CLEVELAND, Ohio -- “Fake Blood,” the new album from Cleveland emo-punk band Heart Attack Man, is all about growing into a new stage of life. A darker, angrier stage.
The new album, released on Triple Crown Records, has been received well since it was released on April 19 with glowing reviews on Substream and Chicago Reader. “Fake Blood" is a follow-up to the band’s 2017 album “The Manson Family,” and Heart Attack Man’s best work yet.
Singer Eric Egan’s has helped boost the band’s profile with his own internet promotion. Back in February, Egan went viral when he listed his signature orange beanie for sale on eBay. It received a bid for over $100,000, but he later removed the listing and opted to keep his hat to himself. He’s also put out humorous videos like “Quick Line Check” and a “Hot Ones” audition tape, which have been embraced online.
Heart Attack Man will be returning to its hometown of Cleveland to celebrate the release of “Fake Blood.” The band will host a album release concert at Mahall’s on May 18, along with opening acts Perverts Again, Crime of Passing and joyframe.
We chatted with Egan about Heart Attack Man’s new album, the band’s recent tour with Seaway and Free Throw, and having fun on the internet.
Anne Nickoloff: You have your hometown album release show at Mahall’s. How’s it feel to be back in Cleveland? Do you have anything special in store for that concert?
Eric Egan: We’re going to play the whole record, which sounds kind of simple, but when we released our debut album, “The Manson Family,” when we did the record release show for that, we didn’t play all of it. So, this time around we just wanted to do the record in its entirety. We’ll be playing a lot of older material as well, but it’ll be nice to actually play the whole thing, front to back. We’re all really excited for this show, been looking forward to it for a while now. We’re really excited to be able to put together a lineup of bands we all like.
With your new album, it’s been getting really great reviews. How has it been received on tour?
EE: It’s been great. I’ve been really surprised, honestly. I felt very confident in our record going into it. Going into the studio, we were really well-rehearsed and I thought the songs were all there. Personally, it’s been the most confident I’ve been in our material.
But even with that, I am surprised at how well it’s been received on tour. We started out this tour kind of having an even mix -- on this tour, playing the supporting slot, we’re with three other bands, we’re the second band of four -- with that, we have a shorter set time every night than we will at the release show. Because of our shortened set time, we’ve been trying to evenly mix in songs from our entire catalog. With that, we had a few songs from our first album, the two songs from a split that we did last year and evenly mixing up the setlist to be a little bit of everything.
Then, as we got into this tour, we released the record on the first day of it. Right away, we immediately noticed that people were taking a liking to the new material. Every night of the tour, people have been singing the new songs. It became very apparent as we were going along that the new material is definitely fan-favorites already. People were specifically requesting certain new songs. In comparison from the beginning of the tour to now, where we started with an even distribution of everything, for the past four or five nights, we have pretty much just been playing new material except for a few songs. It’s been really well-received. When we play the new material live, people have been going crazy, singing along, stage diving, all that. It’s been very lively. I’ve been very pleased.
That’s great. I’m really glad that it’s caught on so well. I was hoping to maybe talk more about “Fake Blood,” the topics within it. It feels like it’s very much about growing up or growing into a new stage of life. Could you reflect on that a little bit, personally?
EE: Whenever I talk about the meaning behind songs, I can’t emphasize enough: I want people to come to their own conclusions and interpretations of what the songs mean to them. What inspired it for me personally, and what it means to me, I just want to put it out there as a side idea. I’m not trying to say, ‘Okay, this is what it means and what it should mean to everyone.’
For me, the album is about growing up and reflecting on the past few years of my life and situations within. With our debut album, “The Manson Family,” it’s really building on a lot of that and a lot of the same situations that I was reflecting on with that. Except that it’s developed more; the sentiment of the Manson family was sad and confused and dwelling in negativity and trying to feel better. But the more that I’ve sat with myself ... I’ve realized that dwelling in the negativity isn’t going to make it get any better. Just constantly focusing on it, you might feel a little bit better, and it’s different for everyone -- but for me personally, it just wasn’t getting me anywhere. A lot of those feelings festered over into frustration and anger over the years. This album has been about putting it out there and getting it off my chest.
