Just last week, PropertyOfZack had the pleasure of doing a brief interview with Christian McAlhaney of Anberlin. Christian and I discussed the band’s recent tour, reception to their new record, Billboard charting, and more. Read up on it below! 

For the record, could you state your name and role in Anberlin?
My name’s Christian and I play the guitar in Anberlin.
 
Tonight the band will be playing a radio holiday show alongside Circa Survive. Are you guys stoked to have a mini-preview of what the upcoming tour will be like?
Yeah, we’ve played random shows with them before like Warped Tour and radio shows. We’ve known Anthony for a while actually, or at least I have. It’ll be cool to see those dudes again.
 
The band has been doing radio shows for the past few weeks. How have they been in general?
They’ve been good. It’s crazy, we’re flying all over the country. I’m not complaining, but it’s funny. We were in Rhode Island and it was like 15 degrees and then yesterday we were in San Diego and it was like 80 degrees.
 
And just a few weeks ago Anberlin got back from a UK and European tour to support Dark Is The Way. How did fans receive the new music over there?
It was good. It went really well and it was really fun actually. I think it went really well.
POZ: Was it nice to change up the scenery a bit after the US tour?
Christian: Yeah, it was exhausting though to be quite honest. We did that US tour and literally had two days off after that and then went to the UK. And even with the US tour, we filled up most of our days off on that tour with just stuff, just important stuff that ended up falling on our days off. We had just been going basically since the US tour for over a month straight with no days off.
 
Dark Is The Way has been out around three months now and it just sounds bigger than anything Anberlin has ever done. What was different in this writing and recording process compared to past efforts?
This was my second record recording with Anberlin, so I think personally, I felt more comfortable this time around and I think as a whole, it was the most kind of open policy we’ve had. If anybody had any ideas regardless of what their role in the band was, whether it’s drums or bass, if you had ideas for the song, we’d say them. If you hear something that someone else is not hearing, say it. I think a lot of times there are assumed roles like, “Okay, you play the bass, you write the bass parts. You play the drums, you do the drum parts.” But everybody knows how to play the guitar at least somewhat, so there was a song that our drummer wrote on this record. That was kind of the policy of this record; everybody was open with contributions. It was great.
 
How have the initial reactions been compared to the initial reactions of New Surrender?
I think it’s been good. New Surrender had a really great reaction. Everybody has different tastes. So it’s always funny for us to see people arguing online, whether it be on message boards or whatever. One person’s trash is another person’s gold. Someone might be like, “Oh, I love these songs. These are my favorite.” And someone else might be like, “Those songs suck! These are my favorite.” I think as a whole, we love both records, but every time you put out a record, the goal is that it’s the best record you’ve put out. As a whole I think people are really stoked. I know we’re really excited on it.
 
It has charted extremely well also. How does it feel to be able to get so high on the charts in such a shaky time, especially considering that this sort of scene doesn’t get much mainstream love?
It felt good. This year’s been filled with major kind of bucket list stuff. We did things I’ll look back at when I’m an old man on my deathbed and feel very achieved. Not a lot of artists can say that they debuted in the top 10 on Billboard, or had the opportunity to work with the producer that we did. As a whole, it’s been a very gratifying and I guess vindicating kind of year. Especially these days when it’s so hard to gage what you’re going to sell. These days it’s hard to even know what sales mean. We’re not selling hundreds of thousands of records, but relative to what’s going on in the music world…It’s hard to wrap your head around that. It’s like, “Oh, we debuted in the top 10, but we only sold X amount of records.” Five years ago, top 10 would be like 100,000 records or something.
 
“Impossible,” the albums first single charted at number 15 on Billboard in its first week and just a month ago you guys performed it on Kimmel. Was that a cool experience?
It was really cool. We had done Kimmel before for New Surrender. Last time we did it was in an indoor stage, which was cool because it’s an awesome opportunity, but this time we did it on the outdoor stage, which was just awesome. It’s way bigger and a cooler stage. Slow and steady’s been the name of this band’s inception. Every record has been full of little achievements that push us a little bit farther I think.
 
There’s been talk about doing a music video “Closer.” Is that any more or less of a possibility at this point?
Yeah, I think that’s the plan. “Closer” might be the next single. I just heard about it the other day. Nate was like, “Hey, I have this really cool idea for this video for ‘Closer.’”
 
Halfway through January starts your headlining tour with Circa Survive and Foxy Shazam. That’s a giant tour, how did it come together?
I think we’ve been talking to Circa for a while, trying to figure out how we could tour together. Scheduling and timing just kind of fell into place for next year, so I’m pretty stoked about it. It’s a co-headline bill and I think it should be great. They’re definitely a band that we’ve looked forward to touring with at some point. And Foxy’s crazy. I can’t wait to see them live.
 
Should we expect much variation from the set on your previous US tour this fall?
I’m not sure. We haven’t delved into that yet. The production won’t be the same. We had pretty crazy production for this last US headline tour. I don’t think the January tour will be that over the top. Set list wise I’m not sure yet either. We haven’t even talked about it. I guess we’ll see.
 
Following that tour the band will head to Australia for the Soundwave Festival in February/March with a bunch of your good friends. How stoked are you for that?
I’m actually the most stoked. I grew up, not like a metal head, but the reason I started playing guitar was so I could play Metallica and Iron Maiden songs. I actually lost my mind when Iron Maiden and Queens Of The Stone Age are the big bands on Soundwave this year. I just cannot wait. I just saw Iron Maiden play outside of LA like six months ago, so I’m really excited to watch them everyday for like a week.
 
What can we expect post-Australia in the late spring or summer from the band?
I’m not sure. Summer…different stuff is being thrown around. Nothing is set in stone. Since we’re touring the US again in January we talked about maybe going back to the UK and maybe mainland Europe during the summer. Maybe another US tour with somebody else in the fall and then who knows. It’s hard to make plans in this music industry. I feel like we’re always flying on a wing. Eventually something works out.
 
Thanks so much for your time!