Defeater won't stray from concept albums

Defeater guitarist Jake Woodruff reckons the band will never release a non-concept album.

They issued fourth album Abandoned last month and Woodruff admits they’ve toyed with the idea of a ‘regular’ record, but mainman Derek Archambault keeps coming up with concepts that lend themselves perfectly to the format.

Woodruff tells Musicradar: “It’s something we’ve been thinking about over the past few years. If we ever ditched the concept stuff, it wouldn’t be Defeater, it would be something else.

“Plus, after seeing how Derek has crafted these concepts and storylines, we are all curious about how far we can take it. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of things to write about. Without that stuff, I’m not so sure it would be a true Defeater record.”

Abandoned marks the band’s debut on iconic punk rock label Epitaph, and they couldn’t be happier with the partnership.

Woodruff adds: “We were all really pumped to write a record coming out on Epitaph. We’ve all been fans of that label since we were about 12 or 13, and now we’re on the same roster as Rancid, Converge and even Tom Waits through the sister label. That’s definitely a smattering of bands I never expected to be in the same category as.”

The Boston melodic hardcore outfit previously released a video for the track Unanswered. They go out on a North American tour this week before heading to the UK and Europe for a run of dates in November.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.