Back in the early-to-mid 2000s, Earshot were key players in spearheading the American alt-rock movement, releasing massive hits like “Get Away”, “Not Afraid” and “Wait” respectively, with their influence and success getting them significant radio airplay, as well as being featured on a number of video games including Madden ’05, MX vs. ATV Unleashed, and Project Gotham Racing 2. However, despite all the success of 2002’s Letting Go and 2004’s Two, the band would go through several line-up changes and their momentum would gradually wane, not releasing their third LP, The Silver Lining, until 2008. After this, the band would recede into the shadows for over a decade, releasing only a 4-track EP in 2015 and a couple of singles during Covid. Thankfully, all of that is about to change: with a brand-new line-up that includes ex-Breaking Benjamin guitarist, Aaron Fink, Earshot are set to make a massive comeback in 2025 with their first new album in 17 years. The band’s first single “Where Were You?” recently dropped to a strong reception from fans, and the band are currently in the throes of planning their next moves. I recently caught up with the band’s founding member and frontman, Wil Martin, who candidly discusses the band’s history, its tribulations, and the bright future that lies ahead of them, so I hope you enjoy it. (Please note: the transcript from this interview was edited and some of the wording changed for a more concise reading experience. For the definitive version of this interview, with more content, please watch the video version of the interview above.)

We’re here to talk about your new single, but give us a brief history on how the band first formed?

The band formed here in Los Angeles in 1999 and the ironic part of the story is that I wasn’t even a singer at the time, I was a guitar player that answered an ad for a band that was looking for a singer. I had been in bands as an aspiring guitar player for many years and we could never find the right singer, but at that moment I decided to give singing a shot. Once Earshot got started, we got noticed pretty quickly: we had a one-song demo called “My Time”, which was the first song I ever recorded as a singer. I had no idea what I was doing, I remember dreading going into the studio because no one knew that I’d never sang before, but I just did my best and winged it, and that basically sparked a bunch of label interest. Eventually we ended up signing to Warner Brothers Records, where we put out our first album, Letting Go. We had “Get Away” off that album, which did amazing things for us and set us up for the next record, Two, which had “Wait” on there – which feels more popular today than when it first came out. After that record, we took a little bit of a break; we parted ways with Warner Brothers and we did a smaller record deal with Universal Music Group, a label my manager at the time put together. From there we released The Silver Lining, which, if I’m quite honest, is not my favourite record. It was a weird time for me artistically, creatively, and personally.

It’s funny you say that, I’d never heard The Silver Lining until only recently and it’s a solid record which retains some of your sound, but it’s clearly trying to do some other things at the same time.

Yeah, there’s a lot of different reasons why that record sounded like a departure from Two and even Letting Go: firstly, I had brand new members in the band, so there were different creative influences happening on top of everything else; secondly, I had gone through so much with the fallout from being on Warner Brothers and then transitioning from no record deal to another record deal, at the time it felt like an emotional roller coaster. During this period, I also had a really good friend of mine unexpectedly pass away too, so it was a weird time. The funny thing is though, when I share that record, I actually hear so much potential in it, it’s just the ideas aren’t very fleshed out. It feels very scattered. There’s no continuity to it. I guess for lack of a better term, it feels rushed to me, creatively.

I wouldn’t say it was rushed. I feel like there’s some ideas that weren’t properly realised, but it’s still a solid record. Two is your best album to date, and Letting Go has some really good songs on it, but The Silver Lining is still a really good album.

When I think about it, when we were making our first record, we were new to the game. We were on a big label and working with an A-list producer in these beautiful recording studios, and we showed up focused, but we didn’t have our sonic identity fully formed yet. But, the songs on that record were important because it really paved the way for Two where we found our identity. It also helps that we were laser-focused on that record [Two]. I mean super laser-focused, and I think that’s why that record is so special and why people love it so much. They can hear it. They can feel it. And then you get to The Silver Lining and you can hear the focus just isn’t there. The identity was scattered; a lot of different things happened with it. Like you say, it came out good, but to me it’s not our best effort. What’s ironic to me is I get requests for it all the time, from people asking for it on Spotify and Apple Music (because it’s not on there at the moment due to the label now being defunct), and I think it’s cool they want to listen to it, but I’m just thinking it’s not our best record though (laughs).

While doing some research for this, I found a lot of comparisons being made between Earshot and Tool and it baffled me when I discovered this. After listening to Letting Go recently I understand some of the similarities to it, but I think it’s an unfair comparison because Maynard and yourself have similar voices. That being said, was Tool an influence on you?

