Palisades: "The world is such a crazy place"

From tackling topics others are afraid to speak about, to challenging themselves and confronting demons head on, New Jersey’s Palisades are a band that don’t mess about - as drummer Aaron Rosa explains.How are you guys at the moment? Is the band in a good place? We are fantastic! Our new album ‘Palisades’ comes out on 20th January and we can't wait for everyone to hear it. We're headlining in the US right now playing for our wonderful fans and the shows have been amazing. So right now there's nothing to complain about. There’s been a lot of noise about ‘the state of 2016’ of late - what’s your take on current events? Will 2017 be better? We try to stay out of politics as a band. The world is such a crazy place, in both great and horrific ways. Culturally, we try to spread positivity, hope and self-empowerment. Tomorrow can be better on individual and collective levels if every human does the right thing by other human beings and the world we live in. Has the social climate impacted upon the band at all? It would be hard to deny that it has. Media coverage of the US Presidential elections was so intense this time around. Social media has become a fast-moving source of all news. Good and bad. All of those things have an impact on us as individuals and as a band. As a band we are very aware of certain issues such as ethnicity and race. So much of this was happening while we were writing and recording the new record. That is why we are so passionate about it. It is our way of, hopefully, creating change. Why go self-titled for this one? What does it bring that your previous two didn’t? Each one of our albums was the best representation of Palisades at that time. With our self-titled however, we feel that over the course of time and experimenting with music we have finally come into our own and really defined what Palisades means to us. We talk about real things that in the world. Musically we have been pushed outside of our comfort zone and the result is an album that tested our musicianship as well as our songwriting. I honestly feel like we created a really strong and well written album that people will enjoy ten years from now.