Parklife DC editor Mickey McCarter catches up with Daniel Fleming, guitarist for Fairfax, Virignia metalcore veterans Age of Ruin, to talk about the band’s new album, Nothingman. Ahead of Age of Ruin’s Jan. 10 appearance at The Pocket in Washington, DC, Fleming discusses the record’s creation, themes, and his approach to guitar.
Mickey McCarter: Nothingman is the new album. How did it come together?
Daniel Fleming: This band started in 1998, if you can believe it. We didn’t ever broke up, but we kind of just sort of took a little bit of a hiatus unknowingly around 2007 or 2008. And the band reformed in 2017. We didn’t really know what direction we were headed in, but we put together an EP just to kind of dust the cobwebs off. And then we were having a lot of fun and really wanted to pursue the band with a lot more ambition. So, we had already begun writing new songs for this record and decided to reach out to our friend Mike Schleibaum, who plays in Darkest Hour, to produce the record and put together essentially what we were considering our best work, our life’s work, at this point. It took a lot longer to complete than we anticipated. We had a few personal challenges along the way, but we did self-release the record. It’s in vinyl, it’s on all streaming platforms, on CD, and we released the CD through a partner of ours called Grey Matter Records.
MM: What should people be listening for on the album, thematically or emotionally? I understand Nothingman and the EP Thieves deal a lot with isolation and finding yourself, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
DF: Yeah, it’s kind of dead on. Some of that’s in some of the media we’ve put out already, but we have done this with records in the past and really approach it as something you would listen to front to back, start to finish. And there’s nothing wrong with a lot of bands will just write kind of songs and put all the songs together. And a lot of times that works magically. But we really wanted something that you would listen to like we grew up on, like in a long format, where you put a record on and you don’t stop it. You don’t skip between songs like you do in streaming today and only hear the band’s top hit and that kind of thing. There’s a well thought-out intro to each side.
Watch the official music video for “Promise Me” by Age of Ruin on YouTube:
MM: I wanted to ask you about grunge as an influence. You spent your youth with that music, and you even played Warped Tour in 2004. How does that show up for you now?
DF: The grunge thing is really close to us because we grew up in the ’90s. So when we were a band forming, we started in 1998. a lot of that music was still contemporary and it was in the mainstream. And so we were of course influenced by all that, but really digging into a lot of the metal that we were hearing out of Europe. That’s what we were latching onto at the time. And now as we’ve matured, it’s just the stuff that you grow to love in your youth, you’ll listen to until you’re 100 years old if you could. You know what I mean? You identify with it, and I think that’s it just comes out naturally and it’s that combined with a bit of a challenge to ourselves to push ourselves musically
MM: How has your guitar playing evolved over time?
DF: I started taking guitar lessons during the pandemic — and people ask me why, and I say, ‘well, you can always get better.’ There’s always someone better than you, and there are things that you can learn. What I wanted to do was learn some techniques like sweep picking, which I was not very good at. I couldn’t figure out how to master it, so one of the first things my teacher taught me was that I’m holding my pick wrong apparently — for sweeping specifically — but the way that I naturally hold my pick is upside down for what you would naturally do if you were trying to sweep. I was unable to do it because of the way my palm rested on the bridge. So, that opened up; that’s just one door that opened through that mentorship, among many others. It’s definitely evolved a lot.
MM: What can people expect from the current live lineup?
DF: You know, this lineup has been together for a few years. I know it’s from the perspective of of looking at this band from start to finish; it’s been a long time and there’s been a lot of different people in and out of the band — myself even included for a couple years that the band carried on, with my blessing. I wanted it to happen, but I was pursuing other things at the time. If you think about a lot of bands only lasting a year or three years with a single lineup, that’s kind of where we’re at. We have a solid lineup that we play and lock in really well and everybody’s super stoked about this band and putting a lot of effort into it.
So we’re really pleased with the lineup we have right now. We have Hendrik Osinga, who plays drums. Many years ago, he played in a band called The Others. And then he played in a band called Left Unsaid for many years too. He’s an old friend that we played with a lot. He’s been playing drums with us for a few years. And we have a guy named Casey Flanagan who has been with us for about a year and a half on guitar. In terms of what to expect live, we bring a high-energy show! It’s not a mosh metal band, so those like death metal pits or whatever, we’re not into that kind of stuff. It’s more about having fun and respecting each other and enjoying the music. We profoundly love this: We take so much out of meeting other musicians and playing live with other musicians and seeing what they can offer.
Watch the official music video for “The Traveler” by Age of Ruin on YouTube:
MM: And of course, your have your other longtime members, Benjamin Swan on vocals and your brother — Christopher Fleming — on bass. Does the “brother” dynamic shape how the band operates?
DF: In terms of playing with a brother, I’ve known him since he was nothing, he was zero. We get along really well. He actually lives next door to me, too. It works really well just because of our relationship. He’s not my only brother; I have two other brothers. And so maybe growing up, we were able to keep enough of distance, but maybe there’s the camaraderie of having an older brother who used to pick on us both. I don’t know. But it works out really well for us, and his rhythm is outstanding.
Maybe it’s partly just the comfort: We know each other so well that we’re able to take care of each other out on the road. And that’s something that we’ve learned in our maturity to respect each other, both as brothers, but also the other guys in the band — to look out for when someone’s feeling fatigued or to step up. There’s a lot of work that happens to put on a show between running a merch table or loading gear. A lot of us have learned the other tasks each other do to stay cohesive as a unit. That probably helps there with communication and everything, but it’s certainly something that we carry throughout to the other members as well. There’s a lot of mutual respect among us all.
MM: After your show at The Pocket, what’s next?
DF: We have a couple of dates throughout the Mid-Atlantic region up through March. We’re about to announce we have another song that’s about to drop — a single called “Falling” — sometime in February or March. We haven’t entirely pinned down the date. And then we are booking some tour dates toward the end of spring and summer. We’re going to hit Puerto Rico and the Midwest and back to the east coast.
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Age of Ruin headline The Pocket at 7DrumCity on Saturday, Jan. 10, with support from Shovelhead AD and Skin Testament.
Age of Ruin
W/ Shovelhead AD and Skin Testament
The Pocket
Saturday, Jan. 10
Doors @ 7:30pm
$18.07 advance/ $23.75 Day of Show
All ages
