Saving Vice Reflect On One Year of ‘Hello There’
Rolling out an album is an extensive process that spans months. Bands and management schedule announcements for singles, tours, merch packages and artwork in a strategic manner to build anticipation and complete a cycle of their career based around said album.
Many bands ended up scrapping those plans in 2020, including Saving Vice. The Vermont metalcore band played an album release show (the concept feels like a relic right now) for their debut album Hello There on March 7 last year, right before the initial COVID wave hit that has yet to let up. Tours and video shoots canceled, albums postponed, and an industry left in confusion, still searching for a way out.
It’s not unreasonable to think Saving Vice would be thrown off their game, especially upon releasing their debut album. Yet, the band adapted and enjoyed a successful year all things considered. Hello There recently passed 1 million streams on Spotify and the band only grew as they released covers of Motionless in White and Evanescence songs, a two-song EP and reworked versions of Hello There tracks.
Vocalist Chase Papariello spoke with Scene Daddy about the year since Hello There’s release and how the band made 2020 their biggest year yet, despite a total shutdown of live music.
There’s no doubt COVID didn’t have to be this bad, at least speaking from the United States’ perspective. Multiple systemic failures led us to this year-long. no-end-in-sight, semi-lockdown purgatory. “Broken Window,” one of Hello There’s singles, touches on corruption and how it’s affected our values.
“‘Broken Window’ is very important to everyone in the band,” Papariello said. “It’s about how what is now being viewed as good, right and just is being skewed from what it used to be and how it’s slowly declining… The decline of moral value and how we’re allowing these things that should have never been allowed in the first place.”
Papariello said there’s unfortunately “no shortage” of lyrical content stemming from disappointment in government and, in the song’s words, the “absurdity, stupidity, the utter lack of sympathy” in the world. Make no mistake though, Hello There isn’t stuck in the angry-at-the-world metalcore trope. The album’s lyrics touch on homesickness (“So Safe”), abuse and power imbalance (“Never Knows Best”) and rebirth (“The Black Briar”).
New versions of “So Safe” and “Never Knows Best” were released in 2020, showing the subtlety and melodic sense the group is capable of. An acoustic take on “So Safe” strips the song back, allowing it to breathe and creates an atmospheric chill, while the band recruited pianist Misstiq to turn “Never Knows Best” into a haunting ballad.
Saving Vice also tipped the scale in the other direction this past year, with the release of their Binary EP. Two tracks and under seven minutes was all the band needed to convince us they were honing their skills in creating chaos and breakdowns. Binary and the acoustic version of “So Safe” were recorded and produced by Saving Vice guitarist Robbie Litchfield. Papariello described Litchfield as “an impressive force of nature” behind the band’s independent approach. “As much as we love being DIY, [we know] that’s not something we can do forever, but it’s definitely something we want to do more in the future.”
Producing for Saving Vice has proved a beneficial move, as Litchfield is currently operating out of Hell Here Studios in New York while the band has been unable to tour. Other band members have launched or continued their own projects within the last year: vocalist Tyler Small creates graphic design art under My Reunion and drummer Sam Whelton runs the clothing line Break Loose. Papariello has his own clothing line as well with Lowpoint. “It helps us stay sane in times like this,” he added.
As far as looking ahead, Papariello said Saving Vice is laying low (for now) after a busy year. Looking forward to the future, the band has some singles in the works and “maybe an EP,” with a follow-up to Hello There still a while down the road. “We are trying to better ourselves and get to our best form for our next drop,” he said. “We have really big plans for our next song.”
Listen to Hello There and Binary EP.