It can be hard to hold it in your mind, but believe it or not we’re nearing five years since the outbreak of COVID-19 changed the world. It was probably about this time in 2019 that we got insanely sick, in a way we’d never been (which is saying something, trust us), but that’s not what we remember. We remember working our ass off and spending every last cent we had on an album and a tour that was quickly annihilated via pandemic precautions – and we know we were far from alone in that disaster.
On the plus side, being locked away for a few months did allow us to focus on listening to new music, and one of the records we remember the most from this particular era of hell was Fight Cloud‘s Thoughts Aligned. It was just one of those records you couldn’t help but relate with at the time – intentionally or not, the record’s narrative paired well with intense, borderline-unsustainable isolation.
Luckily, the craziness of the pandemic didn’t do them in. In fact, they’ve been able to progress somewhat with singles here and there, and even picked up a new drummer a while back. On the surface this can look like a familiar post-pandy approach where a band relies more on singles and EP’s than formal albums, and that’s not a bad thing – if anything it’s just good sense. But we’re happy to report Fight Cloud is actually on the eve of revealing a new full-length, and they even answered a few questions for us below!
But first, peep the new single – it sure is a “Ripper.”
FB: Fight Cloud has been making music for over a decade now – has time flown for you guys or does it feel like a journey?
Oh man, definitely been a journey. Twelve years since we released our first album…seems impossible, but we’re always grateful for every new day, new idea, new song and every opportunity we get. Every bump in the road seems like it was necessary to get where we are right now. We finally found the right band members that allowed for our creative minds to meld easily and consistently. We finished the new album in less than a year, which I think is a sign of true unity, seeing as we were only able to release three singles in the three years prior.
FB: Looking back, potentially your most celebrated effort to date is Thoughts Aligned – it also came at potentially the worst time, right before the pandemic. You’ve released a few songs since then and are ready to start teasing the next LP. What kinds of lessons have you learned since the release of Thoughts Aligned?
It’s been a lesson in patience and perseverance. The pandemic slowed a lot of things down, we went through multiple member changes, life got in the way, and there were points where the future of the band was uncertain. In total, the new LP has been over 4 years in the making and at times it was hard to believe we’d ever finish it.
FB: What can you tell us about the Subterrania Collective?
Haha, haven’t heard that name in a while! It was an old initiative put together by some friends of ours here in Richmond as a way to group together and catalog our musical releases. Kind of like a diet record label. It has unfortunately dissolved since its heyday, but a lot of the friendships and bands are still going strong, so I think it served its purpose well.
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FB: What’s the scene been like in Virginia? Has it evolved over the years you’ve been active? Do you find that your environment influences the writing for the band?
It usually doesn’t influence our material too much, but our peers in the local scene definitely inspire us to keep working and to be our best. It’s great to see the influx of new bands and the growth of the old ones we have been playing with for the last decade. Richmond has always been truly welcoming to us, and generally very accepting of all kinds of quirky and experimental acts. The venue landscape is ever-changing and it seems more difficult to book venues now, but I’d say the energy and support in the scene has felt pretty consistent since we started playing here back in 2011.
FB: Have the recording sessions for the upcoming material stood out in any particular ways or do you guys have an established routine for the studio?
Luckily, our guitarist Mitch is an engineer and owns Go West Recording here in Richmond, which he finished building and opened in late 2022. So we’ve always done our recording in house and we just try to do a better job each time around. The huge difference with this record was having the new studio with separate control room, live room, and all that jazz, which we’d never had before. This was also the first project with Grayson drumming and he killed it playing to our crazy automated tempo maps. Production-wise, we aimed to keep things more simplistic and really just tried to capture what we sound like live.
FB: Can you tell us a little bit about the new material?
This new album definitely calls back to some of our roots, a little heavier, a little grittier, but in some ways, more relatable and approachable. Since the pandemic, life has been interesting, and I think the great thing about making music is that you can express emotions in a way not everybody can. We’ve definitely taken full advantage of this outlet and poured a lot of emotions into this album. I think the listener will be able to hear the energy of a group that is finally comfortable in its own skin. The record is a testament to our journey getting here, with themes of love and loss, birth and death, and the evolution of relationships.
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FB: Purely hypothetical, but it must be asked – if you indeed were forced into a floating cloud to fight someone, fictional or not, who would be the last person you’d have to fight against?
Haha, nice. Ourselves, I think. The theme across a lot of games and stories is fighting yourself, your own worst enemy. A lot of what FC has been doing in these past years is finding our positive traits and learning how to hone in on them, while simultaneously figuring out how to let go of certain things that aren’t as important or don’t serve us anymore.
(Thanks for reading! If you’re looking for more music, check out our Bandcamp compilations here. If you like us, or possibly even love us, donations are always appreciated at the Buy Me A Coffee page here, but if you’re in a generous mood you can also donate to folks like Doctors Without Borders, the PCRF, Charity Water, Kindness Ranch, One Tail at A Time, or Best Friends Animal Sanctuary that could probably use it more – click on their names above to check ‘em out if you’re so inclined. Thanks again!)