ANBERLIN EXPERIMENTING MORE ON CITIES?

Tooth and Nail Recording Artists, Anberlin have released their third album, ‘Cities’ and the release has enjoyed tremendous critical acclaim all the way to a #19 debut on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. ‘Cities’ is the band’s follow up to 2005’s ‘Never Take Friendship Personal,’ and the group’s third album ‘Cities’ continues to showcase the bands growth as song writers and musicians as they steadily build a solid fan base.

We caught up with lead vocalist and principle songwriter of Anberlin, Stephen Christian, to discuss ‘Cities’ and the band getting progressively better at songwriting.

“It’s not a new direction, I think if you like the old Anberlin records I think you’re really going to appreciate the new one. I think we just progressed as musicians. I never liked it when a band after two or three records kind of go in a whole new direction and leave you helpless not knowing where they’re going so I think if you listen to the record you’ll be able to quickly tell that it’s Anberlin but we definitely got a little more proficient on our instruments and at songwriting as any band would that spends this much time together on the road.”

We also talked with Christian about the band experiementing more in the studio on ‘Cities’ and even adding vocal Choirs and String Orchestras to the bands arrangements.

“But we want to definitely experiment a little more, I mean we had everything from a new mix and master team to a new studio outside of Seattle, about 30 minutes outside. We got everything from a boys choir to a whole string Philharmonic Orchestra so we definitely experimented a little bit and it was definitely worth it and it turned out in our opinion pretty good.”

So what does the band feel about all the success they’ve enjoyed so far and debuting at #19 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart.

“Wow, it felt great but that’s not what we rely on the albums success to. The success of the album, you know the critics and how well it’s going to do comes from the fans. We’d rather hear the fans feedback, iTunes does reviews and Amazon.com and different websites like that. And even meeting fans at the shows and stuff. Those mean the world to us. It doesn’t matter about the number as long as the fans are happy.”

In February of 2007, Anberlin announced that guitarist Nathan Strayer amicably left the band and that Christian McAlhaney, formerly of Acceptance, would take over as the new guitarist on the bands tour of ‘Cities.’ Although nothing has officially been announced, Christian does feel McAlhaney will be more than an interim replacement. Anberlin are currently on a run of sold out club shows around North America and it was also recently announced that Anberlin will be on the upcoming 2007 Warped Tour performing dates from June 28th until July 27th.