For Chicago’s Madina Lake, working with esteemed producer David Bendeth on the eagerly-anticipated Attics to Eden, the experimental follow-up to their 2007 Roadrunner Records debut From Them, Through Us, to You, was an honor and a sincere privilege. After all, the man has worked with the likes of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Breaking Benjamin, and label-mates Killswitch Engage, and he’s even helmed Paramore’s recent breakout LP, Riot! But by the same token, the two months the band spent with Bendeth — within the platinum plaque-lined walls of his House of Loud Studios, planted smack dab in the desolate thick of Elmwood Park, New Jersey — completing the record was ultimately humbling. That’s because crafting and tracking what would become their sophomore full-length was an experience tantamount to rock and roll boot camp, according to bassist and backing vocalist Matthew Leone.
“David broke us down — he was like a drill sergeant,” Matthew said, of the first time Madina Lake played some of the new material for Bendeth. “I was totally frazzled by the end of the first day. We thought it would be easy, because we knew the songs were there. We just thought we’d come in, and record them. But when we played them for him that first time, he just ripped us apart. He completely deconstructed us, and it hurt bad. But the pain was well worth it.”
By the end of it, Madina Lake had churned out a monstrous collection of genre-defying, impassioned and infectious tunes which often meld the ethereal, hypnotic elements of Muse with the riff-rife potency of Linkin Park. And the band also found its true sound through the experience.
Attics to Eden is an album that proves maturity comes with experience. One of rock’s most promising young acts takes the listener on a unique auditory voyage across layer upon diverse layer of sound. The 12 songs on the album — including “Never Walk Alone,” “Let’s Get Out of Here,” “Legends,” and the guitar-less “Friends and Lovers” — are replete with otherworldly atmospherics, epic guitars, intricate and oftentimes punishing drum-work, melodic choruses, imposing bass lines, audacious instrumentation, and Nathan’s unpredictable, inescapable vocals.
In Madina Lake’s earliest beginnings, the band set out to release three albums which would congruently tell the story of Madina Lake, a small town of their own creation, which would serve as the canvass for a much larger message. The first chapter focused on the town socialite, who goes missing, and the reaction the town’s inhabitants have.
“We wanted to make three installments of this sort of grandiose statement we wanted to make,” Matthew said. “The first one was a statement about celebrity obsession, so this is part two of that, which just continues on the mystery.”
“This one goes completely surreal…like universal,” Nathan added. “There’s elements of spiritual escape, and almost science fiction elements to it that we went with on this one, but at the end of the day, we’re sticking very closely to our main objective with the whole story, which is good vs. evil. We didn’t want to repeat anything we did on the first one; we didn’t even really want to touch on the same topics. But you have to put faith in the kids that support your band to see your vision out and develop with you.”
But one need not know the story to appreciate Madina Lake’s poetics.
“I think people have the same basic sets of emotions,” Matthew said. “The spectrum of emotions is not that big, so whatever you’re talking about, I think people can file it under their own experience.”
“If you do something that’s not true to your heart, its going to be contrived and its not going to connect. As much as we try to follow this story line, we make sure they’re based on real events and real things that we’ve gone through, things we’ve experienced, and feel passionately about. I think people around the world can connect to a similar string of emotions that they go through, whether they’re in China or Italy or Belarus. People go through the same gamut of emotions and that’s first and foremost in our songwriting.”