Not every song is about the same situation, or the same person, or what have you, but it’s a very general vibe of frustration and anger and getting that all out in different ways. Some of the songs are a lot more direct, and you can really tell right away what the song is about, but then some of the songs, I wanted it to be a little bit more deliberately vague and ambiguous in a sense. Not using a lot of metaphors and all that. I’m big on lyrics and I spend a lot of time with them and I want to make the most of every word.
If you had to pick a favorite song off the album, which one would it be?
EE: For me, there’s a favorite song to play live and then a favorite song to listen to. Right now, my favorite one to listen to is “Moths In A Lampshade,” right in the middle of the record. We haven’t done a song like that before and it was really refreshing to try something new like that with guitar harmonics and a lot of vocal layering. I really like listening to that, and it was a lot of fun to make. It’s a little more experimental for us.
I’d say my favorite one to play live is “Sugar Coated.” It’s the penultimate track. It’s definitely the most aggressive track on the record, and it’s really fun to play live. People go all for it, and it’s really high energy.
I also do really like playing “Crisis Actor,” because a thing that’s been happening on this tour. There’s this part in the middle of the song where I recorded me yelling the Miranda Rights over the middle part of the song. On this tour, I tweeted [and asked] if anyone wants to get onstage and do that part, because it’s a lot to fit into one part of the song, especially live. We did that whole part as an afterthought when we recorded it. We were finished with the song and then listening to it, and I was like, “This would be cool to do it here as a sample thing.” I really like playing that song live too, because most nights there have been kids that have gotten onstage and screamed that part with us. It’s been a lot of fun, that song’s really high-energy too. I really like playing the songs that have crowd involvement. Whatever gets people going.
Yeah - touching on that, how you’re involved with your fans, either through social media or during concerts -- you’ve done some pretty funny things. I saw your ‘Hot Ones’ video on Youtube, the hat thing that got the $100,000 auction. Could you talk about your personality on social media to reach your fan base?
EE: The funny thing about that is, every night, I’ll have people talking to me about my internet presence and whatnot. I’ve been getting so many people asking me, ‘What’s up with the beanie situation?’ I’ve retold the story so many times already and it’s not like I’m sick of it because I think it’s hilarious, I think it’s a story worth retelling. With my internet presence, the way I look at it, being a band in 2019, there are so many bands out there and there’s so much going on. People have such a short attention span and there’s a heavy emphasis on social media and everything. For better or for worse, it’s just the way things are. The way I look at it, I could just not do any of that, be very removed from social media and just stick to making music and not being very interactive - but I like being interactive and I like talking to people. I like talking to and meeting our fans at shows.
I view it all as one package deal, it’s all part of it. I don’t think, ‘Okay we’re going to go on tour and I’m not going to talk to anyone, I’m not going to interact with anyone.’ That just doesn’t appeal to me, that’s part of the reason I like going on tour so much.
I view it all as the same thing. When we’re on tour and especially when we’re not on tour, it’s crucial to have a very engaging social media presence. Otherwise, people are going to forget about you -- well, maybe not forget about you, but it keeps a sense of urgency to what you’re doing. When you make it fun and make it genuinely something you’re about and putting you’re all into and having fun with, that’s just the way I like to operate with it. I wouldn’t be constantly finding ways to have fun on the internet if I wasn’t all about it. It’d be pretty exhausting.
Looking back on some of your early years within Cleveland, the pop-punk and emo scene here, I was wondering - you guys are starting to grow beyond that quite a bit. What’s that experience like for you?
EE: The thing that’s been different with that is that we haven’t played locally as much. We play Cleveland maybe three or four times a year. The thing is, we’re still involved in a sense, we all still go to shows and stuff, it might not be as much because we’re not home as much. But I like to think that we’re all still somewhat involved and we’re not completely out of the loop and we still know what’s going on a little bit. I’d like to think we’re not completely removed or above anything. I would never forget where we came from. Maybe people do look at us that way and are like, “They think they’re too good for the scene," or whatever. But I’d like to think that while we’re home, I still love going to shows and everything. We all do. When we do play locally, it normally ends up being on a tour that we’re on, or something where it’s a release show. We’ll play sparingly. It’s all still very important to us, to at least know what’s going on even if we’re not home that much, or something at an arm’s distance.
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