As rapidly-rising post-hardcore crew Dayseeker announce their eagerly-anticipated new album Creature In The Black Night, we sit down with frontman Rory Rodriguez for a world-exclusive interview to get the lowdown on the record, the personal darkness that runs through its veins, and where it will take them next…
What would you do if you had a brief spot of downtime between busy periods of work? If you’re Rory Rodriguez, who’s at home for a couple of weeks before Dayseeker hit the road again for festival appearances, headline shows, and support slots with Ice Nine Kills and In This Moment respectively, then your schedule is fully accounted for.
Currently, a typical day begins with Rory getting his daughter, Hazel, up and ready for pre-school, then dropping her off. This gives him the chance to focus on training Jolene – the family’s recently acquired four-month-old Beagle puppy – to be less of an agent of chaos and break the habit of chasing Hazel, albeit lovingly, around the house. And in between trying to wrangle a child and small canine, the health conscious Rory gets his fix of antioxidants with a matcha or two (for the uninitiated, it’s a drink that looks, and smells, like grass cuttings).
When K! last spoke to Rory during a similarly short-lived period at home in November, his routine included working on Dayseeker’s forthcoming studio album. Having completed half of the new record towards the end of the year, it was wrapped up in February, so is long since done and dusted, and ready to step into the light.
It’s 1pm in Southern California and Rory is sitting with his back to a sliding door, through which brilliant blue sky is visible above his neighbour’s roof. It’s a hot day but the singer is keeping cool thanks to a sleeveless shirt and the air conditioning he believes is sorely missing from European hotels. This bright and upbeat atmosphere is wholly at odds with the tone of Creature In The Black Night, Dayseeker’s forthcoming new opus, now confirmed via its self-titled first single – following the release, in April, of non-single Pale Moonlight.
“It’s an eerier sound for our band,” is Rory’s pitch for the new record he made with bandmates Gino Sgambelluri (guitar), Ramone Valerio (bass) and Zac Mayfield (drums). “It’s still pretty experimental and has pop influences in there, but I also feel like there’s a little more screaming and more metal parts. That’s because it’s less melancholic and sad than Dark Sun. This album is more about the personal issues I’ve dealt with, trying to navigate my life as our band becomes a little more successful with time, because people sometimes don’t have the purest intentions when getting close to you and trying to be in your life.”
Listening to Creature In The Black Night – the song – brings several things to mind. Firstly, if this title-track is a microcosm of the album it shares a name with, then Rory’s summary is on the money – it’s moody and sleek, like The Weeknd fronting Bad Omens, and suitably spiky in its latter moments. It also suggests Rory was pulling our leg last December when he suggested that “maybe there’s a happier song on there” with regards album number six. In fact the track Afterglow (Hazel’s Song) from 2022’s Dark Sun remains the singer’s only attempt at a happier song – and even that, he admits, is “kind of sad sounding”.
Rory meant it when he said there might be something more upbeat to come, as back in September of last year, amongst a batch of six songs he was working on, one such track did meet the brief. Unfortunately, time wasn’t kind to it, and its placement alongside more melancholy material made it stand out for all the wrong reasons, so it was nixed.
“It’s not a bad song,” reflects Rory. “It just leans more into major chords, like anthemic rock, a Thirty Seconds To Mars kind of vibe. To me, it almost sounded like it could have been on Dark Sun. So now we’re trying to give it to a DJ or another band so that it could serve their sound better.”
Casting strong songs aside may seem foolhardy, especially when they’re similar to Dayseeker’s previous, popular material, but it wouldn’t feel right to Rory. Putting something he wasn’t totally in love with on the new record at a critical point in his band’s career would have been a betrayal to himself and the fans – especially if the tunes lack the requisite darkness.
And Rory certainly knows darkness, having lived with its repercussions on behalf of others. His name was chosen in tribute to his father’s younger brother, who was murdered aged 23; despite being hispanic on that side of the family, the decidedly Irish name was originally inspired by Rory Calhoun, a beloved actor from the ’50s and ’60s known for appearing in westerns. Meanwhile, Rory’s mother, who actually was of Irish descent, was addicted to methamphetamines while he was growing up, resulting in unpredictable behaviour even after she got clean, making her emotionally unavailable to Rory and setting him on a path to relationships with similarly emotionally unavailable women during his younger years.
“I was put in a lot of uncomfortable and highly stressful situations,” reveals Rory. “And my therapist thinks that when I was younger and something tough would get thrown at me, and I’d freak out, my brain would take that thing and push it to one side as a survival tactic. [My therapist] also thinks I’ve kept to that pattern as I’ve gotten older.”
