Eyes Set to Kill talk White Lotus

  by Reggie Edwards Eyes Set to Kill just wrapped up their tour with Falling in Reverse and For All Those Sleeping, a tour which frontwoman Alexia Rodgriguez says saw most shows either sold out or moved to bigger venues. Falling in Reverse frontman, Ronnie Radke, was once the front of Escape the Fate, but after spending time in jail, came back and formed a new band, Falling in Reverse, whose fans, Rodriguez says have been a bit younger than they’re used to seeing. “They’ve been kinda younger but we’re one of those bands who’s found over the years of touring that we kinda have a various age range of fans,” Rodgriguez says. “We have metal heads (the older ones) then we have newer-age metal heads. Then we have the younger pre-teen kids. So a lot of the Falling in Reverse fans are really into us. “Girls have always been really into us because we’re doing something that not many girls are doing.” Eyes Set to Kill’s latest record, White Lotus, was released in early August, and was something Rodriguez says the band wanted to do for the fans. “We put out an EP a long, long time ago,” Rodriguez says, “and a lot of kids who were coming out to the shows kept saying they wanted to hear our older songs but we didn’t really like our older songs as much because we were writing them when we were in high school. So we wanted to take some of them and re-write them so we could be playing those songs the way we would enjoy and yet still have the fans excited about the songs. “Then during that process we ended up writing a bunch of newer songs so we just picked those out as well. Then I had some acoustic songs I wanted to share with our fans too because I always have material, I don’t like to keep it in me. It feels like I’m putting a piece of me out there instead of just holding it in. so we used some of that acoustic stuff too. It was originally going to be an EP but now it’s just a full-length. “For the most part we’ve gone through a lot of members and it’s been because of artistic differences or people just not being able to be away from home for so long. It’s been a really rough road this whole time of being a band but when we finished White Lotus I feel like we’re finally in the place where we want to be. We’re free agents and we have full say on what we want to be instead of having everyone tell us what they think we should do with our songs and all that stuff that comes with a label.” Not long before the release of White Lotus, Eyes Set to Kill formed their own label, called Forsee Records, something they never really thought about doing because they signed with their first label after one of the first offers. “We were so young that we didn’t think about shopping around and kinda just jumped at the first offer. We never really got the chance to do what we really wanted to do and be smart about the decisions we were making. This is an idea because we wanted to be in charge of everything cuz we feel like we’ve never been able to have artistic opinions that we thought out with. There were times on our old label when I wanted to just be in charge of the cover of our albums. They had an in house guy or they didn’t like my ideas even though I’m the writer of the band, I didn’t get the right support I felt like. That’s an advantage of having your own label I feel like, because you get to support yourself and share ideas with the people who care about your project and really want to go in the same direction as you. Sometimes with labels it’s not that easy.” The title White Lotus may seem like just another title on the surface, but Rodriguez says it goes much deeper than just a title, and symbolizes a lot about where the band is right now. “I wanted to something symbolical,” Rodriguez says, “because we never really thought of doing that with CD covers and I thought of White Lotus because it represents rebirth and renewal and I feel like that’s the perfect symbolization of our band because we’ve been through so many members and we’ve been through so many phases that I feel like this is the first time where we actually know what we want to do and what we want to sound like. We have a clear mindset so I feel like a White Lotus is the perfect thing to put on the front because I feel like that’s the stage that our band is in.”