WOVENWAR: 'Archers' Video Released

"Archers", the new video from WOVENWAR, the band featuring the talents of Jordan Mancino (drums),Nick Hipa (guitar),Phil Sgrosso (guitar) and Josh Gilbert (bass) of San Diego, California based metal act AS I LAY DYING, and Shane Blay (vocals) of OH, SLEEPER, can be seen below. The clip was shot by Josh Knoff and directed/edited by Nick Hipa. The song is taken from WOVENWAR's self-titled debut album, which was released in August 2014 via Metal Blade. The CD was produced by Bill Stevenson (DESCENDENTS, BLACK FLAG) and mixed by Colin Richardson (SLIPKNOT, MACHINE HEAD, TRIVIUM).

Says Hipa: "Our video for 'Archers' is cut from live footage — filmed by Josh Knoff — from our recent hometown show at Brick By Brick. The lyrics heavily reference specific themes and songs from Shane's previous band (OH, SLEEPER) as a sentimental nod to how that chapter in his life was unforgettably formidable. With that in mind, it felt appropriate to create a visual edit captured from our venue in a room filled with quite a bit of family and friends… it kinda just completes the whole vibe as positively nostalgic."

In an interview with The Weeklings, Hipa stated about the name of the new band: "As human beings, there's a common thread that runs through us, and we have the spectrum of love and hate and everything in between; we're born exactly the same but as we age and go through life, certain parts of our character are cultivated, whether it's a belief system or whether it's a religious belief or a political belief, or prejudices or anything. Those are influenced by the people who are raising you or the environment you're reared in.

"We chose 'WOVENWAR' instead of 'WOVENHEARTS' or something like that because we had to go with the heavier-sounding one and that might sound superficial, but the idea is there."

Hipa also spoke about WOVENWAR's much more melodic vocal approach compared to that of AS I LAY DYING. He said: "When we were thinking of singers, we thought about who met our criteria who we'd want to be in a band with, almost immediately when Shane's name came up, that was it. There was no tryouts with other guys, or there was no, 'Okay, he's an option, let's see who else is out there.' This is somebody that's been my friend that half of my life, and somebody that the guys knew and that they respected as a musician and who we were all comfortable with. It was like he was already one of us, and he's such a talented guy, so let's see what we can do with Shane… He's just got a great voice and what he does best is sing, and we love that about him and we wanted to explore that, so that's what we did. It worked out extremely naturally because we didn't ask him to do anything that he didn't feel comfortable doing. We'd say, 'Here's some music, what would you do with this?' and he'd come back with all these vocal melodies. Immediately Josh hears those and has all these harmony ideas, so you've got two singers making the vocal presentation something that, if you take away all of our past musical endeavors, on its own, we felt it was awesome and that's what we wanted to develop."