At All Cost: “We’re Not In This To Get Rich”
MTV.com reports: When Century Media — home to the likes of CELTIC FROST, NAPALM DEATH and SATYRICON — signed Austin, Texas, metallers AT ALL COST back in March, some fans questioned the move. After all, AT ALL COST aren’t typical of what the label has been churning out the last 20 years.
“We’re one of the lightest bands on the label, and we’ve always been one of those bands that were too light for the heavy tours and too heavy for the light tours,” frontman Trey Ramirez explained. “I can’t even think of a single other Century Media band we should hit the road with, but maybe that’s the direction [the label wants] to go — maybe they’re branching out.”
You see, AT ALL COST are … well … eclectic. The band’s recently released LP, Circle of Demons, is teeming with solid melodies, thrash-tastic riffage and the occasional breakdown. But there are poppy, electronic elements to AAC’s sound too — and at times, Ramirez employs a vocoder to alter his voice. Standard metal fare, these boys ain’t. So, where does the singer see his band fitting in with the rest of metal’s current class?
“We’re definitely part of the same class, but we don’t get called upon that much,” he cracked. “We kind of all revel in the fact that we’re standing outside the box. It’s kind of cool. You either get 100 percent positive attention from people or 100 percent negative. And negative people are easily persuaded. Most naysayers that have come to see our shows have actually come up to us and told us, ‘I was totally wrong about you guys.’ We like being different.
“We’re just eye-openers, man,” he continued. “We think that certain genres are stagnant, and we want to change things. Change isn’t always necessarily good, unless you do it right, and we’re still fine-tuning our sound. But we want other bands to come out and say, ‘I know there’s supposed to be a breakdown here …’ or, ‘I know the song’s supposed to fit this formula, but let’s try something different. Let’s dare to be different.’ I think that when you stick to the metalcore formula, you’re just so limited in what you can do. When you do something different, you get cheers and you get jeers. But we’re in it for ourselves. Honestly. We’re not in this to get rich.”
AT ALL COST are comprised of a bunch of college dropouts who work small jobs to make ends meet. The band signed with Century Media after its former label, Combat Records — also home to HORSE THE BAND and LOOK WHAT I DID — imploded last year. AAC are known for their live sets, but much to their chagrin, they’ve never been asked to participate in summer festivals like Ozzfest and Sounds of the Underground.
“We’ve just never had the attitude of spending money to make money,” Ramirez explained. “We’ll road-dog it as long as we can, until we’re invited — as opposed to paying the $75,000 to get on [a major metal tour]. There’s no return from doing that, but it’s not like we’re seeing major returns doing it this way. It never has been about that — we don’t mind touring with bands that have a fanbase that don’t necessarily like our band. We’re in the business of persuading people.
“If you leave our show saying, ‘Oh my God, those guys were great — I’m going to go buy that record,’ great,” he added. “If you leave our show saying, ‘What the hell did I just listen to?,’ and we some how opened your mind a little bit, that’s also equally great. We’re in it to win it. It’s pure energy when we take that stage, and that’s our most fun of the day — that’s our time. So, we have to have a blast during that time to make it worthwhile, and I think that transfers over.”
Still, that doesn’t mean being in AT ALL COST is easy. In fact, the band is known for its unusually bad luck.
“We’ve been the victim of multiple thefts,” the singer said. “We’ve had our trailer stolen twice, our van broken into once. Luckily — and I use the term loosely — the trailer was only full of equipment one time. The other time, it was broken into on the side of the road, and then someone stole it. We’ve lost a couple of babies, let’s put it that way.”
During the band’s recent tour with ONE DEAD THREE WOUNDED, Ramirez got even worse news.
“The first week of that run, I lost my glasses,” he said. “Then, when I went to the doctor for replacements, I found out I was legally blind and had glaucoma. Then I got two staph infections — all in the first week. Then I come home from that tour and my dog ate my glasses. Them’s the breaks. Sh– happens to a lot of bands, but sometimes it happens to the same band a lot.”
AT ALL COST are currently on tour with VANNA and ASSACRE and will hit the road again this fall with VANNA and OH, SLEEPER.
(+41 rating, 14 votes)
