On KNIVES, AIDEN comes in with the confident swagger of a band that has finally come into its own. Every song resounds with meaning, assertion and gravity. AIDEN is not a band to preach to their fans, demanding them to blindly follow-the-leader. AIDEN asks the listener only to question what they really think, to know what they really know and to believe what they really believe.
Like life itself, KNIVES is a wrought with the search for truth and answers in an unjust...
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On KNIVES, AIDEN comes in with the confident swagger of a band that has finally come into its own. Every song resounds with meaning, assertion and gravity. AIDEN is not a band to preach to their fans, demanding them to blindly follow-the-leader. AIDEN asks the listener only to question what they really think, to know what they really know and to believe what they really believe.
Like life itself, KNIVES is a wrought with the search for truth and answers in an unjust world. KNIVES is dark but enlightened, brutal but honest and is a true statement from a band who will write what they want and be who the fuck they want to be. Continuing in the D.I.Y. tradition, KNIVES was recorded by AIDEN themselves at the band’s Seattle- based Sleepy Hollow Studios, with singer Wil Francis at the helm of production.
“I wanted to create a sense of urgency on this record, to try and capture raw energy was our main goal. I feel, for the first time, that we actually accomplished that.” - Wil Francis
In 2003, AIDEN began quite humbly in Seattle, as many greats do: spawned from the deceptively charmed facade of a suburban adolescence gone awry. Throughout their now seven years in existence, Wil Francis, Angel Ibarra, Nick Wiggins and Jake Davison have grown in their most formidable and tumultuous years together. In their early days, the band was young and frantic, but eager and driven.
AIDEN had to sell off their personal belongings to fund their first release, OUR GANGS DARK OATH. So determined to persevere, some teenaged band members finished high school in a van on the road. AIDEN’s focus and energy caught the attention of Victory Records, the band was subsequently signed in 2003. Their first Victory release, NIGHTMARE ANATOMY, awoke the punk underground and broke records as Victory’s highest selling debut album. They rallied every kind of listener from punk to goth to rock to metal; AIDEN was the new band on the scene and everyone took notice. They won awards for Best Newcomer and Best International Newcomer in 2006 from Metal Hammer and Kerrang! magazines, respectfully. The releases RAIN IN HELL and CONVICTION followed, solidifying AIDEN’s place in history forever.
In the years that followed, AIDEN took the world by storm with full force on the Vans Warped Tour, Taste Of Chaos and Taste Of Chaos International, as well as popular festivals including Carling’s Reading/Leeds, Download and Bamboozle. The buzz of their live show spread like wildfire, igniting frenzied moshpits with the bands’ punk laden songs getting crowds fired up everywhere.
The band toured the globe many times over, building a dedicated fanbase that can borderline on obsessive (that is never a bad thing). On their travels, AIDEN has shared the stage with Linkin Park, 30 Seconds To Mars, The Used, Lost Prophets, Taking Back Sunday, NOFX, Marilyn Manson and
HIM, from Moscow to Sydney, Tokyo to London, Helsinki to Mexico City and every corner in-between.
“If you would have told me when I was a kid that someday I would be traveling around the world playing music for a living, with some of my very own heroes, I would have said that you were crazy and you need to take your meds. Life is very strange and amazing things happen if you open your eyes and are willing to chase your dreams.”- Wil Francis
Dissolution, Heartache, Fear and Death have touched the members of AIDEN in a very real life, and have then inspired a snarling response. It’s like a bird’s eye view into a living hell. The ever-going, tenacious and (often) controversial act AIDEN channels everything they’ve got into their newest work, KNIVES. The result? The album of a lifetime.
Though the album has been given a Parental Warning sticker and flagged for controversial content (AIDEN dares to defy convention in several of the songs), KNIVES has been received as the defining album of this band’s long-lasting career. KNIVES will not tell you what you want to hear, but it might tell you what you need to hear. And, spoken like a man who has learned through turmoil, Wil Francis hopes to pay it forward, “I tell my story in hope that people may take something from it.”
www.myspace.com/aiden
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