From First to Last: Matt Good looks back, moves forward with We Were Bleeding Anyway

From First to Last gave a whole generation of MySpace kids a soundtrack for feeling their feelings loudly and unapologetically. For more than 20 years, Matt Good has remained a driving force in the creative engine behind the beloved post-hardcore/screamo band, which has often operated more like a community of musicians than a traditional group.

Through numerous lineup changes, eras and labels, one thread has remained constant throughout From First to Last’s catalog: ripping guitars that move from chaotic riffing to soaring, anthemic hooks, cutting lyrics and raw emotion. Now, with their first new material since 2015’s Dead Trees, that identity is impossible to miss.

Lead single Your Name in Red Ink reaches back toward the rawness of the band’s earliest days while filtering it through the maturity and production experience that come with decades of making music. Joined by new vocalist and longtime fan Lil Lotus, From First to Last will release its upcoming EP, We Were Bleeding Anyway, on October 2. I spoke with Matt Good about the band’s creative evolution, working with Lil Lotus, producing the new material and what this latest chapter means for From First to Last.

We missed you at Warped in Montreal this year! It was the first time the tour had come back through in 12 years. I looked it up, and the last time you came through was in 2008. Would you be keen to come back to Montreal if Warped returns next year?

Matt Good: Yeah, for sure. It sort of seems like they asked the bands to do the U.S. dates and the international dates bi-yearly or something — not as a strict rule — so we’ll see. But yeah, we’re obviously open to doing it. We’ve had nothing but great times there!

We don’t actually know if it’s coming back next year, but you’re always welcome — vous êtes toujours les bienvenus. We love you guys!

Your first single from this new EP, Your Name in Red Ink, sounds immediately recognizable as From First to Last, but it also doesn’t feel like you’re trying to recreate Dear Diary or Heroine. When you were writing these songs, how conscious were you of the line between giving people the sound they remember and allowing the band to sound like what it is now?

Matt Good: Pretty conscious. Maybe not fully in the way you describe, but there was a really pinpointed effort on my part to remember who the person I used to be when I was writing and try to bring that person into the fold, accepting that as being good and valuable.

I started playing some of our old songs on guitar and remembering how I would approach chord shapes and voicings and things like that. I was reacquainting myself with the writer I was then and trying to decipher what I was doing that really excited me when I was 21 or whatever. By getting back to that and bringing it into my arsenal, then marrying it with who I am now, I think it organically became what it is — which is kind of what you described.

I can totally hear that in these new songs. From the beginning, From First to Last has had this very intense emotional quality. I’ve been a listener from the start, and the very teenage “Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit now has a body count” line from Heathers is almost the perfect encapsulation of that. You’ve managed to hold on to that emotional intensity, but you’re obviously writing from a very different place as adults. How has getting older changed what you draw from in the writing process?

Matt Good: I didn’t really give it too much thought prior to starting to do press for this album, but now I’ve discovered what it really is. What I’ve been describing to people is that in life, all of your problems are very relative to your own experiences.

When you’re young, your first girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever — when you lose that person, it feels like the most devastating thing in the world at that time because you can’t imagine ever having that again. Everything is melodramatic and overly exaggerated. Then, over time, I’ve dated plenty of people and it didn’t work out, and it’s sad, but you know the person’s out there. You start to develop a better way to handle those emotional traumas.

But with that being said, as you get older, life naturally introduces new challenges that become the new thing that feels just as bad as when your first girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you. Dealing with family members dying, friends dying from overdoses, drug addiction issues in yourself or family members, losing your job, financial hardships, the state of the world now — you can go on and on.

In general, I think all we were ever really doing was emoting about the things that felt hard or important, the things we needed to conquer emotionally, or the problems we had to face. They’re all relative.

The things that may have felt super important then maybe don’t feel as important now, but they’ve been completely replaced by a whole new batch of things. So it’s kind of the same in a lot of ways.

Totally. I’d say the constant is your emotional sensitivity and who you are as a person, and how you process these things. I think that shows through your art.

They Said Your Ghost Was a Promise is the second single you dropped just three days ago, and it’s also a certified banger. From what I’ve seen, the reception has been pretty awesome, and it feels like a return to form. Which brings me to working with Lil Lotus. There’s obviously something surreal about having someone who grew up listening to you come in and make music with the band. When you started writing together, how much did his knowledge of the band influence the songs? What has that collaboration been like?

