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WATCH: Flyleaf's live Shock Session performance

WATCH: Our exclusive interview with Lacey Mosley and Pat Seals

Interview by Courtney Lear

It took Texas rockers Flyleaf four long years to release the follow-up to their mega-successful self-titled debut. But with their new Memento Mori debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200, it’s pretty clear they haven’t lost any steam in the interim. That's probably because they've never really slowed down — the Texas quintet have spent the bulk of their “off time” between albums on a relentless touring schedule, including dates with the likes of Korn, Stone Sour, Disturbed, and the Deftones.
    Though they've never made a secret of their faith, the band has successfully avoided becoming pigeonholed as a "Christian band." Part of this certainly has to do with their choice of “secular,” tourmates; but the powerful rock sound of their hits “I’m So Sick” and “All Around Me" — not to mention frontwoman Lacey Mosley's impressive vocal chops — have also elevated their material far above and beyond Christian radio’s generic Jesus-song fodder.
   Mosley and bassist Pat Seals recently sat down with ShockHound to recount their warzone adventures, tell us why Memento Mori feels more personal than their first record, and explain why they believe it's important to live with an awareness of death.
    They also treated us to a raucous Shock Session, which ended in Mosley suffering a startling hit to the head in the last seconds of their final song, courtesy of Seal’s bass. But she's doing okay — and apparently, this is not the first time it’s happened.

SHOCKHOUND: Lacey, you just got whacked pretty hard by the headstock of Pat's bass. Are you okay?

LACEY MOSLEY: Oh yeah, he used to do it all the time. He would hit me, then he would hit himself with his bass until he was gushing blood everywhere so that he would be punishing himself for hitting me. I’m like, stop doing that! Then it was so common that it would just keep the sore there [on his head].

PAT SEALS: So I’d just open up the old one.

MOSLEY: Finally he stopped doing it ‘cause I would get so scared, like he was going to need stitches or something. But he’d be like "Where’s the camera? Where’s the camera? Take a picture." His parents literally have this picture of him with blood all over his face on their refrigerator.

SHOCKHOUND: What does the name of your new album mean?

SEALS: The name of our record is Memento Mori. That saying comes from back in Roman times. When a general, or in our case a king, would win a victory, they would come home and have a parade, and they would always assign one slave to stand behind the king and say "Memento Mori," which means "Remember you’re a mortal, remember you will die." We think that’s an important message to say to anyone who will hear it nowadays because, I don’t know, a lot of times people live as if time doesn’t matter, or they aren’t conscious of how important they are in fulfilling their purpose.

SHOCKHOUND: So do you think the idea of ‘Memento Mori,’ the concept that you will die one day, runs throughout the album’s lyrical message?

SEALS: It’s an underlying theme, but it’s not like we’re like, "Meeeemeentooo Moooori!" in every song.

MOSLEY: If you listen to [the songs] from beginning to the end, you kind of get the message that life is short and precious and the lives of the people around you are short and precious, and you should make the most of every opportunity and live for things that aren’t going to fade away. Don’t live your life for material things, because that’s not going to last; but the greatest things are faith hope and love and you can hear that.

SHOCKHOUND: Speaking of love, I hear the track “Treasure” has a really cute story behind it.

MOSLEY: Did you hear that? [Laughs] I remember sitting at my house by myself after a really amazing day with my boyfriend, [who] asked me to marry him that day. I just remember sitting down by myself and looking at this ring that he got me and just feeling like the most valued person in the world. The song’s chorus was just playing over and over in my head, "Tonight I’ve become the most dazzling precious treasure/I am treasured over all the earth." That’s how it made me feel. He makes me feel like that still, he’s really amazing.

 
SHOCKHOUND: It’s been four years since your last album. Obviously, you’ve gotten married and everyone’s had their own lives going on for the past few years. How do you think you guys have changed personally, and how has that shown up on the album?

