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Let’s jump ahead to Blowout. What’s the significance of the name?

Alex: Blowout: a victory for the underdog, a tire that’s blown, a haircut in New York City, a party, a sale. Did I say flat tire? Speakers that are really loud. Compression.

Matt: Oo, The Loudness War.

Alex: Yeah, trying to win The Loudness War.

Matt: Loud was a pretty unifying theme.

Zach: Blowing out is an action. Like, we just blew it out. That’s what blowout is.

Matt: It’s the guy next to you on the train with the fucking Beats by Dre headphones.

Zach: It’s the fucking guy today: some guy spit in the fucking conductor’s face! He was blowing it out.

Alex: We saw an assault today. “The city’s blown out,” like post-apocalypse, or the actual fallout, like the explosion.

Ryan: And hi-fi. An album that doesn’t sound like a washed-out garage album, which is what a lot of things sound like. Like, a band that can play their songs.

Adam: Bricked out.

Matt: Bricked out is when [the sound levels are just] fucking dark.

Adam: There’s no wave, really.

Matt: There’s no dynamic.

Adam: It’s just squares. We got a mix back once, I was like, “yo that shit is bricked out, son!”

Zach: And we didn’t like the mix. But now we like it. Now we brick it out. At first, we were scared of bricking it out.

Adam: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Brick it out.

Alex: No—if you join them, you can beat them. That’s the difference.

You’ve been sitting on this album for a while.

Alex: Yeah, it’s flat. We’ve been sitting on it so much it’s flat. It’s like up our ass.

Ryan: It’s like when you have your wallet in your pocket for really long in your jeans, and your jeans fade to have the wallet mark on them. I hate that. We’ve been sitting on it for a year.

Zach: A year! Not that long. Everybody’s like, “oh it’s really long.” I mean, what is a year? It’s 12 months.

Matt: Yeah, who cares, man? The world wasn’t ready for it when we finished it! That’s what we decided.