Matt Good: Yeah, it mattered a lot.

He brought a really valuable thing to the table, which was the perspective of what he, as a fan, would be excited to hear from us.

I made a lot of instrumental demos — there are tons of them — so I would let him pick the ones he wanted to work on. I’d ask, “Which ones are you vibing with?” Even that, in a way, was being filtered through the perspective of a fan. He’d say, “Oh, I really resonate with this,” or, “This hits.”

When we were doing the vocals, I would always let him start the process with the subject matter. He would come up with some lines and ask, “What do you think about this?” And I’d be like, “Oh yeah, that’s awesome,” or, “Yeah, but let’s tweak this little thing.”

It was really collaborative in a very easy, egoless way. It was super chill, always really good vibes. Every time an idea was thrown out, it was never laughed at or anything. It was just super awesome. I love working with him, and it’s going to make making songs going forward very easy.

That’s awesome. It sounds like a great fit. I’ve heard you talk about not having ego when it comes to making music, so it sounds like you guys are a perfect match in that respect. You’ve also done lead vocals for From First to Last. How would you say experiencing both sides of that has changed what you need from a vocalist now?

Matt Good: Yeah, it definitely has. I don’t even know if I can articulate it well, but there’s definitely a sound where, when I hear it, I know it’s doing a thing for me. It’s like it’s tickling my brain in some certain way. And when it’s happening, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s the thing.”

It is cool because I would say Lotus and Sonny [Moore] are similar in very vague, abstract ways in their deliveries. They both have higher-timbre voices, and they can sing a certain way.

The way I sing has always been more akin to a Tom DeLonge or something. I don’t really have that glide-y, flowy, epic kind of thing. I do more articulate, character-driven vocal-style stuff.

Now I get to place what I know I can do really well amongst what I want to hear as well. So you get the best of both worlds this way with Lotus. It’s really nice for me personally.

I can hear that now that you say it. Both singles you’ve dropped so far, at least to someone familiar with your catalog, totally hit those brain tingles. That marrying of things is palpable.

How’s the live-show chemistry? I hear it’s fire.

Matt Good: Yeah, it’s awesome. Every show has been getting better because back in the day, we probably would have just ripped and gone straight on tour. That’s what you used to do. We haven’t had the ability to play back-to-back-to-back yet.

We’re about to do two shows in a row headlining straight into Aftershock, so that’ll be nice. It’ll be the first time we play more than once in a row.

You practice a lot to play, but when you get onstage, most of what you practiced goes out the window because you’re not prepared for the impact of the adrenaline in the moment. You can only really rehearse so much. What you really need to do is commit everything to muscle memory, and that’s been happening over time as we’ve played these shows.

Now when I get onstage, I’m like, “Oh yeah, this is just what I do,” and it feels normal again. I don’t have any thoughts about it — I just do my thing.

For the first shows, it was a little like, “Oh, I remember this. I know I used to do this.” It didn’t feel totally weird, but it did feel a little weird, and we had to get past that.

The chemistry has been awesome the whole time, and it only keeps getting better as we do more shows.

That’s great to hear. I can’t wait to see it!

You’re also a pretty prolific producer, Matt, with your own studio, Good Sounds, having produced for bands like Asking Alexandria, Sleeping with Sirens, Hollywood Undead and Escape the Fate, as well as From First to Last.

On Your Name in Red Ink, you handled the production, mixing and recording. How did taking that much control over the process change the way you approached the songs compared with previous records?

Matt Good: It’s a good question. It made things interesting for me because you have to wear both hats at the same time, and there were times where I was like, man…

That’s four hats, man.

Matt Good: Yeah, yeah. [Laughs.] It’s a lot of hats.

There were times where I’d be recording guitars in here and I’d be like, “Man, I wish I had another one of me right now.”

I really got into the weeds for a while with the guitar stuff because I really wanted all of this to be live and organic on the record. I have different amps I was trying, different cabinets with different speakers in them and different mics. I was just going nuts for about a week figuring out the guitar sound I wanted. [Laughs.]

I’m glad I did, but in hindsight, it would have been nice to have someone there to say, “No, man, this is good. Just go!”

It is a lot. And it puts you into different headspaces at the same time, which is a lot to manage.

Matt Good: Yeah. It was funny because something like me getting a guitar sound applies to me as the artist and me as the producer at the same time. So that gets a little wild. You know what I mean?

Totally. Was it always the plan for you to take this bigger role with the new material, or did it just happen naturally as the band matured?

