INTERVIEW – Conquer Divide: “We always want to bring something new to the table and for our fans, we don’t want to write the same stuff.”

Interview with Isabel Johnson by Carina Lawrence

Modern metal quintet Conquer Divide hail from the U.S., U.K., and Canada and they unleashed their self-titled debut in 2015 and now thankfully they are back with their highly anticipated follow-up ‘Slow Burn’ which was released 8th September 2023 armed with a new fresh sound and a new label. We talked to guitarist Isabel Johnson whilst the band are on tour in the US supporting Icon For Hire to discuss the new album, the future and more.

So, let’s start with the obvious question I imagine getting asked a lot. Why was there such a long gap between the self-titled debut in 2015 and the new album? Was that planned or just circumstantial?

So, it wasn’t necessarily planned. We toured with the first album until 2017, and we had some members leave, and we were trying to fill in the gaps, and we were writing, and we had some members get married and stuff like that, so big events, and then we were kind of ready to make come back, but then the pandemic hit so that just extended everything. The pandemic really pushed everything back by a couple of years, and also, we are no longer with the record label that we released our first album with, so we were finding a new record label, so the waiting that comes with that as well. If we had it our way, I think we would have had the album released by like 2020 or 2021, but unfortunately, it just didn’t end up that way. Some of the recordings actually on this album have been ready to go since like 2021, so we have been very patiently waiting.

Following on from that, when was the new album ‘Slow Burn’ actually written and recorded then. Was it all a while ago now?

Yeah, so we probably started seriously writing the album in like 2017/2018 when me and Kristen Sturgis (the other guitarist) started getting together and hashing out some ideas guitar wise but a couple of the songs like ‘N E W H E A V E N’ and ‘The Invisible’ we wrote last year which are the newer ones so its kind of mixed. It definitely wasn’t all in one sitting, and it is a varied album when it comes to sounds, and that’s one of the reasons, as well as there was a lot of time in between some of the songs.

How did you arrive at the new album title of ‘Slow Burn’? What does it mean?

It took quite a while for us to decide on the album title. With the debut album, it was just self-titled, and we just settled on that as we couldn’t decide, so it took a while to come up with a name and the music was completely done before we came up with the title and ‘Slow Burn’ seemed to make sense, as a lot of the songs have been burning for a while before we released them and a lot of the members like to think that slow burn is in relation to the fact that they like every song, so every song is fire and it’s a nice slow burn. I like to think of it as the album has been a long time coming we have been waiting to release it…slow burn.

How much do you think you have evolved since your debut personally and creatively?

The 2015 album music was written back in 2012 so it is almost ten years later so we have all grown as people and musicians and we were all around 21 when the first album came out and I think for us we always want to bring something new to the table and for our fans, we don’t want to write the same stuff. The first debut album was pretty much a standard metalcore album and we intentionally wanted our second album ‘Slow Burn’ to be more varied. It’s funny because a few years ago when we were in between record labels around like the end of 2018 we were having labels tell us like ‘Oh, we love you guys but we don’t want any screaming’ and then suddenly all these rock and metal labels we like we are not signing anyone who screams because around that time it was starting to maybe go out of fashion a little bit and I feel like now, screams are cool again, so I guess we waited it out and now is a good time. It was great for us because our single ‘welcome2paradise’ which is one of the heavier tracks on the album, was actually a label pick and we were so excited and pleasantly surprised because we thought they would pick one of the softer ones to promote to a broader audience and they were like ‘nope, we want to do ‘welcome2paradise’ and we were like this is awesome, we were so happy.

That’s great, sounds like things are going well with your new label Mascot Records then…

Yeah, we have just started really because we have been waiting to release the album and now they can really showcase what they can do and hopefully this album is a good success and gets us a lot of tours, so we can really just show our music to as many people as possible.

That follows nicely as I was going to ask more about the single ‘welcome2paradise’ as I read that this was a particularly special one for you all as you pushed yourselves to try something different and touched upon environmental issues. What inspired you to do this?

It is definitely different lyrically, and that is the same for quite a lot for the new album as the first album was all about feelings but more like ‘oh you hurt me, and this is how I feel’ instead of talking about the outside world so that is new for us in this album but ‘welcome2paradise’ was fun because I remember we were sitting down with Jon Eberhard who helps us in the studio, he helps produce and me, Kirsten and him all sat down and we were like ‘let’s write something really cool and groovy’, and the opening riff is in ten fall so instead of counting to four you count to ten which is quite interesting and fun to play. Sometimes we do things quite deliberately but sometimes we have some happy mistakes. We did a bit of writing at Kristen’s house, and she was having some construction done outside, and we actually sampled some of the drill sounds and put it in the song. Kristen was like let’s just use this.