You know, it’s funny, I had this conversation just the other day with a very good friend of mine and back in the early 90s when they came out with Undertow, I fucking loved that record. It was so raw, gritty and dark compared to anything else at the time. Back then the guitar sound was always big with loads of reverb on everything, and then that album came out and it was really dry and intimate. Right in your face. In those days that record rarely came out of my CD player, along with all the other stuff I was listening to: Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails – I mean, what a time for music that was. So, in terms of what Undertow provided, there was nothing else like it. As the years went on, they started to lose me, not because I didn’t like the band, but because their work became more of a commitment, what with the length of the songs and all the different parts. I’m more of a “song guy”, I like listening to stuff that’s a little easier, where you don’t have to think as much at times. I appreciate what they do; a lot of the stuff they do is really intricate.

Were they an influence? I mean, their early records probably had just as much influence on me as the other stuff I was listening to back then. I think if you listen to the body of work I’ve created, you can hear all of the things I just mentioned. Every artist is influenced by what they are listening to. When I look at it from an outside perspective, I think you can definitely hear some moments on Letting Go that sound Tool-inspired, but on Two I don’t get it at all – at that point it just became a conversation topic people liked to dredge up. I was never offended by the comparison. In the early days I was a little off put by it, but that’s only because as artists we want to be identified as our own being, right? It just became such a focal point at the time and I was just resistant to the fact that what people were actually doing was complementing our ability. It wasn’t a dig so much. And you know, some people do mean it as such, but by and large, most people mean it as a compliment. It took me a while to understand and accept that. I remember listening to Stone Temple Pilots for the first time and thinking it was Pearl Jam, so they went through the same thing. It happens. You can’t help influence. We’re all a product of our predecessors before us.

I feel it’s an unfair comparison. I definitely don’t see how you could even compare Two with Tool. There are elements in the way you approach your vocals on Letting Go where I can kind of hear it, but anything after Letting Go I can’t. But like you say, the comparison is not a bad thing.

Since we’re talking about this, you asked me earlier about what changed on The Silver Lining that made it such a different sounding record. As we’re talking about this, it’s occurred to me that on the first record, there was a different group of guys from who was involved on the second record. The bass player [Guy Couturier] that we had for Letting Go, he wrote most of the songs musically and was a big fan of Helmet and Tool and Bauhaus. He was really into those bands at the time, so there was absolutely some subliminal influence that, with my voice at times, made it seem similar to a lot of different things. Quite honestly, if we’re talking about singers that I love – that really seeped through more than anything – Scott Weiland’s a big one, Chris Cornel, and Ed from Live is a huge influence on me. I’m one of the biggest Live fans. I still listen to their albums all the time. I would say I’m surprised nobody has gone “God, he sounds just like the guy from Live” (laugh). Not that I’m ever trying to sound like anybody, but if I listen to my natural voice, I think there’s a lot you could draw from there.

A four-year gap is pretty normal for a lot of bands, but then after The Silver Lining you get to Aftermath and there’s a seven-year gap, and from album to album you’re looking at 17 years, so what happened in between Aftermath and now?

Aftermath was just a collection of songs that we had left over from previous records, so I just decided to finish it and put it out there. That’s why that EP sounds so unfinished. There’s a couple of great tracks on there, “Let Me” is one that gets a lot of streams, surprisingly – I think it’s because that’s the most traditional-sounding Earshot song on there. But essentially, it was a collection of songs that were laying around and I just decided to put them out there. This was at a time where there were more parting ways with not just the label we were on during The Silver Lining, but with my long-time manager. So, there was a lot of weird transitional stuff happening during that time and I wasn’t really inspired as an artist: I didn’t like the music ideas we were coming up with, and it stayed that way for many years up until maybe the last three or four years, where the band saw another line-up change and we were able to create a fresh dynamic together. This new music has really lit a fire in me. I think when people hear this new record people are viscerally going to be able to hear and feel something behind it all, and I’m so excited for people to hear it.

Well, we might as well just segue into that then. The new track is awesome, and you are 100% right. For me personally, this is the best song you’ve done since Two, and you’re right, there’s a tangible energy that comes from it. One thing I took from the song was your vocal approach, it sounds really different to anything you’ve done in the past. Was that an intention you had, to approach it differently, vocally?