Matt Good: Yeah, I think it was just something nobody even questioned. It was just like, “Oh yeah, you obviously just make the record.” I mean, why wouldn’t I?

What about the move to Fearless Records? You’ve had a lot of different eras and labels over the years. What made it feel like the right home for this new iteration of the band?

Matt Good: Our A&R guy, Cody, is a friend of mine, and I was working on another project with them for my friend’s band, Minute After Midnight.

We had just been talking back and forth, and I was like, “Hey, From First to Last is making an EP. I haven’t really shopped this. I haven’t told anybody or anything, but you’re my friend, and I really like Fearless a lot. I’m just giving you the heads-up: if you want the band, I’d love to be on Fearless. I think that’d be great, and we could work together.”

And he was like, “Dude, yeah, that sounds awesome.”

So he brought it over, and everyone was on board. It took a while because of all kinds of different moving parts, but they were all about it. It’s honestly been such a pleasure working with them. They’re a great, great label, and we’re all very happy.

It’s awesome to hear. There’s a lot to be said for the community around music and the people you’ve met throughout your career, and how you can support each other through different eras. Speaking of which, I’ve heard you describe From First to Last as a community, which is a really cool way to put it. What has it been like seeing the band through all of these different eras and being the person really driving that community for so long?

Matt Good: It’s cool. I like looking back on it and seeing all the different iterations of the band. I think it’s really fun because people get really hung up on a band’s members, and I completely understand why. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense to me.

For me in general, as a musician, since day one when the band was made — and even that’s debatable when it was [laughs] — it’s always just been about playing with people you vibe with and who you feel like you can contribute something to, and who can contribute something to you.

It’s about the collaboration that creates the product. I do realize I have an importance to the band, but at the same time, I’ve always been looking for people to work with in a way where it gets me excited about making something and they can be excited about being that person.

That’s the reason why Sonny was in the band. It’s the reason why everyone has been in the band.

A lot of people don’t realize Sonny [Moore] wasn’t even the first singer. Obviously, we did really important stuff with him that matters a lot to a lot of people. But in the band’s career, he is kind of a small blip on the radar. It’s just a really bright blip.

That’s why I like to refer to it as a community in a lot of ways. If there’s someone bringing something to the table that gets everyone excited in the moment, we’ve always just been like, “Cool, yeah, just play with us!”

It’s always been like that. I know that’s not normal, and people are really, really obsessed with band members. You’ll see stuff online about current or past member rosters, and it’s just really not as big of a deal as people realize.

Every time, even if the members are exactly the same, when a group of people goes to make a record, they’re different people than they were the last time they made one in terms of what they like, who they are and what decisions they’re going to make.

There’s no way you’re ever going to capture the same lightning in a bottle every single time, whether you change the people or not. I could actually make the argument that changing the people makes for a more interesting and exciting experience.

It might not always hit you as the listener in the way you want it to because you remember something, but it might hit someone else. Who knows?

Sure. I think what makes it resonate — to call them brain tingles, using your phrasing — is how you’re feeling going in, the actual creativity and the feeling you’re bringing into it. If you’re not inspired, that’s going to show. Working with the exact same people in the exact same framework isn’t necessarily going to produce the same success. It’s really about being able to tap into that same well, and you need to be inspired for that to happen.

I know the wider community is really excited about this new music. Your Name in Red Ink was the first song from the new EP, and now you have They Said Your Ghost Was a Promise. Without giving away anything you’re not supposed to, what do these songs tell us about the rest of the EP? Are they representative of it as a whole?

Matt Good: Yeah, I would say they’re definitely representative of it as a whole.

The whole EP to me — well, I’ll tell you how it’s been described to me — sounds like the band that people remember, but in a new way.

It’s kind of funny because that sounds almost contradictory, right? But it makes sense to me.

I did a lot of listening before I did the reading, and I can tell you that tracks. There’s something about the emotional intensity — sound-wise, lyrically, everything — that feels like a grown-up version of the band we fell in love with twenty-ish years ago. So I’m really excited to hear the rest of it.

Matt Good: Yeah, I’m excited for people to hear it.

It’s actually funny: if you told me to place this record in a timeline, if you could rearrange the past, I would say this one feels like the record that would have come after Dear Diary.

Thank you, Matt! We Were Bleeding Anyway drops on October 2, and I need everyone to go and pre-save that right now because we are so back, baby!