Madina Lake Interview with Nathan Leone (lead vocals) and Matthew Leone (bass, backing vocals)

Tell me about your new album and the recording process… 

Recording the album with David Bendeth was certainly a challenge, but a challenge we desperately needed.
We needed somebody to light a fire under our arses because until that point in our career we’d been the only
ones to apply more pressure to ourselves. He was a musical genius, he taught us some very, very invaluable things about song writing and we belly-ached a lot, but in the end we can still say we’re friends and we made a record that we are extremly proud of.

We made our first record with Mike Trombino and he was a very laid-back producer (we loved him for his tones and work he had done previously) and the environment was very relaxed and made on the West Coast. With this record we went to the East Coast and worked with David Bendeth who was incredibly hard-working - we were
there for 6 weeks to 2 months and we worked 12 hours a day at least, and with this record we really pushed the envelope in terms of genre and style. We didn’t stick to anything in particular, the record is all over the place, but in a nice cohesive way. We got some dense industrial songs on it, we got some utter black songs, some metal-leaning songs, it’s all across the board. But at the end of the day I think we beat our first record by a mile and we’re very happy about it.

It’s a concept album based on a 50’s town called Medina Lake?

Yes, it’s the second instalment of the story that unfolds in the 50’s town of Medina Lake. It’s an evolution of the first tale of what happens in the town of Medina Lake in that the first one set up the town and territories and described how the town’s socialite went missing. In the second one we see what effect that has on the town, so the camera pans out and we see a more global perspective of what’s happening in the rest of the world, and we see that the town is not so isolated after all. In fact it’s a very important place in the world.

So guys, what’s the story? 

From the beginning we had the beginning of the story and we had the end of the story but we left the middle to be determined by life experiences and how the world was going to change. I think that from Obama winning the Presidency in America was definitely a testament to humanity, a healing character and we didn’t really see that coming… But at the same time the economy was absolutely pummelled by a bunch of greedy scumbags in the City and these rich companies who were selling who wee selling loans to get a few bucks off the interest rates, but meanwhile collapsing the entire economy and, ironically, it’s actually very relevant to the story. The second instalment is called ‘Scorched Earth’ and that’s kinda where we’re heading right now to be honest. It’s kind of a nightmare out there. But yeah, everything in life influences our records and songs and in the past two and a half years, they’re been a huge part of that.