Cyberpunk, Linkin Park and anime: Dissecting Magnolia Park’s new album, VAMP

Following a string of releases that spanned everything from Disney to spooky season, Magnolia Park have taken their storytelling talents even further with their fourth album, VAMP. The follow-up to 2023’s Halloween Mixtape II, guitarist Tristan Torres explains that the band’s new LP chronicles “an insane, cyberpunk dystopian world, Nocturne Nexus, where vampires have to fight against a Final Fantasy-type organisation to save the world.” So far, so intriguing, right?

“I would say it’s a loose concept,” continues Tristan, who suggests VAMP is striving for something even bigger. “We wanted to write something that the fans could love and start a community that people can go to and express their feelings for the record and what we’re doing as a band. We wanted it to almost be a way of life!”

But where did the idea for this fang-tastic new album come from? What bands inspired it? And do the events that take place in Nocturne Nexus have an autobiographical basis? And while, yes, that does make it sound like we’re asking whether anyone in Magnolia Park is actually a vampire, we can say for sure it’s not Tristan, who’s walking in the bright Florida sunshine as he speaks to K!. We’re less certain, however, about his bandmates, vocalist Josh Roberts and guitarist Freddie Criales, who remain indoors and in the shade as we run through what makes their new epic opus tick…

Tristan Torres (guitar): “We had got back from Australia, where we’d been playing our heavier songs, like Animal and Do Or Die [both from Halloween Mixtape II], and the crowds there were literally going insane for us. So when we got home, me, Josh and Freddie were at my brother’s house to start work on the first demos [for a new record] and I found this anime called Vampire Hunter D. Vampire Hunter D has this really cool aesthetic, a mixture of the old and the new. So does cyberpunk, which is another big influence on the aesthetic. It just all clicked at the same time that we wanted to do this vampire-inspired record, which grew into something way bigger than we could ever have anticipated.”

Josh Roberts (vocals): “There are so many different species of vampires in different mythologies, so we wanted to streamline that to highlight the similarities between them all. Despite the varying styles, they all have the same fundamentals, like a family. We wanted to create something that would resonate with people – they know what a vampire is, but once they go into the mythology, they’re left asking: are they bad? Are they good? What do they really stand for? Because no-one is all the way bad or all the way good. A song like Cult really touches upon that subject.”

Freddie Criales (guitar): “We had a song called The Void, but that one didn’t make the album, so Shallow was the one we did that really gave us a feel for what VAMP was. It was around that time we were figuring out how to make a proper rock song, too. That was one of the hardest parts: getting over the hump of making a rock song and making it good, because we came from the more alternative/pop-punk side. Getting down those heavy tones and heavy sounds was a priority, so when we did Shallow, that’s when we knew we were getting it. It was a stepping stone in the right direction.”

Tristan: “When me and Freddie were doing the lyrics for Shallow, I was going through a bad time. Meanwhile, Freddie wanted to make a very lusty kind of song, so it ended up sounding like this lusty, self-hatred song. A lot of our songs are about what we’re going through at that moment in time, because even with an album with this focus, it all has to feel real, so more people can become attached to it. So the lyrics, ‘I hate myself more than you know / The more I think, the more hate grows’, while part of the story, is a genuine feeling that people have and work through on a day-to-day basis.”

Josh: “Listening to Hybrid Theory, the way Chester [Bennington]’s emotions came through in his voice, whether it was his screams or his singing, was something I wanted to emulate. Chester is one of my biggest singing heroes, so if I was going to do a style that he was so good in, I wanted to do it justice with my own voice, to really push myself and my voice so I could be somewhere near the realm he was in back in those days.”

Freddie: “We love Bring Me’s album, [2019’s] amo, as well as their Post Human stuff. We knew them from Suicide Season, but I didn’t get into them until Drown came out. And when amo came out, I really got into them. We were always chasing that amo high of a riff like MANTRA. The riffs on that album are so cool because they’re rocky but they’re also bluesy and kind of garage-y, which might be because of the production. It’s actually trickier than it sounds to make riffs like those. Plus, we wanted to emulate how they shaped music around Oli [Sykes]’s voice.”

Tristan: “One thing we wanted to improve on with this record was the aesthetics, so how people feel the music and where it puts them. [2006 album] Saturday Night Wrist is a record that puts you in this gothic, ethereal mood when you listen to it, so we wanted to learn from that. I know that, for some, it’s not necessarily a huge favourite in the Deftones’ catalogue, but it’s absolutely one of my favourites for sure.”

Tristan: “The only reason why we get to skip genres like as well as we do is because how great and versatile Josh is as a vocalist. I want to give him gas! The fact that he can go from crazy screaming on Omen to doing an R&B, pop thing on Shallow gives all five of us free rein to write whatever we want. And that is incredibly freeing!”

VAMP is out now via Epitaph

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