With Dead Language, The Flatliners have created their most detailed and cohesive album yet. Having spent the past decade touring the globe, this record highlights the band’s precise musicianship, as well as their adeptness at playing together and feeding off each other’s energy. It also features sharpened songwriting, resulting in an album that’s both mature and accessible. We caught up with the Toronto-based band after their recent appearance at Riot Fest Chicago. We spoke with singer/guitarist Chris Cresswell and drummer Paul Ramirez, and discussed their new record in detail. We also talked about touring, the future of the band and more.

Bill – Since the release of your last album in 2010, you guys have toured extensively and played all over the world. How did these experiences affect the writing process of your new record?

Chris – It definitely contributed to the huge gap between albums, that’s for sure. As far as the writing process goes, it’s interesting because I think we all come up with a lot of ideas while we’re on the road, but we’re not afforded the amount of time we really need to put it all together and actually form songs out of those ideas until we’re off the road. So, it actually created this weird kind of sporadic and really spread out, almost spastic schedule of writing and recording. We’d write a bunch of songs and when they were finished we’d record them. Then we’d go on another tour and we’d write some more ideas. Eventually we would put them together and make songs out of those ideas when we got home from tour, and then we’d record them. It was a really strange way to do it, but there was no pressure, there were no time constraints or anything on us. Not that there ever has been, but it was fun to do it that way somehow, even though it was so weird.

Bill – Dead Language was recorded in such a way that it really highlights your band’s musicianship and emphasizes each member’s performance. Was this the sort of style that you were going for when you began recording?

Paul – We did most of our last album, Cavalcade, live off the floor, but ended up using parts of it and rerecording guitars and stuff like that. This one, we really haphazardly recorded a bunch of songs to be demos, and then with most of them ended up being like, “Hey, these are pretty good bed tracks. I don’t want to try and record this again.” We kept a bunch of it, redid a couple things, wrote and recorded more songs, and just kind of mashed everything together to make an album. That sounds really messy, but it was calculated.

Chris – That’s exactly how it happened though. We had a lot of talks while we were on tour, whether it was in the van or just drinking after the show. We had a lot of talks throughout the last year or so about the process of writing a song; demoing it, picking it apart, rewriting parts of it, rerecording it for the album, about how that whole process just sucks. We’ve done that for our last two records, and it didn’t suck the life out of anything, but it could have. Maybe it did, you never know. The end result of all our albums we’re obviously super proud of because we still put them out. With this one, almost every song we recorded, there’s only one version of that song recorded. That to me, and I think to all of us, was something that really stoked us out.

Paul – Some of the recordings are like the first impression of what the song was going to be. Maybe we were going to go back and work on it more, but then we ended up not, which is kind of cool.

Bill – This record differs from your previous material in that the songwriting is extremely detailed and direct. How do you feel it compares to your earlier albums?

Chris – I think that was the whole thing we wanted to accomplish with this album. I think we got a lot of the more songwriter-type songs, that’s a bad way to put it maybe, but just the longer songs and everything, out of our system on Cavalcade. This time we wrote twenty songs for the album and it just gained its own momentum. We kept going and we were up to 18 or 19 songs, and I remember the very last one we wrote was either “Young Professionals” or “Birds of England.” Those were the last two that we wrote. We already had 18 songs and we had these ideas, and we really wanted to flesh them out and we did. I’m glad we did that because they made the record. I think that was what we wanted to shoot for, write as many songs as we can, and in doing that you just end up writing really direct lyrics and really to-the-point arrangements. And then you just see what sticks after that to actually make the album.

Bill – What’s the meaning behind the record’s title?

Chris – The first part about it is kind of a joke because we’re releasing a CD in 2013 when no one really listens to CDs specifically anymore, so I feel like that’s kind of almost a dead language. A lot of it has to do with certain parts of my own life that have changed pretty drastically in the last few years, on a personal level. A lot of the songs kind of detail how I’ve worked through it. That part of my life, not to sound dramatic, is dead to me now and completely over. Life has never been better though. It’s nothing dangerous or anything like health risks or something crazy, just some really weird personal shifts in life. I moved past it with the help of these guys and being able to write music, and friends and family and stuff. It’s perfect if you go through something like that in any kind of way to have a musical outlet, because then you can just write about it. Then you have a record that is basically like a fuckin’ diary, (laughs).

Bill – “Drown in Blood” is a fairly dark song with somewhat morbid lyrics. What inspired you to write its words and what do they mean to you?

