Small Town Sindrome are an alternative/punk rock band from the US. Their most recent album, ‘It Only Gets Worse From Here’, was released a month or so ago (you can find our review of it here). Just before its release, we had the chance to sit down with the band and have a quick chat about it, their last year and their plans for the future. Check it out from down below!

Obviously you put out a single from the upcoming album; it seems like it was pretty well received?

Yeah, so far! We’ve got a really good response. We’ve got the album coming out a week on Friday so we’re excited to see the response to the rest of it.

So how was the writing process for that? Over here we had lockdowns and stuff but has it been different over there?

Yeah. Like the studio we recorded in, the Bouncing Souls studio that they did most of their albums in, so you’ve just kinda gotta get around it. The masks and all that. But we survived!

Is there a specific theme or story to the album or is it more through individual tracks?

We kinda… honestly I have a tee-shirt and on the back it says ‘it only gets worse’, and one day Brian was like “I’m gonna write a song about that!” And then we thought it was a good idea for an album and we just kinda rolled with it.

How does the sound of the album compare to your previous work?

I guess people have to listen to it and make their own judgement, but I think for the most part it’s a lot more polished. For me I learned more chords on guitar so… We really wanted to go for more of a polished sort of sound so I think that’s what we did, I think we accomplished that. We spent a little bit more time on the songs, I guess.

That’s where Pete Steinkopf of the Bouncing Souls came in too. He was really pushing for a little bit better quality in everything we did and it really came out. We’re starting to see that too; people are commenting from our first album and saying that maybe we backed off the edginess a bit, not sure what that means but it’s a little bit more polished.

I think we came into it a lot more confident than the last one, too. Me personally, I felt I was a huge step further than I was with the first one. I was much more confident, and I think us as a whole group felt tighter and more confident together. It definitely made a difference, it made it feel more complete.

So, how would you describe your sound?

Controlled chaos.

That’s actually not too far from the truth!

I feel like we take a mix from a lot of our influences, you know, pop punk, classic punk, classic rock, even a little bit of the more alternative metal or heavier stuff. You get kind of a different feel from a lot of that so it’s kinda hard to say what we do sound like.

Just today I’ve had about a dozen radio stations hit me up for whatever and it’s funny because of the diversity of the radio stations. Jut based on that we could play more of a classic rock station or even a hardcore one. With every song on the album, each person can find something they like with it and it’s pretty cool!

Have you guys managed to gig and stuff recently?

Here in the US we had a nice little tour scheduled last summer that got washed out. That was kind of a bummer but we played some local places at least. This year was really kinda focused on the album, to get that done, so we’ve managed to play a show or two here each month and did a mini-tour in September but really the focus was on the album and getting it out there. Next year we really want to hit it hard as far as touring goes.

Have you got anything pencilled in already?

Yeah actually, the UK! The South mainly, probably a couple of mid-tier festivals and then pretty much book everything we can around that. Our plan is to go all over the UK. We’re really kinda waiting to see what this winter brings but are planning on a heavy schedule come the spring!

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