Interview: Ex-Sleep Signals' project Eyes Like Midnight release new singles, videos, full album planned
Redmond, Oregon’s Eyes Like Midnight emerged after vocalist Robert Cosgrove’s band of ten years, Sleep Signals, disbanded in 2023.
Since forming and solidifying, the trio has released three major singles this year: “Digital Deity,” “Bad Love,” and most recently, “Quicksand.” The band’s Devourer EP is out digitally in November.
New single “A Coffin Song” will release next Tuesday, Sept. 24 and has been previewed with a short film: Part I The Plan and Part II The Heist.
In this extensive OOTB interview with Cosgrove, he discusses the project’s genre diversity, his wide range of influences, new freedoms with the writing process, past setbacks, future plans and more.
Why did you decide to release “Quicksand” as the next single?
We decided to release "Quicksand" as our third single because we wanted some contrast with the previous single, "Bad Love." This project has allowed us to get really creative with our music, especially with mixing genres, and we wanted to show some of the range that we're capable of. "Quicksand" is the heaviest song we've recorded to date and it felt like a really natural progression as we share what we've been working on for this new project.
It seems like music videos are an important part of the process to you for releasing new music, why so?
Music videos are a huge promotional tool that we feel we need to have for each release as much as possible. They're a huge way to share our music on a completely different level. Even when we're in the studio writing a song, I'm usually thinking about a direction I want to take with a music video and visuals that I want to create for our live show. A song can be so much more than just an audio experience and it's really about delivering that holistic experience to our fans.
“Digital Deity” has a bit of industrial and electronic samples interjected and “Bad Love” has more of a mainstream lighter rock appeal, whereas “Quicksand” has a much heavier metal sound; what are some of your influences and how would you say you pay tribute to those influences in the band’s music and lyrics?
We pull influences from all over the board and we love music from a lot of different genres. I grew up listening to a lot of 80’s and 90’s pop; I was huge into Michael Jackson. I had a big nu-metal phase around 2000 and loved bands like Deftones and Korn. In my teen years I listened to and played a lot of hardcore/metalcore and loved bands like Bleeding Through, Poison the Well, and Atreyu. I love a lot of modern pop like The Weeknd and Ashnikko. I think the older I get, the more open to more genres I become and I think you can hear it in our music.
Having such a melting pot of genres involved in the band’s music, when you write music, what’s the process like from start to studio, and how do you decide on the sound approach or genre?
Our writing process has been evolving as we've created more music for Eyes Like Midnight. We have a couple of great co-writers that we work with and I work closely with our producer on the vocal melodies and lyrics while we're in the studio. In our last project, Sleep Signals, we were really focused on trying to write songs that would be good for radio. In Eyes Like Midnight, we said from the beginning that we're just going to write whatever feels good and what we like. It's been a really great experience because we're not afraid to experiment and it is the reason we have had so much diversity in the music.
What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a person or musician, either personally or in the music industry, and how have you overcome that?
We faced a lot of challenges in Sleep Signals. It felt like every time we were making progress, we'd hit a roadblock. In 2017, our van caught on fire and blew up on tour. In 2018, I had an unexplained ischemic pontine stroke. In 2020, we shut down with the rest of the music industry because of Covid. In 2021, our bus was hit by a semi truck while we were on tour. It just really felt like every year we were going to have some huge impactful setback. There was never really a question though, we just accepted the setback and kept moving forward. We've been very fortunate in Eyes Like Midnight so far and hopefully our good luck keeps us out of more trouble.
With the release of your debut EP Devourer just recently under your belt, what are your next plans?
Our Devourer EP drops digitally in November, but you can order physical copies on CD already on our website. Our plan is to keep dropping new singles after Devourer and then put out another EP. We're sitting on about 15 songs right now. We're hoping to get out on the road to follow up our live debut at Rock Fest last month and we're really looking forward to touring with this project. We're also working on putting together a full-length for next year to follow up the 2 EPs. It's going to be a busy '24-'25 for us.
Get Album and Merch Here
https://eyeslikemidnight.com/#merch
Eyes Like Midnight are:
Robert Cosgrove - Vocals
Tristin Paz - Bass
Kaylynn Sammy - Guitar
Follow Eyes Like Midnight
https://linktr.ee/eyeslikemidnight
https://m.facebook.com/eyeslikemidnight
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