PropertyOfZack had the honor of interview Nick Ghanbarian from Bayside just last week. I had a great time with Nick as we discussed Bayside’s new album, new label, as well as future touring plans. Check it out below and enjoy it because it’s a good one!

For the record, could you state your name and role in Bayside?
My name’s Nick Ghanbarian. I play bass in Bayside.

The first taste of Killing Time was released just hours ago and the reception so far is looking pretty incredible. How glad are you guys to be starting strong already with the new record?
It’s pretty early, but the album’s been done for a while and we’re on a new label, Wind-Up Records now, and they’re gonna do things differently than our last label. They want a lot of time to promote the album and really set it up and it feels like a long time until February 22^nd, but I think that in this day and age we’re going to have a lot of content and songs and stuff for people to get excited about. Hopefully each week we’ll release some kind of information or song clip or something like that until the album comes out. So far we’re practicing right now. We’ve seen a couple comments here and there on Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that to people’s reactions to the new song and it’s totally positive, which is great.

Is what we’re hearing on “Already Gone” a good indicator on what a lot of Killing Time will sound like?
That’s one of the more aggressive ones. I’d say half of the album is kind of like that, a little bit more aggressive. More than half of the album. We were very conscious of what we like to play and what people like from our band and I think there’s a lot of aggression on the album. Then there’s some laidback stuff. We’re certainly not by any means reinventing the wheel for us anyway. If you liked us in the past, you’ll like this album. It’s better. We had more time to write the songs and really critique things and the recording is the best recording that we’ve ever gotten. If you like that then there’s definitely more of that on the album and there’s some different stuff too.

What was the writing process like for this record? Are there any themes to look out for?
Thematically I don’t think so. I think that the biggest difference in this writing process is just that we had time. With our old label we pretty much wrote songs and went into the studio and recorded them, which wasn’t the case at all. We were demoing for this new album in November and December and we didn’t record it until June, so we had at least six months to just listen to the songs, live with them, see what we could do better, write better parts, see what worked, see what didn’t work, and really just critique ourselves and push ourselves. For us we feel like that made our songs better. It’s really no different this time, I just know that we really did do our best and expected a lot of ourselves because this is the longest time that we’ve had in between albums, touring, and all that stuff. We didn’t want to dissapoint and really expected a lot from ourselves.  I know that we’re extremely happy and very anxious for everyone to start hearing songs. Today was a big sigh of relief for us because we can finally have our fans hear a small dose of the new album. We’re excited and the feedback is totally positive, so that just makes us even more excited.

 How does the band feel about Shudder over two years later?
I wish it would’ve gotten more of a chance. I feel that when we put that out it was our last album on Victory Records and it kind of just came out. We did one headline tour for two years worth of touring, so I’m not totally sure that we ever got to play as much as we wanted off Shudder and I certainly don’t want it to be the one Bayside album that is forgotten. I think there are a lot of great songs on it. There was no over thinking on that album. Whatever we did right was the first thought that came to our minds. We went in and recorded it. We tried as hard on that album as an album at that point and I think there’s a lot of good moments on there. It’s hard to judge reception because I know we haven’t played too much off of it on tour and these days you can’t even look at record sales or anything like that to judge how it was received. So that one, we love it and we will continue to play songs off of it, but that seems like the most polarizing album as far as Bayside albums go with the fans. People will hate it or love it and there’s almost no in between.

I think many fans were anticipating the record to be released sometime during the period of your upcoming tour with Senses Fail. Were there any delays in the process of getting the album out or were you guys always shooting for February?
No, us and the label both thought it was going to be coming out around the Senses Fail tour, which is part of the reason we were doing the tour. For label reasons and even for us, we don’t want to do things the way we want to do things for the sake of doing them. We have a very good new relationship with our label and want to trust them. It’s not what we’re used to. We expressed our concern that we’ve never waited that long to put an album out, so I think that that’s why we’re going to have a steady stream of music, news, and content.

Is a music video a possibility before the release?
I know we’ll for sure be doing a video before the release. Hopefully it’ll come out either right before it or just as the album’s coming out. That’ll be something we do after the Senses Fail tour. Probably in December or Januaryish.

Like you said, this is Bayside’s first release on Wind-Up Records. Is it just a more natural relationship than you had with Victory?
Yeah, the good thing about Wind-Up, there’s a lot of good things, but they’re in New York, so it’s much easier to have a relationship and go into the city and deal with people one on one instead of through emails or phone calls. They’re genuinely excited. They have tons of staff that everyone is excited about. When we go in there for meetings everyone really seems completely genuine and excited to be involved in our band and that really meant a lot to us when we were looking for a new label. They came off the most genuine and excited about not only what we can become, but what we’ve already accomplished, which is good because we’re four very proud people who pride ourselves on what type of band we are and the road that we took to get where we are and of all the labels we talked to we didn’t have to tell them that, they already knew that and that really meant a lot for us. We’re super excited and even to this point where we don’t even have our release out yet they’re been an extraordinary label for us, so I’m really excited to see what more they can do for us in the future.

