Touché Amoré: Life Is Good, but Los Angeles Band Keeps It as Hardcore as Ever on 'Is Survived By'

Jeremy Bolm has a girl that loves him, a family that supports him, a band that he's proud of, which allowed him to tour Europe and the United States during 2013. These things are problematic for the vocalist.

Bolm sings for Los Angeles hardcore staples Touché Amoré, representing Deathwish, hardcore's closest thing to a definitive label. Themes prevalent among the big names on Deathwish (Code Orange Kids, Lewd Acts, and genre icons Converge) include depression, loneliness, occasional bursts of violence, and a little more depression.

Amoré's two previous full-lengths lived up to the genre's expectations, with Bolm delivering confessional shots to the gut and the band providing the anxious soundtrack of a breakdown. He found his newfound happiness might make writing for a third album, the telltale record of a band's durability, difficult.

"I had all these things I didn't have in the past," he explained to Music Times. "To write another record of that...it would be forced, it would be fake. That's kind of what you think the people listening to your record are going to want and expect, and it just wasn't there."

The lyricist wrestled with what he felt, and what he knew was expected of him, a process that in itself provided enough turmoil for an album of hardcore. So he ran with it.

"I won't fake what's expected / to succeed with album three!" he sums up during the track "To Write Content."

Touché Amoré fans need not worry too much however. Bolm and company haven't converted to bubblegum pop yet. If they chewed gum when making Is Survived By, it must've had fiberglass sprinkled in. Drummer Elliott Babin, and guitarists Nick Steinhardt and Clayton Stevens throttle between melodic and breakneck throughout the album's half-hour, while Bolm screams his themes of staying honest and living up to one's self. The cracked voice on the other end of the phone during the interview lives up to the album's vocals.

Another difference between Is Survived By and Touché Amoré's previous releases: length. The album adds nearly ten minutes to the band's last record, totaling more than 29 minutes, including the epic title track, which clocks in at 3:30.

Sure, we're being facetious, but a 3:30 song pushes the limits of what Amoré has typically sold. The band gets 40 minutes during its current tour, opening for A.F.I., and they'll squeeze 21 songs into that frame. Despite a setlist delivered at a semi-automatic clip and hints of optimism in Amoré's new music, A.F.I.'s optimistically titled fan base "The Despair Faction" has received the band well.

"Opening for any band that has a cult following is always sort of difficult because you're just in the way," Bolm said. "But every night we've always got a group of kids hanging out, giving us high fives. And we're doing well with merch so..."

It seems Touché Amoré has gotten a chance to tour with all the most popular figureheads of hardcore to further boost merchandise sales. Aside from A.F.I., the band travelled Europe with Rise Against during 2012, and went back with Converge later that year. Bolm took special pleasure supporting Japanese post-hardcore group Envy during one of its rare U.S. tours.

The group has certainly made fans within the hardcore genre thanks to releases like Is Survived By. Perhaps more interesting than Touché Amoré's similarity to other hardcore acts is what it shares with one of the world's biggest pop stars. Amoré doubles up on the accented "e" favored by Beyoncé Knowles, a bane for music writers and American keyboards everywhere.

Bolm listened patiently as Music Times lamented its mundane problems.

"This is the first time we and Beyoncé have been on the same level," he notes thoughtfully, before offering a solution. "Copy/paste?"