Touring around the country, living in a van with four of your closest friends, and selling thousands of albums; this is the dream of many young bands. It's been a reality for Norma Jean, one of the hardest working bands in hardcore today.
Playing over 200 shows in Europe and North America during 2001, they plan on matching that number for 2002. "By the end of September, we'll have played 100 shows in a row with only a few days off," says Daniel Davison, the band's drummer. "I'm really hoping to go back to Europe this January, but it's still up in the air right now."
"Bless the Martyr And Kiss the Child," the band's new album, was produced by Adam Dutkiewicz (Killswitch Engage, Everytime I Die). With influences ranging from metal, power violence, and hardcore, the new album is much heavier and grittier than the band's previous full length "Throwing Myself". "We really clicked with Adam on this album," says Davison. "He was really interested in hearing what we wanted to do. The last album we worked on was in a huge studio, there were six guys working on it. It was supposed to be one of the best recording studios in North America but it felt really impersonal, and we weren't able to carry out as many of the ideas we had as we would've liked."
As Norma Jean has toured, not only has their song writing grown, but their friendships with other bands in the hardcore and metal scene have too. "When we first started out we were big fans of bands like Zao and Training For Utopia," says Davison. "Eventually we started playing shows with them, started touring with them and ended up becoming good friends. As we began listening to bands like Hatebreed and Converge, opportunities opened up and we just played some shows with them a few weeks ago. They were really cool. We're going out with Everytime I Die soon. We're excited because we're big fans of them too."
As successful as their former album was, the band doesn't want to rest on their laurels. "The new songs are a lot more technical and chaotic than the older ones were. We feel like this album shows how we've grown in the past year in our song writing," says Davison. "Without revealing too much, we tried to make the lyrics personal but universal enough that anyone can relate to them."
Source: http://www.normajeannoise.com
