Warrington Station

Warrington Station is an unsigned band from Monument and Colorado Springs, Colorado. They regularly play shows and are steadily gaining popularity in the area. Recently they underwent some huge changes and completely changed up their sound. They are getting ready to play their first show since the big change. I got to interview Lawson Barney, the drummer and one of the founders of the band, about Warrington Station’s music, shows, and their recent revamping of the band.

Why don’t you start by giving us a brief history of your band?

Lawson: It started out with me, my brother and our original vocalist, Matt, and one of our friends, Michael. We got together and were just like ‘Let’s make deathcore’. We had like, three practices, spent a lot of money on pizza and gas, and it just didn’t really go anywhere so we kind of disbanded that. Then Matt found another band that was in the making called Vitriol. Now these guys didn’t really have any of their stuff together. Their guitarist just quit, their bass player had just quit, and they were like ‘we kind of want another vocalist’ so Matt joined them and said ‘Hey these guys need a bass player, do you want to play bass for them?’ So it was like ‘eh, okay I’ll play bass’ and then it was like, ‘hey we have a show at the Black Sheep in three days, you need to learn all of the songs.’ I think there ended up being maybe twenty people there in all and I didn’t really learn any of the songs, so I just kind of bullsh*tted all of the bass. And their drummer was really bad and I’ve been a drummer for 9-10 years now so basically a really simplified version of what I said was ‘hey, we should kick your drummer out, I’ll be your drummer, my brother will play second guitar and then we can start more shows. So we kicked the drummer out and I played drums, but we didn’t really write anything after that. We played a couple of shows but then he dropped off so we got Aaren to play guitar for us and then we got another friend, Anthony, to play bass for us, and after that we ended up kicking out our vocalist, Matt. He was the other vocalist. We had two vocalists and we didn’t like his vocals as much and we decided it was unnecessary to have two. So now it’s me on drums, we have Austin Woodard on guitar, Anthony Ganis on bass, Aaren Asuncion on second guitar and Garrett Edmunds on vocals. So, yeah. That’s our history.

Who were your main inspirations?

Lawson: Musically, when we first started, after we kicked out the drummer, we were basically a Chelsea Grin ripoff and an As Blood Runs Black ripoff and pretty much all of our songs were just a lot of tremolo picking and heavy breakdowns. None of us were really any good at writing guitar. It always seemed pieced together and kind of rushed.

[at this moment the entire rest of the band walks in unannounced through the back door of Lawson’s basement as they always do.]

Lawson: Well, since you are all here now, you might as well introduce yourselves.

Aaren: I’m Aaren! I play guitar. For the band. Sometimes.

Garrett: I’m Garrett Edmunds. I do the vocals.

Austin: My name’s Austin Woodard. I got a haircut tonight. I play the guitar. And I have a mustache.

Anthony: My name’s Anthony Ganis and I play the bass [pronouncing it like the fish rather than the instrument] and I have a wolf shirt.

Lawson: [After all of the laughter dies down] So yeah, as I was saying we weren’t really any good at writing stuff. We kind of had a breakthrough after we kicked out Matt where we started writing better stuff. We wrote Malady and Proof of the Void, which are our two best songs right now. Other than our brand new one, which you will get to hear at our show tomorrow. So does that answer the question? I don’t really remember what it was. [laughs] Oh, wait! Inspirations. A huge inspiration for me as far as drums go was Lamb of God.

So, you guys kind of went under for and kicked the vocalist and you’re just now coming back with a totally different style. What lead to that decision?

Lawson: Well, we kicked Matt because none of us really liked his screams. And after that we realized that he was just like ‘Let’s write really brutal deathcore, let’s do another breakdown here and let’s have more screams and more breakdowns.’ and we were all kind of eh whatever so we just kind of wrote stuff like that, and then after we kicked him out we were like ‘Wait, none of us really like that kind of stuff.’ and we were tired of just writing the same old shit, like that typical deathcore ‘dun d-d-d dun’ really boring sh*t. And so we were all like, ‘well we all like hardcore kind of stuff, like The Carrier’ and right now The Carrier is our biggest influence, no doubt, for our new style. Definitely check them out if you haven’t heard them. They’re pretty sweet.

How are you guys feeling about your first show after the big change?

Lawson: I’m pumped. Our first show we’re just going to do a preview. Since you’re going to our show tomorrow you will get to hear a new song and possibly a new intro. If you want to hear all of the new stuff we’ve written, we have a show on the 25th with Thoughts Behind Me, Forty Fathoms, and Legacies. So come out and see us. We will have all of our new stuff, some of our old stuff. I’m pretty pumped. I think it will be a good change.

With several members having just graduated and going off to college what are your plans? Are you guys planning to stay together or what?

Lawson: Yeah, we don’t have any plans to break up. They’re both most likely going to community college in the city so I don’t think it will really affect anything too much. It might affect practice, like we might slow down on writing new stuff but we definitely have plans to keep playing

So then what are your plans for the future? Are you going to pursue a record deal?

Lawson: We are going to lay back on playing shows, because we used to play shows almost every week for a long time, and we just took two months off to write new stuff, and we are going to lay back on playing that many shows. Maybe like one or two a month, and we are really going to focus on writing new material, and producing. And, I can’t remember his name for the life of me, up in Denver, he does really good recording, he recorded Kastigation, and he will be recording our EP. Great recording, good price. So we are going to go up there soon and will record our EP, and then we are going to go up to Denver to record our EP, and up there is were we are going to record the EP. In Denver. [everyone is laughing at this point] So, yeah. We’re doing that up in Denver, to record the EP.

Well, you managed to answer half of my questions before I even asked them. Do you have anything else you want to throw out there for our readers?

Lawson: Well, yeah. There are definitely some local bands I think would be worth checking out. There’s Speak Obsession and Kastigation. Holy North, who are not metal at all, but I’m in that band too so I’m going to promote them. Restore All Vengeance, Omnil... Basically I’m just promoting all of my own projects now... [laughs]

[In the background Aaren yells ‘Don’t forget Gorecock!’]

 Oh, Gorecock! Go on YouTube, look up Gorecock, it is f*cking hilarious, and awesome, and totally worth the time. Buy one of our CDs. We are trying to sell enough CDs to buy one pizza, it’s been like a year and a half and we haven’t sold a single CD. It’s like 30 songs that took us 10 minutes to make. Go look it up. It’s worth the time.

Alright, well that’s about it then. Are there any closing thoughts you have or advice for musicians who might just be starting out?

Lawson: Don’t be in a band with anyone unless you are 100% sure you want to be in a band with them. Because if you’re in a band with someone and you have even slightly clashing personalities, it’s going to suck so much d*ck to try to work with them. So pick people with similar musical tastes to you, but you still want a variety. Try to find people who already have all their sh*t together and who are good at writing. Definitely try to find people who are good and never just settle for people who are mediocre. Because you can always find people who are better.

During their practice they showed me the new song they were going to play which was extremely technical and well composed. They are energetic on stage and passionate about their music and definitely worth going to see. You can find Warrington Station on Facebook for music, upcoming shows and updates on the band at www.facebook.com/WarringtonStation.