“Songs where I’m upset with myself are harder to write and process. It is the highest level of accountability”: Inside Koyo’s brutally honest new album

“Part of the adjustment is that I’ve barely been here…” smiles Joey Chiaramonte, conceding the pun, telling Kerrang! how he’s acclimatising to Los Angeles. At the start of the year, the Koyo vocalist ditched life in The Big Apple to move in with his girlfriend, shipping furniture across the country between a trip to FYA Fest and eight weeks of touring with Arm’s Length and Rise Against. Of late, that type of diary-destroying schedule has become business as usual.

Formed in 2020, the Long Island group, who fuse The Story So Far-esque pop-punk with hardcore-leaning sensibilities, hit the ground running after the pandemic, hurling themselves into full-tilt touring life as they clawed their dreams into existence. When their 2023 debut Would You Miss It? rolled around, Joey began to realise the consequences of this lifestyle, telling Kerrang! at the time “that much dedication to something does put relationships at risk”.

If that thought was fleeting then, it wasn’t long before it stared him in the face. Forced to confront that dilemma in real-time, the result is Koyo’s second album, Barely Here.

“A majority of the ideas put forth on Barely Here are not new things,” he confirms. "They've just been exacerbated and seen through to the fullest potential. By the time we got to recording Would You Miss It?, I was definitely starting to feel the chips in the armour. Would You Miss It? to Barely Here, every concerned thought that rubbed off on Would You Miss It? was seen all the way through.”

The tour van and Joey go way back. Formerly in east coast metallic hardcore mob Typecaste and also Vein.fm’s tour manager, the excitement of those formative experiences trumped any damage or strain from 200-plus days on the road per year. But in Koyo, the burnout caught up with him. He became far more mindful of the friends and family he leaves behind. His relationship, which remained long-distance at his home in Brooklyn, 45 minutes from Long Island. He cries on Selden Mansions: ‘The west coast’s a dream / Made in heaven for me / But I need Long Island now’.

“Either alternative felt like a chance at relief,” he explains. “If I got whipped to the west coast as I actually have now, it would be more relieving than living in Brooklyn, touring full-time and wearing myself down. But my brain is so chemically fucking magnetic to Long Island. I felt so much grief, being in proximity to the place and not living there. Ultimately, either-or felt like an alternative to the way I was living.”

Which is why Barely Here is far more complex than a push-and-pull between home and away. Wherever he is, Joey admittedly struggles to live in the moment. He overthinks the next flight he needs to catch; the places he’d rather be; the people he should have seen. What I’m Worth is the rock-bottom of that downward spiral (‘Every choice seems so unconscionable’), while he apologises to his ageing grandmother on Oxidize for putting off visiting her: ‘My heart breaks / From the guilt and the weight’.

“Songs where I'm upset with myself are a lot harder to write and process,” he tells K!. “It is the highest level of accountability. My grandmother, struggling with memory issues, in assisted living, and I’m opting to not spend my free time seeing her because it's too emotionally heavy? I am choosing to do the wrong thing, and I feel guilty for it. Working that out in a song is very challenging, and feels extremely fucking heavy. It's cathartic, but it's not easy.”

Barely Here doesn’t solve these puzzles. There is no magic wand to wave away the reality of Joey and Koyo’s responsibilities – never mind when you’re gearing up for a full-throttle album campaign. A cheery and measured character by nature, Joey doesn’t want the violins to come out, nor is he making a profound mission statement. So what is he trying to convey?

“It is largely an attempt at an explanation,” is the conclusion he comes to. “All lyricism is subject to being dated from the moment a song is recorded, but Barely Here was an attempt at trying to clock what everything felt like in real-time, [not] an attempt at defending myself, or persuading anyone of anything. I will try and give you the most honest peer-in.”

Though he might be apologising to his loved ones, Joey stands behind the path Koyo have taken. Everything he wrestles with on Barely Here stems from the choices the five-piece have consciously made, putting in the miles on the road. We point out others might sit at home churning out social media content, and a gracious Joey doesn’t belittle anyone who does. But he cannot shake his own DNA.

“On the short list of things I can stand by with extreme pride is doing it the ‘real’ way,” he beams. “I don't say that to disparage anyone else. Any way that gets you there is valid. It's just not something instilled in us. Touring is our bread and butter. What we do is admittedly a little more old-school and traditional. There is a bit of an archaic nature to that, but I do take an immense amount of pride in it. People could love it, hate it, but one thing I can say with full certainty is that we've earned every inch. And that doesn't have to mean anything. Earning something isn't necessarily grounds for praise, reward or acclaim.”

Together – Joey, guitarists Harold Griffin and TJ Rotolico, bassist Stephen Spanos and drummer Salvatore Argento – are a united front as they go about their business. The standard of friendship inside Koyo is so high, that you wonder if Joey’s fears spawn from the ridiculously high bar that they hold themselves to, which he can’t physically uphold from the other side of the world. Joey reflects on the wider friendship group that birthed Koyo, and worries that he neglects the others from that Long Island circle.

“It does create this weird, unhealthy nostalgia, ‘Is that time in my life gone? Did I create a further separation of everyone because of our unavailability?’” he muses. “Being unavailable for that, physically, can be heavy, and I don't think I'd [manage] if not for the fact that Koyo and I are best friends. Being in a band with my best friends, doing this at the level we do it, is all but essential to making it happen.”

For now, at least, there is a positive feedback loop taking place. The chemistry Koyo cherish is a direct consequence of the time they’ve spent on the road, taking no shortcuts, and building a collective spirit to get them through the tough days. Everything in Barely Here might repeat itself. New dilemmas will emerge. But Joey knows he can always return to the safe space and brotherhood that underlines Koyo’s existence.

“That link is irreplaceable, and something we couldn't imitate if we tried,” he agrees. “Amidst uncertainty, self-doubt and constantly changing times, the one thing we can always bank on is when we get together, we can make dope Koyo songs that we believe in. The one thing we can always depend on, without question, is each other.”

Barely Here is out now via Pure Noise.

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• Album review: Koyo – Barely Here
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