Tomorrow marks the start of your co-headlining tour with Senses Fail. How stoked are you to get out there with some of your best friends?
I can’t wait. It’s been almost a year since we’ve been on tour, so I feel like all four of ourselves don’t even know what we’re getting into at this point. Since I’ve been in the band this is the longest by far that we’ve been off the road. It’s gonna be completely strange just waking up in Lancaster, PA tomorrow and not in my bed. Because I’ve been home for basically a year. We did a lot of the writing at home, we recorded close to home. I want to say it’s a weird feeling, but I almost don’t even know what I’m getting into. We’ll see. Our bus is here at our practice space; we just did our last rehearsal. It’s starting to feel familiar, but I’ve still got to go home, watch a hockey game with my girlfriend, and our bus call is in about eight hours or so. We’ll see.

You’ll be taking out Balance And Composure and Title Fight as well. What do you see in those bands for the future of the scene?
They’re representing younger people in bands, which I think is important because they’re kind of hardcore based bands from Pennsylvania and I think it’s really important for bands like this to be prominent in the scene and I don’t know if backlash is the right word, but to be the antithesis to a lot of the poppy bad aesthetic bands that are out there that have infiltrated our scene with no morals, no positive influence on people, and I think these are just two of a lot of bands out there that are doing things right and I feel like a lot of people can learn from them about being in bands and just really lyrically and how they present themselves. It is the antithesis from a lot of bands that are on Warped Tour now. Bands like this are almost a minority, which is unfortunate, but this is what us and Senses Fail wanted to do. We wanted to bring out up-and-coming bands that we think we would have enjoyed when we were younger, so hopefully our fans enjoy what we think are good new bands.

Should we expect to hear a couple new songs in the set?
New songs from our new album and some older songs that we haven’t played in a while. That’s basically what we’ve been practicing; a couple of new songs and then older songs we haven’t ever played or not played in a long time. It’s gonna be exciting. We’ve had a lot of time to just asses our older records to see what kind of songs we could infuse into our set list to make it better and a little bit more diverse and dynamic. I’d say between one and three newer songs. I’m sure it’ll be on YouTube in a couple days.

The tour ends in late November and then Anthony has some Where’s The Band? dates, but after that nothing is on the books until Soundwave, which is later than normal this year. Might we see some early 2011 US dates in support of the release?
Yeah, I think we’ll be doing something. I’m not sure when or where, but we’ll be doing something come January, maybe early February before the Australian tour.

How excited are you to get back to Soundwave?
That’s really the best. I’m so affected by the weather and leaving New York in the winter to go to the Australian summer is absolutely amazing and puts me in a good mood and helps me get through the winter. Some of our best friends as far as bands go like Anberlin and New Found Glory will be there. We haven’t been there in two years so we’re super excited.  That’s definitely one of our favorite places to play. Besides for the 20-24 hours worth of flying to get there I highly recommend it to anyone if they ever get the chance to go to Australia. It’s a beautiful country. It’s a good laidback country with great weather. It’s a lot of good things from America and a lot of good things from England and Europe all mixed into one with great weather.

Should we be on the look out for an European dates as well in the first half of 2011?
Definitely in 2011. I’m sure we’ll do a little something before Australia and then I’m pretty sure we’ll focus on something for the spring to support our album. I don’t know when, but I know that that’s a part of our band that we need to work on. We’ve only been to mainland Europe once, which was about a year and a half ago with New Found Glory, so that’s definitely something we need to explore more. I’m sure with our new label and our new album we’ll be able to do that.

So after the album is released should we just expect constant touring throughout next year?
I want to say yes because that’s all we know how to do. That’s all we’ve done since I’ve been in the band so it feels weird that we haven’t done that. I think that the older and more established we get as a band we do have to tour smarter, not necessarily tour more. We’ll see. Hopefully people will respond well to the album and maybe some bigger and better things will present themselves and we’ll get to play in front of new people, which is always our goal. That’s what we hope for regardless of whether those opportunities present themselves I’m sure we’ll tour no matter what.

Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Just all the social networking stuff; Facebook, our Twitter is @BaysideBand, my Twitter is @NickBayside, Anothony’s Twitter is @AnthonyRaneri and those are definitely the best outlets to get information or stupid jokes that I might say about Twitter. And if you’re a hockey fan I talk about hockey a lot, which is most of what I think about all the time besides this band and my girlfriend. That’s basically it.