Thank you. I don’t think it was intentional, more something that was automatic. When I’m writing lyrics to music I’m listening internally and asking “what is it saying?” What’s the response I want to give this music I’m hearing? I wrote the riff [for “Where Were You?”] when I had just got this new amp. I was loving the sound of it. I was in my studio and playing the amp thinking “wow, this sounds so fucking good and heavy” and I just started playing this riff, and then I recorded it and listened back to it thinking “man, this is just me testing out the amp, but I feel something here”. So it just sort of spilled out and then once I took it to the rest of the guys and we started fleshing it out, that was when it really got unlocked and everything started coming together. A lot of the songs on this new album came together very naturally and organically. I think part of the equation was down to me going back to the way I used to write. On the first two records, it was a conscious stream of thought, like, here it is. Here’s what I’m going to say. Here’s what I’m feeling right now and I don’t care how I say it or how it sounds. I’m just going to put it out there and here it is. The other part of the equation is the other guys in the band, because we’re on the same page. Creatively we’re aiming at what we’re good at doing, while also trying to innovate a little bit and add some new things, little Easter eggs to it that people may not necessarily notice or recognise, but they’re hearing it and they don’t realize that they’re hearing it.

I think that’s the big difference on this record versus any of the records before this. I’m with you, Two was probably my personal favourite. I mean, the first record is always kind of your first love, right? There are some great songs on that, but like I said before, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We were going with the flow and learning as we went along. On this new album, we come with a lot of experience, a lot of background. We come with knowing what our identity is; we come with not being afraid to go where we go with things and trusting that it’s going to be okay, that it’s going to be good. And that’s what we did differently on this record to the other ones, and for that reason this record is by far my favourite record we’ve done. Objectively speaking, this is a record where if I hadn’t heard it a million times already, I would listen to it a million times. It’s the kind of record that cuts deep; it’s catchy and it has all of the quintessential Earshot elements there.

There are two things that really made me excited about this song and the prospect of a new album: the first thing is Aaron Fink. I don’t mind some of the new Breaking Benjamin stuff, but the original line-up is where my heart is, so when I read that he joined Earshot I thought it was a really cool fit. I’m not sure how much involvement he had with the writing on this particular track, but I can hear a lot of his style on it. How much involvement did the other guys have, Aaron included?

This record was pretty equally drawn up by all of us, with the exception of our drummer, Mikey, who doesn’t really write a whole lot. I mean, obviously he comes up with his drum parts and the way he plays them, with some minimal input from the rest of us, but by and large Aaron and myself had the largest hand in it. John, our bass player, brought a few tracks to the table that are some of my favourites, but you’re going to hear the fingerprints of myself and Aaron all over this thing. I first met Aaron back in 2004 when we were doing a string of dates with Breaking Benjamin, and we quickly became friends. Every day, first thing in the afternoon whenever we got up, we would be hanging out until one of our bands had to play and then we’d come right back and keep hanging out until the buses left at two or three in the morning. We would be passing the iPod back and forth all the time, sharing music together, it was a really cool time and we’ve always kept in touch since. Cut to all these years later, around 2018/19, and Aaron sends me a text asking me if I would be interested in singing on one of the songs for his solo album. At that time, I got some offers to do a couple of shows, but I didn’t have a band together. Mikey expressed some interest in doing them and Andy [Stafford], so when Aaron sent that text I thought, well if it’s ever going to happen [the band coming back], this would be a great time to do it, because this is literally like starting a brand-new band again, albeit with some name and brand recognition attached. So, when I called Aaron and asked how he felt about doing these couple of shows he didn’t hesitate to say he was in on the idea.

From there, we planned to make this record back in 2020 but then COVID hit, which put the kibosh on that, so we ended up remotely recording some singles and putting them out. We did “Uninvited” and “Been a Long Time” where we were starting to inch closer to the band’s roots, and then “Unraveling” which reminded me of something off Letting Go: heavy, nice chorus, kind of chaotic sounding, definitely something that would have come off our first album. After that, we all got together and start recording this album; we had all these song ideas being throwing back and forth, so we flew out to Florida to Mikey’s studio and we stayed there for 10 or 12 days recording and fleshing out the songs, seeing which ones were good to continue with, which ones we’re going to be thrown into the filing cabinet, and which ones we were going to burn. Originally Aaron and I intended on producing the record but we both got really busy, so I called up a couple of old friends: Johnny K, who produced Two, and Bob Marlette, who’s also a great producer and friend of mine, to see if they were interested. Johnny was really excited and passionate about it, so we worked out a deal with him and flew out to Nashville to finish the record. We’re really happy and excited with it. He understood what our strengths were and what we were good at doing, and so he got us to focus on those things and encouraged being experimental but set some parameters on it so we didn’t end up with another The Silver Lining or Aftermath. And, well, it worked.