MOSLEY: We’ve been touring and touring and touring and we’ve played with almost every band I can think of, except U2, that’s a band we really want to play with. I think you can hear Samir and Jared and Pat and James’ influence from bands that we’ve toured with and music’s that come out. It’s not so much that we sound more like Korn or we sound more like whoever it was, just that we recognized that there’s a degree of professionalism that these guys have even though they’re rock stars. They get up and do their business and they know what’s going on with their stuff. They’re not just drunk and stupid all the time, like you would imagine.
    I think that was important for us to learn for this cycle. Something they would always say, every band, was "You need to take the reigns more, you need to know what’s going on, it’s going to reflect on you ultimately, this is what people think is coming from you." With Memento Mori, although we were extremely busy, we made ourselves just stop and look through everything and make sure it was going to come out of our hearts and be personal, and be something we could stand behind and describe [that] this is what this means and this is why we did this this way. So I think that was the biggest difference between this record and the first one, is that although the first one is just as honest, I think this one is more personal.

SHOCKHOUND: Your debut was a huge success. You had charting hits with “I’m So Sick” and “All Around Me.” Was there a lot of pressure going through the writing process, and going back into the studio to make your sophomore effort?

SEALS: I don’t know, maybe in the back of our minds, but we just had so much time to write these songs on the road and we had a big cram session last August where it was just, "Who’s got an idea? Who’s got an idea?" We were just writing and working real hard...and just focus on actually making the music. We did this album with Howard Benson [who produced the first album] so there wasn’t that freak out factor of "Oh he’s such a big deal, we’re so scared." We knew him, we knew his team. It just felt a little more natural in my opinion.

MOSLEY: We spent two months on the first record, so coming back was just like coming back to visit our friends and family. It was real comfortable. I know how Howard is and I know him personally, so he’s not as intimidating. You’re not afraid you’re going to say something stupid, 'cause you’ve heard him say stupid stuff a million times. [Laughs]

SHOCKHOUND: Last August you guys went to Afghanistan, right in the middle of a warzone, to play for the troops. What brought about the idea, and what was the experience like?

MOSLEY: I had a friend who was in the Navy, and I spent a lot of time with him and I got to see where they have to stay and the things they have to do, go out for 9 months and not talk to anyone. The places they had to stay just felt like a tomb. It just feels really lifeless. So every time since I walked with him through that, I see people in uniform and I want to say, "Thank you," and I want to say, "We care about what you’re doing, we’re thankful for what you’re doing, and we remember you back here."
    That’s one of the things we heard from them. One of the soldiers said, "Thank you for helping us know that we’re not America’s forgotten." Because for us to come from a safe place to a dangerous place and say, "We’re right here with you, we love you, we care about what you’re doing," was an intense experience. It was life-changing for us. They were the most grateful audience we’ve ever played for, and above all that it really brought home the whole concept of Memento Mori. These people were living life for something that they felt they were willing to die for, and that if they died then they felt like they were doing that for their loved ones' sake.
    You hear over and over soldiers saying, "We’re here so that when you go home you feel safe." That’s exactly what happened when we got home. I remember feeling like the most amazing thing was I could drive down the road and know that the Taliban’s not in that mountain over there [and] gonna shoot us. So it was pretty amazing for us to see them have such a clear understanding of what they’re doing, and to be face to face with them, in the middle of it.  

SHOCKHOUND: You guys did a webisode for us about the meaning behind the song “Again,” but can you give us a little more insight to the concept behind the video? It’s a performance video, but there’s fire and animation and craziness. What was the inspiration behind that?

SEALS: I don’t know, we didn’t say, "'Again' will be about this and have this in it." Meiert Avis was the director for that video, and he’s done videos for U2 and a whole bunch of folks, so we just kind of brainstormed with him and said. "We just need these visual effects behind us supporting our performance of this song." He did a great job with the flames and a couple [my] woodcuts are in there.

MOSLEY: That was the biggest thing for us, to make it personal, we wanted to see Pat’s artwork in the video and we wanted to see it light up and be on fire. That’s what he came to us with in the beginning, saying, ‘We want to make a landscape of Pat’s art and have you guys playing in it.’"

SEALS: I love the way it came out. I showed my mom and she said, “Oh wow. You look like a real band!" [Laughs]  Then I hit her with the bass.