LIVEALIE AND THEIR JOURNEY THROUGH THE STATIC: FROM “DEATH BLOOMS” TO “WHIRLPOOLS”

Originally published on hercampus.com

With their 2024 release “Living in the Static,” Livealie has cemented their place in the metalcore scene. Composed of frontman James Harrison (ex-vocalist of Oceans Ate Alaska), bassist and clean singer Jordan Lee, guitarist Andrew Robles, and drummer Brandon Lee, the band bridges New York City and London, collaborating across the Atlantic to put out projects they’re proud of.

I met with Jordan and Andrew to talk about their creative process, the band’s evolution, and how they’ve stayed connected and independent despite juggling two continents and countless shared folders. 

“We do have a lot of processes when we write, and I do think we blend it fairly well with the distance by sending things back and forth constantly,” says Lee. “We have a very extensive Google Drive, where we’re always bouncing ideas back and forth with some very funny names in there.” 

But of course, the original titles change over time before becoming the official song name. With Robles later explaining the story behind “Fabric Felion Boys,” the Google Drive name for “A Liar at Best,” proving to be just one example of the fun names stored in the band’s shared folder. 

“Jordan’s little cat, we had to get him shaved down and he had a very thin layer of fur that felt like fabric,” says Robles, earning a laugh from myself and Lee on the other end of the call. 

Creative chaos aside, even in rare cases of disconnect, the band considers it to be positive, helping each other grow more in their creative process. 

“There’s maybe some kind of serendipity in being misunderstood,” says Robles. “I’d say in most cases, it’s not an issue at all that we’re all spread out. Maybe it’s actually a good thing in some weird ways.”

The same adaptability and duality also show up in the band’s identity. The name and narrative of Livealie has a different meaning to each member. Overall, there’s an overarching theme of how they’re perceived in the band and individually. 

“It’s like the double side of life. There’s people we have to be, and then the people we truly are,” says Lee. Taking ideas from personal experiences, scenarios, and societal issues in order to write music, their projects prove to be living multiple lives at once. Songs like “Casting Shadows” capture the numbness of feeling nothing at all, while “Honestly, This is the Death of Me” conveys the heartbreak of being misled or deceived. Several themes run through the band’s discography–some deeply personal to the members, others that resonate on a broader, more universal level. 

At the end of each month, the band opens up an anonymous confession board, inviting supporters to share their thoughts and what they’re going through–no names, no judgement. This space is used for connection and catharsis, allowing the band to reflect real experiences and emotions in their music and future projects. Saving space for what the band calls “anonymous confessions” in the creative process reinforces their commitment to authenticity and emotional depth within their writing.

Racking up thousands of Spotify plays, “Living in the Static” proves to be introspective and rich in emotion both lyrically and instrumentally. Lee defends the latter when describing his favorite song in the collection, “Inertia Protocol,” an interlude that lives in spot seven on the tracklist.

 “The instrumentation on it is just so calming and relaxing,” he says. “It’s a great palette cleanser after listening to the first set of music that comes into it.” While the track spans just short of a minute and a half, the impact of the song’s tone does wonders for leading into the second half of the album.

While Lee’s favorite track is a “hot take” to most, Robles takes a more mainstream approach in his choice, explaining that the recording process of “A Liar at Best” was his favorite to experience. 

“Some of my favorite moments are when we are together,” he explains before beginning to boast about Lee and his vocal abilities. “Jordan is like, my pride and joy in this band when it comes to being able to show him off singing, that’s my favorite thing to do,” he begins before reflecting on their past. “It took me back to being slightly younger, doing this BS with Jordan ten years ago. I got really great satisfaction out of there,” he reflects wholeheartedly. “You’re only going to get me admitting it here once, never going to say it again,” he jokes.

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Their emotional honesty and DIY approach didn’t come out of the blue. In fact, it’s been years in the making. After debuting with “Death Blooms” in 2019 and following up with “VHS” in 2020, the band quickly built a promising catalog. After 2020, the band went quiet until their 2023 return with “Whirlpools,” reigniting fan excitement and raising questions about the long silence.

“TLDR is that the gap wasn’t intentional,” says Lee. Two years before “Death Blooms” was released, the band worked with Chris Wiseman (Currents and Shadow of Intent) to create a few songs that were later scrapped leading up to the pandemic. The independent band proceeded with filming a music video for their debut single, running into some hurdles with record labels making their way into the conversation. “We had to put ‘Death Blooms’ on pause for a moment to be like, ‘Do we want to do this? Do we not want to do this?’” 

COVID shut the world down, placing even more distance between the band and their creative momentum. “Not only did we have our own restrictions [in the US], but James was in the UK, where the lockdowns were way stricter,” explains Lee. “There were timestamps on when you could leave, and how often. It made getting to the studio or working with engineers really difficult for a while.” Still, the isolation soon turned into inspiration–“Living in the Static,” their debut collection, was born from that period of distance and reflection.

“I want to go on record saying that the next song will be out in five years,” Robles jokes. Lee jumps in to clarify, “That was actually one of our biggest jokes. Like, we are the band that drops one single every year, and if you’re lucky, we might skip an extra year. We really like anticipation. That’s kind of our thing,” poking fun at their disappearance. 

Still, behind the humor is a serious commitment to building something on their own terms. Through it all, the band stayed true to their original vision. The entire production of Livealie is cohesive, with a black and white color scheme, a mix of heavy and smooth vocals, and using vocabulary on social media that sets them apart from other bands. They’ve built their own brand from the ground up using each member’s prior experience in the music industry to their advantage, influencing the unanimous decision to stay an independent band. “We all come from some backgrounds working for a bigger machine,” says Lee. 

They explain more in depth on what a label does for an artist, describing that money is one of the biggest challenges of becoming an independent band in addition to taking on the marketing and hiring tactics yourself. 

“Having to weed through those filters and go that extra step to make sure that we’re represented in all these different spaces that historically require a label has been probably such a pain in the ass,” says Robles. Between the band’s knowledge of the music industry, and Lee’s experience navigating marketing spaces, the trade offs were worth it to the quartet.

 “Thankfully we know how some of these things work and we utilize these tools and skills that we’ve obtained in the past and now shape our current and future for Livealie,” says Lee.

The same intention carries over into their visuals, valuing them as a companion to the music. While the band’s past and present has been defined by introspection, they’ve leaned into standing out in a saturated digital landscape. 

“In a world full of color, sometimes I think it’s great to pull it back a little bit and just kind of see things in one way,” says Lee. “It helps paint a different image of the world and the meaning of the music we do.” However, he goes on to explain what they see for the color-palettes’ future. 

“We’ve spoken about introducing color, not full-scale, maybe not yet. But we might, in the near future, use select coloring to draw more emphasis in our black and white storyline,” He says before Robles chimes in to propose a sepia filter, even chuckling as he mentions a completely inverted color scheme.

In the end, Livealie isn’t rushing anything–and that’s exactly the point. Whether it’s playing with visual storytelling through music videos and social media, or poking fun at their own slow-burn release cycle, Livealie is fully in control of their future–and they’re in no hurry. For them, taking their time means creating art that’s authentic, intentional, and worth the wait.