Formed in 2001, and hung around the New Jersey group’s only constant, vocalist James ‘Buddy’ Nielsen, Senses Fail are one of the most interesting bands in post-hardcore today.
Now eight albums in, their newest, Hell Is in Your Head, which is released on July 15th, is an excellent collection of songs that deal with the singer's existential fear of death – which is a subject that I have some experience of. As I talk about on this podcast often, I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and the origins of my illness concerned a near debilitating terror whenever thoughts of demise or oblivion entered my mind. I don’t talk much about my stuff in this episode, but it certainly informs my interest in the new record and what I talk to Buddy about today. It's a sometimes meandering conversation and it deals with some heavy, dare I say, mind bending stuff, but I do hope you enjoy it, because it was an interesting chat from where I was sitting, even if, at one point in the interview, it sounds like Buddy was putting together some flatpack furniture while we talked.
Maybe he was. There’s little more existential than IKEA. When Sartre said that ‘hell is other people’, what I really think he was referring to was wardrobes…
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