Chris – It’s actually weird. I started writing lyrics to that song back in 2009 I think. I remember starting to write the lyrics while we were driving in our van through the Swiss Alps, like one of the most beautiful places you could ever see. For some reason I started writing these really weird, depressing, dark lyrics. I think it just made me realize that I was so happy to have come so far with the band that we were in the Swiss Alps. I think it was actually the second or third time that we had been there and that was weighing heavy on my mind. It made me realize that there were some things that I wasn’t so happy about; mistakes I’d made, people I’d wronged, things I regretted, everything like that. Being there made that weight kind of disappear a little bit. Those were most of the verses to the song and then I finished writing the lyrics, maybe another verse and the chorus, on a plane during an Australian tour last year. I later found this old home recording I had of the guitar parts and me singing the verses that I’d written. I had another idea that I’d recorded and that ended up being the chorus, so I just put them together and I realized they fit so well together. It was weird to read those lyrics three years later and it really made me realize how the mistakes and regrets that I was writing about, how they were important to me at one time, but I’d moved past them. It was cool to see that kind of perspective.

Bill – We kind of touched on this, but would you say that the lyrics on Dead Language share a common theme?

Chris – Yeah, I think so. A lot of it is about moving forward, you know what I mean? Learning from your mistakes is a pretty big theme in the end. We didn’t really set out to have a theme for the album, but it was just what was going on in the world around me and my life and friends’ lives and everything. We’ve also been in this band for 11 years now…

Paul – Today!

Chris – Yeah, today marks the 11^th anniversary of our very first show.

Paul – Our first show, same four dudes…

Chris – I think having that perspective as well about like how much work we’ve put into it and what we’ve seen come out of it and everything. We’ve been shown a lot of love and support over the years. I also think it’s important to make mistakes and learn from them. Remember that, don’t just shy away from it and try to bury it.

Paul – Its theme was blue and gray. Last one was red, before that was orange, (laughs).

Bill – What were some of your favorite moments from playing Riot Fest yesterday?

Chris – I loved how we were the first band. I thought it was awesome that we got to kick it off. I think that actually worked to our advantage in a way. People were just there and hanging out, no one was tired. That was really cool to me that we were able to do that. We had a great crowd, we were so stoked. We felt the love, man. It was fun.

Paul – I had a great time. The weather was perfect, not too hot and not too cold. There’s some pictures of me playing in long sleeves, that’s a rare thing.

Bill – Next month you guys are scheduled to play in Brazil. What are you most looking forward to about that show?

Chris – Paul is most looking forward to bringing his old man a soccer ball back.

Paul – Yeah, my dad is really proud that we’re going there.

Chris – I’m kind of just stoked all around. I can’t really put my finger on one aspect. The show itself is crazy, in terms of the bands we’re playing with, and the fact that we’re going all the way down to Brazil for just one show.

Paul – We won’t know until we get there.

Bill – Tell me about your band’s contribution to the upcoming Tony Sly benefit compilation and how you went about selecting which song to record.

Chris – We got asked to do it from Fat, and although it’s obviously a tragic reason to be part of a tribute compilation, we were completely honored to be part of it. We got to know Tony a little bit. We toured with No Use for a Name a couple times and he was always so gracious and such a talented dude. He inspired us more than he ever knew. We talked to Fat Mike about it and he was saying that what he was hoping a lot of bands would do was like if it was an acoustic act, then the acoustic act would do a No Use song acoustically. And if it was a full band, then they would do a Tony Sly song as a full band. I think some people did do that and that was something that we thought was really, really cool. So, we did “Fireball,” a Tony Sly song off of 12 Song Program. The decision of what song to do actually took a little while. We were on the road in the spring in Europe and we had dwindled it down to like five songs I think. And then for some reason we all just wanted to do “Fireball” because it’s such a sad song. It’s super, super sad. It speaks volumes and it can stand alone so well as it is, obviously. We wanted to see how it would sound as a full band, like when you made that really sad song much louder. The vocals are very morose the whole time and we wanted to capture that, but still kick it up a notch at the end and celebrate the dude’s life, kind of like a toast to him. I think it turned out really cool.

Bill – When you look ahead to next year and beyond, what sort of things do you hope to accomplish with your new album?

Chris – I don’t know. It’s a question we get asked a lot and we never have a good answer. I feel like our barometer has always just been in tune to touring and stuff. I think what we’d like to do is find a better balance of touring and being home. The last couple years we’ve tried to change it up. We’d do big chunks on the road and then big chunks at home. Then the big chunks on the road stopped working for everybody. The last year or two we’ve been doing a lot of back and forth, and that’s exciting, but sometimes it’s kind of stressful to be honest. You’re always coming or going somewhere. I think that would be the goal, is to find a really good balance and remain very active, but also have a nice life at home. We’re 26-year-old dudes and we’ve been in this band for 11 years. We are still young guys, but we’ve been doing it for a long time. It would be nice to still play a lot of shows, but not have to do the nine-month touring thing. We’ve done it for a long time and that would be the next step, just finding a rad balance of being a really active band, hanging out at home, having a great life and people singing along to the new songs, that sort of thing. I’ll put it this way, hopefully this record brings us to a point where we can live very comfortably doing this band. If not, we’ll continue to do what we’ve always done.