“I was put in a lot of uncomfortable and highly stressful situations”
Indeed, Rory is sweet-natured and forthcoming, particularly when he’s offering parenting advice, though his words arrive in an inscrutable monotone at odds with the dexterity of his singing voice, as if he’s keeping his emotions entirely in check; and while his mouth often smiles, his eyes don’t necessarily share in the mirth.
“I have actually noticed that if I’m faced with a really difficult thing, emotionally, I’ll move on from it really quickly,” he elaborates. “I used to think that was healthy and I was handling my stuff well, but I’ve been told I’m not sitting with my feelings as much as I should be. We’re trying things… it’s a work in progress, for sure.”
Personal strife has indeed defined Dayseeker’s music – and continues to do so. Dark Sun, after all, wrestled with the tragedy of Rory’s father’s death from cancer, thereby making it a project, he previously told K!, he was “more emotionally invested in than I was with anything else”. That association, Rory says now, is the reason why people telling him they get intimate listening to Dayseeker’s music understandably weirds him out.
“I can understand why somebody might put on some sensual metal, like Deftones or Sleep Token, when they’re doing the deed,” explains a rather exasperated Rory. “But I feel our older music is very melancholic, and a lot of it is about my dad dying, which doesn’t seem conducive to that kind of mood…”
Looking at Dayseeker’s discography, their previous record, last year’s Replica, is something of an anomaly. Unlike their releases before and after it, the album doesn’t feature any new material, opting instead for acoustic reinterpretations of their songs, guest appearances (Holding Absence’s Lucas Woodland, Beartooth’s Caleb Shomo), and a brave choice of cover version (Evanescence’s My Immortal).
More importantly, for a band finally enjoying a steep upward trajectory after years of toil, Replica felt like a curious choice, arguably squandering an opportunity to further their momentum in favour of creative navel gazing. While Rory concedes Replica afforded his band a breather thanks to an endeavour that was less pressured, it gave him the chance to reconnect with his life pre-Dayseeker, as a teenager with an acoustic guitar.
It wasn’t nostalgia that provided the impetus for going back to basics, however, but an anxiety-inducing festival appearance three years ago.
“It was a nightmare while it was happening, but it ended up becoming a really cool moment”
Nietzsche famously believed suffering was necessary for greatness. And so it proved for Dayseeker at the Blue Ridge Festival in 2022, when partway through opening track The Color Black, the hot and humid Virginia weather caused the laptop running the band’s show to crash.
“It was horrific,” recalls Rory. “We were desperately trying to fix the problem, while all those people were standing out there waiting to see if we’d keep playing.”
As 5,000 pairs of expectant eyes bored into Dayseeker and their crew, it became clear the issue wasn’t going to be rectified anytime soon. Thankfully, someone reminded Rory there was an acoustic guitar back on the tour bus, so it was promptly retrieved. A few minutes later, the frontman was standing on the stage far bigger than the coffee shops he played in his youth, strumming the chords to Without Me to a mass sing-along. And while he tried to make lemonade out of lemons, at the time he wasn’t sure he had enough cups…
“I remember being in the middle of the song and thinking, ‘What else can I play?’” admits Rory. “There was no setlist or anything.”
Five songs later, including a version of the as-yet-unreleased Afterglow (Hazel’s Song), Rory took a bow, having successfully made the best of a bad situation.
“It was a nightmare while it was happening, but it ended up becoming a really cool moment. I met a bunch of fans afterwards who said, ‘A lot of bands in your position, if their stuff wasn’t working, would have apologised and just not played – it’s cool that you persevered.’”
As well as becoming the genesis for the recording of Replica, the Blue Ridge Festival incident provided another example of Dayseeker’s ability to fashion creativity from trying circumstances.
“I often find that things that are to my personal detriment seem to be good for my musical career at the very least,” laughs Rory.
Two months later in the midst of a tour with Bad Omens, when a broken down tour bus in Salt Lake City resulted in a seven-hour dash and late arrival in Denver, the acoustic guitar came out again – though this time it was supplied by a fan.
“It was barely staying in tune,” laughs Rory. “I feel like now it’s a crutch in our band that if anything goes wrong, I can do the acoustic thing – and I’m not sure I want that. It’s good to have it as an option, and nice to know I can handle it, but the pressure of it means it’s not something I’d want to make a habit of.”