The album closer ‘gAtEkEePeR’ I believe, is about your frustrations with the music industry, especially in regards to being women in the scene is that correct? I think it’s a great message to end with the lyric, “Keep the gate as we are coming for the throne”. So guessing that means the future for Conquer Divide is looking strong? Do you see these issues happening less now than when first started out, or is it still happening?

It’s always a little bit tricky because where I was just talking about labels and like ‘oh we don’t want screams’, equally people in all areas of the music industry, whether it’s agents or managers or whatever, the amount of times that we have been told, ‘Oh sorry we have already got a female fronted band’ and we are like what the hell, you have like all these male-fronted bands but you can’t have more than one which is a really weird thing, and it sucks. It’s like we can’t have more than one of those, it’s seen too much of a niche for whatever fucking reason, and it’s definitely tricky, but we are having a great time with our current management and agent, and it’s nice because our current team they didn’t talk about any of that, we were like you guys want us so that’s great. It’s hard to be pushed back just because we are women, it’s something that I don’t think male bands experience, but I guess I’m not naïve to the fact it does give us a bit of an edge as well, it’s pick your poison because people love listening to our music and a lot of people love listening to strictly female-fronted bands as they prefer the sound of female voices but then other people are like I don’t like female voices in rock so yeah pick your poison. It’s like marmite. That’s what ‘gAtEkEePeR’ is about, and we still feel quite strongly about it after releasing the album, but I think the feelings were definitely stronger at the time when we were writing about it because we were in between everything, and we had no label or anything and getting pushed back so it was definitely raw when we were writing it. Kristen does a lot of the lyric writing, she is great with that stuff and very smart, and she is able to put into words how we all feel, which is great.

You just recently toured with Electric Callboy in the US. How did that go, and what was it like playing the new songs?

It was honestly, I think, the best tour we have ever been on. It was great because every single show was sold out, and every venue was at least like 1200 people, so it was fantastic. The guys are great in Electric Callboy, and it was interesting because everybody in the crew was great so it was a lovely experience because when you bring a ton of people together, it’s just like at any other workplace, there’s always one dick, but there wasn’t one, there wasn’t even one bad person in the crew.

Right now, you are on tour with Icon For Hire and The Funeral Portrait. How’s that going so far?

It’s going well, they are smaller cap venues, but it’s quite nice because when we were on tour with Electric Callboy, we had to load in very early, and it was very rushed all the time as we were the first band playing, so we would get there at noon, and the doors would open at like six or seven, and it was rushed, but this tour our load in is a little bit later, and our set is a bit later and as there is less people we get to hang out with the fans a bit more so less stressful and it’s nice because like I said the Electric Callboy tour was sold out before we were even able to announce it so it was Electric Callboy fans and sometimes they just happened to like us as well and get a few new listeners, but here (Icon For Hire tour) people are telling us oh we wanted tickets at the Electric Callboy tour, but it was sold out, and we were like sorry we couldn’t tell you guys so it’s a lot of Conquer Divide listeners coming along to this one.

Any plans for other tours, especially a UK tour this year or next perhaps? Would love to see you! I don’t believe you have ever played the UK, is that right?

No, we have only ever played in Canada and America so we would love to come the UK and we are getting offers here and there but we are just waiting for the one that makes financial sense especially as its expensive bringing over all the gear and everything and we would liked to do like a extended UK tour with Europe so that it makes sense so its in the works but just waiting for the right offer which should hopefully come soon because we have just released the new album and there is quite a lot of hype behind it so it feels like now is the time that its going to happen. Its just tricky as you cant really do a month long tour in the UK as the UK is smaller than the US whereas in the US we left early August and we are still on the road and doing shows most days so we would have to add it onto a Europe tour so that it makes financial sense but we are itching to get there because I’m originally from Wirral which is underneath Liverpool (UK) so I would love to play, so we have to play, we will be there.

What else have you got planned for the rest of the year or would like to achieve?

We are planning on doing a headlining tour which we haven’t done before so maybe like a two week tour on the East Coast in the US so that will be either early next year or late this year so that’s what we are trying to do right now. I think after this tour is over me and Kristen will start getting together and start thinking about what we want to do next and we are thinking about doing some more acoustics and acoustic renditions of the songs. Just before we left on tour, me and Kia (Taylor, vocalist) did an acoustic set at a record shop promoting the album as we couldn’t bring the whole band in so we were like we will just do an acoustic and that’s really fun so we are thinking of doing an acoustic EP between the next album and talked about doing some more cover songs as well but I believe anything in between touring we will think about getting into writing again because its better to do that before we get really busy touring again and then you kind of run out of time.

‘Slow Burn’ is out now via Mascot Records! Stream/purchase here:

https://lnk.to/ConquerDivide?mc_cid=3ee049ff7b&mc_eid=b6f569db7d

Check out our review of ‘Slow Burn’ here: