Amid Life Crises: Survivors of The Kraken Reflect on 20 Years of Music and Friendship
Survivors of The Kraken have come full circle. Twenty years after first jamming together as teenagers in the vibrant, underground New England music scene, the trio finally releases their long-awaited debut album, “Amid Life Crises.” Recorded fully analog and live to tape at subModern Audio in Providence, RI, the album captures the raw, unfiltered energy of three lifelong friends reconnecting both creatively and personally. Every track pulses with the authenticity of musicians who have grown, stumbled, and evolved over two decades, embracing imperfections and human moments that digital production would erase. Amid Life Crises is a testament to enduring friendship, resilience, and the timeless thrill of making music on your own terms.
The band reflects on rediscovering the deep bond they forged as teenagers, embracing the imperfections that inevitably come with two decades of life and music, and finding a way to translate that authenticity into songs that feel vibrant, unpolished, and unapologetically human. Each laugh, each misstep in the studio, and every spontaneous creative moment became part of the record, capturing the spirit of friendship and the joy of making music without pretense.
For "Amid Life Crises," you recorded fully analog, live to tape. How did returning to the studio after twenty years and using this approach shape the creative process in ways digital production couldn’t?
Allan: Honestly, digital would have been easier! Recording this way made it so we had to be comfortable and embrace mistakes. Being in the space [subModern Audio, PVD] allowed us to just play, be goofs, and write; without that space, life would have kept happening, and we may never have gotten to doing the thing.
Justin: It really was like stepping into one of those stories you’d read about in a music magazine like Creem or Guitar World. We were just trying things and experimenting and always trying to capture what we were doing, so we needed a large supply of tape! Recording that way required us to step up our musicianship and really dial in on each other. When you’re recording to a computer, if you don’t like something, you can punch in right there and tweak it or manipulate it; stretch or copy something. When you’re recording to tape, you can’t do that. You’ve got to be able to play the part, OR you have to learn to live with the imperfection. We definitely left the studio a better band than we entered. We were also limited to 24 tracks, which may sound like a lot, but it forces you to make creative choices you may not otherwise make because there’s always another track.
“Amid Life Crises” marks your debut album after two decades of making music together. What personal crossroads fed into the writing of these songs?
Allan: We continued to grow personally [marriages, becoming a parent] and play creatively, just somewhat separately. Brian and I kind of developed our own shorthand over the years because we keep playing together in different groups. Getting back together, which happened mostly by chance, wasn’t so much a crossroads as it was just right where we were meant to be.
Justin: When we first started playing music together, we were basically children, and now we’re officially halfway through this journey. That skews your perspective, no matter what has happened. At the same time, I was completely rediscovering who I was, having been a teacher for 13 years and not very creatively active from 2010 to 2020. Now I’m fronting a rock band again? My dad died in September of 2022, and I found myself writing about him and from his point of view, particularly on All’s Not Meant For You and Broken Sound. Sometimes, at a crossroad, you get to choose the path you take, and sometimes the road forces you in a direction whether you want to or not. All of that, and then sent it against the backdrop of a global pandemic.
Having emerged from the early 2000s New England music scene and recently returned to performing, how has that era influenced the way you approach writing and performing today?
Allan: Other than putting a chip on our shoulder, I don’t think it did. We were so far ahead of our time back then.
Justin: I agree with that! Whether it was artifice or genuine, we were surrounded by bands that all sounded alike: Blink-182 or Green Day facsimiles, hardcore, and tribute bands. We could have made the decision to do what was trendy, but that was never who we were. I think our scene, in particular, musically had to catch up to where we were. It was always important to us, for better or worse, to be authentically Survivors of the Kraken.
Allan: Just having lived through that era, now twenty-ish years later... we play for us now. When you are a kid, you play for so many reasons, rarely just to have fun. After all this time, it's because we want to.
After years apart, what did each of you bring back into the band that wasn’t there the first time around?
Allans: Respect. Love. We have a deep respect for each other as people and musicians, and mostly we just care about each other now.
Justin: These are my brothers. We’re family more than a band. I know that on my worst day, I can look to my left and right, and Allan and Brian are going to be there, no questions asked. AND it doesn’t hurt that Allan and Brian note-for-note became two of the most solid players around.
What was it like reconnecting creatively and writing the songs in this album?
Allan: Like the gap never happened. We reconnected as brothers more so than creatively. The art happened around friendship. In the past, we were friends because we were a band; now we are a band because of our friendship.
Justin: It was so much fun. Like time traveling back to 2001, hanging out in Allan’s house in Warwick, where we’d practice. There was no pressure. It was like being in a year-long episode of The Monkees. Lots of laughing, lots of shenanigans. There wasn’t really even an agenda until about halfway through the process.
You’ve described the record as unapologetically human. Was there an imperfection, mistake, or unplanned moment during recording that became essential to the album?
Allan: Literally the whole thing. When you’re recording to tape, you can [with difficulty] edit or run another take, but we took the approach to let everything breathe. Hit the wrong note? It’s okay as long as it still fits inside the groove. Wrong lyrics? Well, actually, it serves the mood, and musically it's solid, so keep it in.
Justin: We did minimal overdubs and tried not to polish it into oblivion. We didn’t use a click track or metronome, and since it’s tape and no computer, nothing’s snapped to the grid, so we may speed up or slow down in places, and it fits with the aesthetic we were trying to create. The equipment we used, while well-maintained, is still thirty or forty years old, so it can be a little glitchy. At the end of Tattered Baggage, you can hear our producer and engineer, Andy Davis, break in and ask us if we’re ready to try the next take of the next song, but it rolled over the end of the take, the one we want to use for the record, AND the board glitches so it records to EVERY TRACK so we can’t even drop it out or minimize it. We could have tried to comp the end or re-record it or do a fade-out, but in the end we realized that was one of those magic moments, like a phone ringing in the background on The Ocean [Led Zeppelin] or that cough in Wish You Were Here [Pink Floyd], and we said, “What the hell, keep it in,” and that’s what you hear on the record. It was a truly human moment, and I love that the listener gets to be in the room with us in that way.
What made now the right time to release Empty Sky as a single?
Justin: The past feels far away even though it isn’t. Tomorrow seems promised, but it’s not. The record came out just over a year ago, so now feels like the right time to release the final single, and we hope it’s a gateway for people who haven’t heard the record yet.
Now that the album is behind you, what’s next for Survivors of the Kraken in terms of touring or new music?
Allan: Ideas are always floating around. When we get together and jam, someone is always fiddling around with something that eventually turns into a song. Truthfully, though, as long as we are doing it together, it’ll be a breeze.
Justin: It’s definitely getting harder and harder for an independent band like ours to book and tour. We’re not giving up. The infrastructure for live original music just doesn’t seem to be there in the way it used to be. We know that to keep moving forward, we have to think out of the box and get creative. If there’s a way to make it happen, we will. We’re not ruling anything out.