“Where Were You?” stands out a mile from most contemporary rock bands today and it’s because of its production. I listened to Daughtry’s EP last year – really good EP – and I listened to Disturbed’s new single this year which is also really good, but the two sound exactly the same, and it’s a big problem with a lot of rock bands these days – this homogeneousness to everything because everyone’s sounding the same. Were you guys conscious of that and wanted to approach the track, and the rest of the album, with a more organic sound?

We always strived to create records that emulate the live experience. As a live band, Earshot have always had great compliments on how much we sound like the records, and even in most instances sound even better, which is a huge compliment. So, we try to make records with “how is this going to translate live?” in mind. We don’t want to do things that we can’t do in real life, because what happens there is people become disappointed. Plus, we take pride in the fact that what you hear is what you get. We can do what you’re hearing, and I’m not saying that a lot of bands can’t do that. I know Disturbed can. I know Daughtry can. But there are a lot of bands out there too that can’t and that’s why you end up with these records that are sort of disjointed. It’s funny, me and Johnny K were just talking about what you’ve just brought up the other day and how this record production-wise sounds different to a lot of the records we hear from smaller bands, and even some bigger bands. There is a mechanical sound to this modern production where all the drums and guitars sound the same, and Johnny made a great point about this. It’s not because people don’t appreciate the sound of a natural-sounding band that can get guitars sounding naturally heavy and drums sounding really big, it’s because of a transition that happened where labels and budgets started to shrink and people had to figure out how to make records with almost no budget. To make a record now like the days of hiring a producer is out of the question, because it was in the budget, so people have to figure out how to make a record in their bedroom, and this is where everything converges, because we’re hearing a lot of emulations of guitar cabinets and guitars, and they just have that…. film to it. I can’t describe it in layman’s terms.

However, from a musician’s standpoint it comes down to whether the song is good or not. Is it connecting with people? There’s been a lot of recordings out there that didn’t sound great but the songs themselves are amazing. I mean, if you listen to Led Zeppelin records, the production quality is nowhere near what it is today, but those songs were so good it just shines through all of that. So, I still believe it’s all about the song. I think the production and the sound and tone of things, I would like to believe anyway, still carries a lot of weight with someone who’s listening to it, because it creates an experience that’s unique. There’s nothing really unique when you’re listening to the same sound from one band to the next, all you have is the song itself that’s different. However, I think it creates a whole other level of experience when you not only have a different song, but a different sounding kind of song. And I think that’s what we always aspired to do. We spent a nice chunk of money making this record and that’s why a lot of bands don’t do it. They can’t afford that. I mean, we had to forego some like to dos and haves to make this record, because it’s not cheap. But nothing good ever is. I mean, it takes a commitment. It’s like investing in your business: you have to be willing to invest everything you have if you really believe in the business you’re building. You have to take that risk, otherwise you never really get to the mountaintops. We put our money where our mouth is on this and we would like to believe that when people hear the whole record, they’ll be completely blown away by it and appreciate it for what it is.

Is there a release date?

It’s definitely going to come out in the fall. We narrowed it down to September and now we’re going to narrow it down to a date. We have a smattering of shows over the next few months, we’ll probably do some more in the fall, but we’re really going to hit the road hard next year. That’s why we decided to release this later in the year, so that there’s not a big gap between the release and touring. So September, maybe even early October, but somewhere around then. I’m actually flying to Nashville next week, we have a few more songs to finish mixing and then it’s done, so we’ll have everything. We’re starting to work on album artwork, I think we’re just about to decide on a title that’s been going back and forth a bunch. So we’re getting really close. We’re really happy with the response “Where Were You?” has been getting. What’s so mind-blowing about the song is, as I mentioned earlier about us playing some dates, Aaron said to me “you know, the record’s not out before these shows, but can we at least put out a song?” So we decided to pick out a great song, but not an obvious single, which ended up being “Where Were You?”, and the response has been amazing. The thing is though, if people having this kind of reaction to it, I literally cannot wait to see what the reaction is going to be when they hear the rest of the record, because it’s not that the other songs are better, it’s just that they have so many other cool moving parts to them.

So, “Where Were You?” is more like a song that sits better on the album while you’re listening to the whole album, rather than it being a jump-out stand-out single sort of song?

