Boundaries released record, Death is Little More, will be echoed in eternity.
Debuting March 29, 2024, Boundaries dropped a beautifully vicious, physical incarnation of what it means to be encompassed in the presence of death, and feel nothing but apathy in response. Straight from Connecticut, fusing metallic hardcore with moving melodies fueled by unspoken confessions about the reality of our world, Boundaries is one of the most promising bands in the current scene.
Connecting over the phone with guitarist, Cory Emond, to discuss evolution and next steps for Boundaries as well as the released record, offered a glimpse into the voices behind the band. Read on…
If you’d like to start off with your name, role in the band, and maybe something you would want readers or fans to know about you that they don't already know, like a fun fact kinda kind of thing.
Cory: I'm Cory and I play guitar in the band Boundaries from Connecticut. Something fun about me, I guess, is that I play video games for like 16 hours a day…Recently, I've been playing this game called Teamfight Tactics a whole lot.
Allie: So there's obviously a lot to talk about with everything that's coming up for you guys—it’s just absolutely insane. I wanted to get some basics out of the way if you wanted to talk about your first hardcore or metalcore show experience that kind of got you into music, that inspired you to start participating in a band or going down a path dominated by music. Is there anything you wanted to say about that? Notable venues, bands that put you on etc.
Cory: I mean, yeah, so like, what got me into this music is I started with bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot, which was really cool. To branch out more to the core aspect, I kind of hooked onto The Devil Wears Prada type which was so gnarly. Very early bands like that drew me in. Those kinds of bands played this venue called the Webster in Hartford all the time and I would be there every weekend for years, honestly. Eventually, I started working there. I worked there for like, eight or nine years, and I just recently quit. That venue really started everything for me. [...] My first show was actually Mayday Parade and All Time Low.
Allie: I personally feel like this is an awesome time to be a part of the music scene. And it's exciting, you know, to watch your favorite bands kind of grow up and get big and even more so to some extent, being a part of a culture where young kids, teenagers and young adults are pursuing music so heavily. So being from Connecticut, what are your thoughts about the current East Coast metalcore and hardcore scene, kind of going hand in hand? What do you love about it? Or what would you wish for the scene based on the direction that it's seemingly going in?
Cory: Honestly, like the Northeast and specifically Connecticut and Massachusetts, I literally think it's the best heavy music scene in the entire country. Like speaking from experience and maybe it's because we're from here, but it's always been the best. It was weird, it started off pretty divided and there wasn't really a scene for metalcore (the hardcore scene has always been thriving here), but we kind of just built our own fan base over the past eight years… It's grown into a really cool, metalcore scene that now other local bands can thrive from.
Allie: To kind of add on to the last question about the general and current state of the scene–you guys have really managed to include the youth in your scene, in a really meaningful way. People feel welcome to start bands and get involved in any form, regardless of how long they've been around. How does it feel to see that happening? Or is that not something you notice often even with the younger kids showing out to your shows?
Cory: Yeah, at our shows straight up (because I've been going to the Webster my whole life), when we played there, I didn’t even know anybody in the crowd… It was just a bunch of random young kids, which is really cool. Some of them are in bands and they asked us if they could open our shows. When I was working there I’d have to book local bands to open for touring acts and stuff, right? It was always cool to have just like younger bands to put on.
Allie: What are your favorite bands in the scene right now to play with, that you're inspired by, or that you love to listen to? Even bands that you just want to shout out in the Connecticut scene currently.
Cory: My favorite band to listen to in our realm of music has definitely been Misery Signals. There's a bunch of cool smaller-ish bands I love touring with that are awesome like Orthodox who we have on our headlining tour–we’ve literally played 100 plus shows with them. They're super sick. Mouth for War is an awesome band full of friends. A band from California, Castaway, they rule.
Allie: Speaking of tour, the last one that you guys did with Roman Candle, Dying Wish, and Foreign Hands, was insane. I was at the Midnight Hour show, it seems like your sets have so much energy and involve the scene as a community. It's amazing to be in the same room with you guys in a space like that. How was that tour for you? Was there anything impactful that happened or noteworthy now that’s over?
Cory: We've done the bigger room tours and they're cool and all but that tour was the best one we did by far like reaction wise. Speaking on Midnight Hour, we’ve played LA before (Chain Reaction always rules), but it was lackluster, mediocre–we were like yeah, this is fine. So we weren't expecting much from the Midnight Hour. Then we played that. It felt like a Connecticut show. It was awesome.
Allie: You guys are currently working on an album and just released a few new singles that are so gnarly. What new things, if at all, are you all trying to do with this record compared to previous ones content wise, musically, or even with mastering and producing?
Cory: For this record, we went into it immediately. One, we wanted it to be a heavier and scarier record. So that was one point that we brought up. The next point was we wanted it to sound a little cleaner and more polished than the older stuff. We worked pretty hard on getting it to sound how we wanted with our producer. We've been doing a lot more content stuff like guitar playthroughs and drum playthroughs and we're more focused on music videos this time around just so we have more to post. We're doing more stuff like this–more press. We're just trying to really push it because the response from the first two singles so far has been overwhelming. The first single already has more streams than a couple songs on the last record we put out two years ago.
