Last year while listening to the radio, I heard a song “Sail” by the band AWOLNATION. It was a bit different than what I usually listen to, but it got stuck in my head and I listened to it way too often. As usual, I ended up finding more music I liked and the song got pushed down my iTunes playlist a bit, but then this summer when I discovered Imagine Dragons and saw that they were the opening band for AWOLNATION, I rediscovered the band and looked a bit more into their music.
I feel like most people are on the same page with me on this one: although the album came out over a year ago, their music has been everywhere the past few months. Songs like ‘Kill Your Heroes’ and ‘Sail’ are used in numerous ads and TV shows, and lead singer Aaron Bruno says that “it’s extremely flattering and more than anything, gives people an opportunity to hear the music you’ve worked so hard.”
One of the lyrics that has stuck with me most from their music is the line in “Kill Your Heroes” where Bruno remarks, “never let your fear decide your fate.” This line became the title of their fall tour, but has also been one that I love to listen to. This project was one that Aaron says “was 100% my vision completed without anyone getting in the way.”
He said during our phone call that he “just wanted to see this vision through and if people liked it that was going to be great and if they didn’t that was going to be great too. I just wanted to finish something on my own.” It seems as though many people like it, but it is also something that Aaron can stand behind and know that it was all his hard work.
The music has been taking off internationally as well as in the US and when I asked Aaron about his reaction to the music taking off in other countries he said, “It’s incredible, it’s absolutely incredible. I don’t know if I would have ended up doing a bunch of traveling had this not happened for me.”
With his surfer roots, most of the traveling that Aaron had done was to wherever the waves were best, but he said that now “anytime you hear it’s going well somewhere that means you’re more than likely going to go there. We heard that we started doing really well in South Africa and next thing we knew, we were going there.”
The band is gaining the success they deserve and you can catch them on tour with Imagine Dragons and Zeale at the moment. Check the tour dates below and watch the new video for “Kill Your Heroes.” Also, the band has a new real-time site so if you Tweet with the hashtag #awolnation, it will show up on the AWOL nation site.