Right. But [due to the response] clearly it is. It is a standout. Mainly that’s because it’s been so long since we’ve put anything out, but I think it was a surprise to a lot of people as well, because a lot of comments I read were from people who didn’t even know we were still around or active. We wanted to use that song to sort of wake people back up again and wake our fans back up that may have thought we went away forever. And this was, I think, the perfect song, because it’s familiar to our fans; it’s a familiar sound. And when people hear the record, they’re going to still hear that familiar sound, but they’re going to hear a whole different energy and some new and different things. Like you said, a big part of that is just the collaboration between Aaron and I joining our creative minds together and that’s created something that’s interesting and familiar, yet brand-new at the same time. It’s a really unique record.

Like many people at the time, my main source for finding new music was through video games like Burnout and Tony Hawks and Madden, which was actually how I found Earshot, because it was on Madden 2005. How did that opportunity come about?

That came about through one of the executives at EA Sports, who just happened to be a big Earshot fan and he got an early preview of the whole record. “Wait” we already knew was going to be the lead single and he just loved the song, so he called the label and asked if they could use it. I’m a huge Madden fan myself, so it was an obvious yes. We went down to EA Sports and they gave us a tour and we got to preview the video game and it was such a great opportunity. It’s always exciting when you get asked to be a part of something that you’re such a fan of yourself. Then EA informed us they were going to do a version of “Wait” with The D.O.C., which again, I’m a huge fan of. I grew up listening to NWA all through middle school and high school, and it was a little moment of dreams can come true type of thing. Like, if you were to tell me this was going to happen when I was in high school, I would have said you were nuts.

It’s funny you bring up “The D.O.C. v Earshot remix”, because I was going to ask you if you’d heard it. Surprisingly you can’t – well, maybe I’m not looking hard enough, but I can’t – find it anywhere. The only place you can hear that song is a low-quality rip on YouTube, and it’s such a great interpretation. It picks the best elements from both songs and when it kicks into the Earshot riff it’s awesome.

I think I might have a copy of it. You’re right though, the only place it exists is on YouTube.

Which album, and this includes the new album, was the most difficult for you to write?

Hmm. I’d have to say The Silver Lining was the hardest one to write, just because I wasn’t, like I talked about earlier, in the right place to make it. I went back and forth between that and Two. There are many things I love about Johnny K, but one of the things that I love about him the most is he loves to experiment. I do too. During the recording of Two, we spent weeks and months experimenting with different amps and cabinet and changing chords to see if anything changed, and I mean, we just really experimented to ridiculous degrees and really got into it, and we had so much fun doing it. And that record took a long time to make, it wasn’t really because of the songs or anything that was going wrong, it was down to us experimenting. Everybody was probably bored to tears, but we loved trying different things out and seeing what kind of noises came from it. It was hard because we were only supposed to take a month to record that album, but we ended up taking three or four months, and the label was starting to bug out and get worried. We tried to assure them everything was fine, but it got hard dealing with that. Other than that, it was a great record to make and the one where I learned the most about songwriting and studio production, and experimenting on different things, whereas The Silver Lining was just difficult to make.

Would you say that the new album was pretty stress-free to make?

The creation of it was easy, but I was going through some pretty rough personal stuff during the writing of that record, so you’ll hear that all over it. You’re almost hearing a diary play-by-play: you’re hearing thoughts and ideas and what I’m experiencing and going through. So that was the hard part of it, but it was also what helped make it, too. People should be able to really resonate with it, because I’m talking about the kind of feelings and emotions people will go “Yeah, I get that. I’ve been there. I’m there now.” And, you know, they say the universe has its way of timing; this is the absolute perfect time for this record to come out. So, in that regard, it was a hard album to make, because I was in the midst of all these different, difficult emotions I was going through at the time, but I was able to channel those tribulations into this record, and you’ll be able to hear that on it.

Have you got anything you want to add?

The only thing I want to say to people and the fans reading and watching this is thank you. You know, thank you for sticking with us this far and for being this patient. I know it’s a long time to hang in there and wait, so I’m grateful and thankful to everyone who’s listening to our new song. I’m grateful to the old school fans who’ve stuck around, they’re sharing stuff like crazy and commenting and they’re really helping new fans find us. We’ve had a very warm welcome back with this, and the response and the encouragement has been amazing, so, thank you.

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“Where Were You?” is now available on all major streaming platforms. Check out Earshot’s Linktree for all their social accounts and latest tour dates.