It’s an understandable response from the leader of a band that, having made Replica to commemorate that acoustic detour for posterity, no longer wants to get comfortable or complacent. God knows they have every right to bask in a little glory; on the first show of their recent run, at Rock for People in the Czech Republic, they filled the festival’s 10,000-capacity tented stage for a performance the singer ranks in the top 10 he’s ever played. And while they can fill 1,500 to 3,500-cap rooms in the States, Rory knows Dayseeker aren’t above supporting other bands, like Ice Nine Kills (August/September) and In This Moment (September/October).
“With our new record being a little more eerie and leaning into horror, I feel like we have an opportunity to captivate a lot of their fans.”
Despite watching more horror films in the past couple of years than at any other point in his life, Rory doesn’t claim to be an aficionado, or even a particularly committed fan. As the record that would become Creature In The Black Night began to coalesce during the first stint of its creation in September last year, and themes of death, despair, betrayal and addiction came to the fore – as well as a general “weird” vibe, according to Rory – Dayseeker began to think about a figure that could encapsulate that darkness.
That figure can be seen on Creature In The Black Night’s cover art, a grim reaper-like apparition, walking in a field of flowers, its jet-black frame in stark contrast to the pink horizon. It’s a presence that can be found throughout the record.
“We use this weird, filtered talking voice effect in some of the songs – it’s in Pale Moonlight and Creature In The Black Night,” reveals Rory. “It’s more like lines of poetry, from the perspective of this reaper figure.”
The horror imagery lurks throughout. The Living Dead, a ballad with a slower pace presumably to reflect the zombie vibe, is about how the things that Rory endured have left him emotionally akin to the lumbering flesh-eaters of the title.
“The song’s about not being numb to a lot of things. I’m alive and functioning as a human but maybe not experiencing and feeling things as much as I should.”
“I’m alive and functioning as a human but maybe not experiencing and feeling things as much as I should”
Elsewhere, and confirming that darkness doesn’t always mean heaviness, Crawl Back To My Coffin may surprise some with melodies you’re more likely to find on a country record. They’re juxtaposed, however, with lyrics about the initial excitement of a new relationship, only for that hope to be dashed by betrayal and disappointment.
“I use this metaphor – I’m the one who’s dead in my coffin, then I meet somebody, which brings me back to life, but they end up hurting me, so I crawl back because I’d rather be sedated and feeling nothing again.”
Given these themes, we’d have to question the veracity of the claim this new record is less sad than Dark Sun, because this all sounds pretty fucking upsetting…
“Committing to the horror vibe for the whole record made it easier for me to listen back to it,” reveals Rory, apparently conceding that he knows it’s far from upbeat. “But I also feel that it paints a very vivid picture for the listener, keeping them in the same pool of the same themes. I’m excited for it. I feel it’s the best thing we’ve written in our career. But we’ll have to see what the internet has to say.”
Rory admits that he still looks at the comments, and while the negative ones are in the minority, that’s what makes them stick out.
“The day Dark Sun came out, there were thousands of positive comments, then there would be about five saying, ‘This is boring’ or ‘This record sucks’ and I’d genuinely start second-guessing something I was really proud of.”
The internet will certainly have had its say by the time Dayseeker return to the UK in February next year, when they’ll further cement their love affair with these shores on a jaunt that, rather appropriately, includes a show at London’s Alexandra Palace on Valentine’s Day – supporting Motionless In White. Dayseeker have played the legendary venue that hosts up to 10,000 gig-goers before, in April of last year, supporting Pierce The Veil. It can only be a matter of time, however, before they’re commanding spaces like that under their own banner.
“There’s only so many people we can support now,” suggests Rory, allowing himself a rare but justified moment of self-aggrandisement. “And our hope and goal for this new record is to carry us to the next step. We’re at a scary point where we’re playing pretty big rooms and we’re grateful for it, but want to make the next jump. There are a lot of bands in our scene that have had careers where they’ve never made that jump – that’s their fate and their peak.”
Dayseeker evidently don’t want to settle where they are, though, as lucky as they feel to be here. But they’re realistic enough to know that while they continue making exactly the records they want to make, there might be a ceiling on their enterprise. We sincerely doubt it, though.
“I really believe in the new album we’ve made together,” says Rory, who sounds like he thinks the only way is up too, despite the modesty. “I just hope people are receptive to it.”
Get your limited-edition Dayseeker x Kerrang! T-shirt now.
Creature In The Black Night is released October 24 via Spinefarm.
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