Allie: So you guys have a feature with the vocalist from Alpha Wolf, and also Kublai Khan TX features. What was that experience like working with those artists? Do you have anyone in mind that you would want to collaborate with in the future?
Cory: That was awesome. We went into this record wanting features because we haven't really done it before. When we were picking people, we were just picking who would sound best in the already written spot [Lochie Keogh] was the person we landed on for that. Such a good choice. For Matt Honeycutt from Kublai Khan TX, we had an open spot. We were like, ‘if you want to do this, just go for it.’ We said, “You can do whatever you want.” It turned out awesome.
Allie: With the album dropping in like two weeks on March 29th and the tour that's coming up, do you have any expectations for the release?
Cory: I have no expectations. Yeah, no idea how it's gonna go. We leave for Europe, like two days after the record comes out. We get back for like, a week and then we do our first headliner. That is doing well so far, so expectations are there for that.
Allie: So knowingly metalcore speaks on a more emotional side to a genre of heavier music. There’s a lot of focusing on death and the struggling pursuit of life amidst the surrounding chaos. Personally, I feel it can get fairly cliche at least content-wise. On that note, what would you say makes Boundaries any different?
Cory: For us, at least in the past (and kind of with this record too), the lyrics are very personal/experience based. Everything [involves] a time and place that happened. This record is more just written on a general feeling. I definitely align ourselves way more with the metalcore side of things, but that's what I would say differs us. I mean, at this point, we have deathcore breakdowns.
Allie: Are there certain morals or a theme that you guys are trying to push onto listeners through your content or even through the press you’re more proactive in, based on who you are as people/performers on and off stage?
Cory: The way we've talked about it before is like the way that people can digest music, even if it's written about one thing specifically… It could mean a thousand different things. We would like people to take it in, in the way that helps them, so they can relate to it in their own experience.
Allie: With the upcoming tour, what are you hoping to get out of this experience? You're hitting a bunch of cities that you haven't been to/played at before, and also for the first time headlining the U.S.
Cory: I'm very excited to obviously play Connecticut again. We don't play there as often as I wish we could. But I love playing in places like Colorado. Very cool. Chain Reaction will be awesome. [...] For Tampa, we luckily got to pick this venue, Crowbar, that we like a lot that we haven't played at in a couple of years. It's exciting to headline the venues that we've been supporting.
Allie: I wanted to know, if you have a story that you would like to share, what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you in the band? Like, fan or gig experience, or even on tour? And if you have more than one, just go for it.
Cory: Oh, God, maybe the worst one was in like 2017. Yeah, we had this old van and the transmission broke on it. So we’re gonna replace it before we leave for tour, right? So we replace it. It costs us like two grand at that point. That was so much to us because we were broke. We all just piled together money and did it. First show was in Texas, and we start to drive. We're like a day and a half into the drive. We get an hour and a half from the venue and the transmission blows up again. You know, in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Sulphur Springs was the name of the place. So we get towed to a transmission shop and the dude was like, the fastest I can get this done is five days. And we're like, all right, whatever. So we put up merch for sale, raised some money luckily, and bought a hotel for five days. Our vocalist Matt just played Resident Evil 4 the whole time. So we got that fixed, that was really terrible. We did like the remaining two weeks of shows. The last show’s in Florida. On the way to that show, the transmission breaks, again. So we had to drive 30 miles an hour to that show. The hour drive turns into like three and people were mad at us for being late, which is crazy. And then we finished the tour. We have to drive from Florida to Connecticut going like forty five miles an hour. Normally, it's like a 22 hour drive, and it took us like two days, I think. So that might have been the worst ever. [...] With touring, we have just had such bad luck with vehicles.
Allie: One of the last things I wanted to talk about was the chemistry between everyone, and how you've grown as people and musicians with each other for 4 records and nearly 8 years. How has the journey been so far? Are there any regrets or changes you'd want to make, or any praise or thanks that you want to give to the rest of your band?
Cory: So really, it was me and our vocalist, Matt, we didn't start it technically, but I guess you would call us original members, but it was me and him. We went through countless member changes. Just with people who weren't down or weren't in it, or we had disagreements, and it took forever. Our bassist, Nathan, filled in for us for like two full U.S. tours and then Covid happened. Then he did merch for us and toured with us. So he's been touring with us for a long time now. So when our bassist left, we were like, you got to do this. Then our guitarist left at the same time, but Tim (our drummer) was in another band called In Good Nature with our guitarist, Cody. And he was like, I'm having him join because I know he's a great fit. So that happened like the same day, essentially. Ever since we got those two, it's been like the perfect fit. It’s really awesome.
Allie: Is there anything else you'd like to add, or anything you want to say to your fans or readers?
Cory: I just want to show appreciation really, for everyone, because like I said, the response has been really, really crazy for these two new songs. There's a trajectory there that I can now see, that I hope can continue because of everyone who's been supporting us. So really, just thanks and appreciation, everybody.
With such honest depictions of pain and loss that’s both mournfully poetic and mercilessly brutal, fans and new listeners can expect nothing but veracity from listening to this release. Stream now on all platforms and follow Boundaries on social media for succeeding tour updates! Thank you to Cory for being so amazing, see you on tour.
Written by: Allie Payne (@alliepaynex_)
Published on: April 18th, 2024