The day that the Rockstar Taste of Chaos tour hit the Long Beach Arena started as yet another sunny Thursday. However, dark clouds filled the sky almost at the exact moment the touring bands arrived, and the rain began to pour.
Coincidence? Probably. Then again, perhaps it was a sign that Aiden had taken over the LBC.
The Seattle natives have a sound and image that is much like the climate of their home region: dark, foreboding and uncompromisingly harsh.
Aiden is currently opening for The Used and 30 Seconds To Mars on this year’s Taste of Chaos tour, which is playing to packed arenas all across America. Fortunately, this band is ready for its close-up, especially its combustible front man who has a penchant for on-stage theatrics such as swinging his microphone in the air as far as possible.
“I don’t want to just stand on stage and sing and not do anything. I want to just tear shit up,” lead singer William “wiL” Francis said with more than a hint of excitement in his voice. “I don’t have a guitar. If I had a guitar, I’d just swing that.”
Aiden’s high-energy blend of Misfits-inspired Goth punk and metallic riffs has earned the band comparisons with the likes of AFI and My Chemical Romance, although Francis insists that Aiden is not just another clone of those MTV mainstays.
“Truthfully, when I listen to an AFI or My Chem record, I don’t really hear Aiden in that,” he said. “I think that a lot of people make those comparisons simply based on a picture of our band or what we look like because we wear dark clothes and makeup.”
Aiden’s music and imagery have also been influenced by the dark and sinister atmosphere of horror films. In fact, the band is named after the haunted little boy in the horror smash “The Ring.”
“Our music is shaped by the grotesqueness of the actual reality that stuff like that [in horror movies] can actually happen,” Francis said. “All the songs I’ve written are about personal experiences and tragedy and living in hopelessness, as well as how I was able to come out of that on the other side. Plus, I like the blood.”
Aiden formed in 2003 when its members were still in high school. The original lineup featured guitarist Jake Wambold, drummer Jake Davison and Angel Ibarra on bass. When Ibarra became the band’s second guitarist, Francis joined the fold on bass and later on lead vocals after the previous singer quit. Soon afterward, Nick Wiggins became Aiden’s new bassist, allowing Francis to focus solely on the mic.
Once the band’s lineup was set, Aiden played countless shows in the Seattle area before heading into the studio in late 2003 to cut its full-length debut “Our Gangs Dark Oath.” The band also made two-song samplers of the album and passed out over 2,000 copies of the demo at its shows.
That was when the buzz about Aiden really began to spread.
“What started happening was kids were coming to our shows, and they were singing the words to the songs and just kind of going crazy, and we thought to ourselves, ‘Wow, we might have something here,'” Francis said. “Every show, more and more kids would be showing up.”
As Aiden began to develop a following throughout the Pacific Northwest, the guys decided to sign with a record label so that they could get their music out to the rest of the country. Although they were in talks with a couple of different labels, including AFI’s former label Nitro Records, they ended up signing with the nationally renowned punk/indie imprint Victory Records in December 2004.
“I contacted Tony [Brummel, Victory founder and owner] and said, ‘I have this band, and here’s our demo, and we sold this many CDs on our own and did these tours. What do I have to do to be on your label?'” Francis said. “And he e-mailed us and said, ‘Let’s do this.'”
After signing with Victory, Aiden went into the studio to begin work on the album “Nightmare Anatomy,” a slick-yet-relentless effort that unveiled both a more metal-influenced sound and a more ghoulish look for the band.
“It was a real natural progression,” Francis said. “The change was just to go dramatic with it, experiment with a creepier fucking look. I like to have fun, you know? I don’t like to do one thing over and over.” Once “Nightmare Anatomy” hit record stores in October 2005, Aiden went on the Never Sleep Again Tour with popular Victory acts Hawthorne Heights, Bayside and Silverstein. The success of the album also helped the band secure a number of high-profile gigs in 2006, including an opening slot on 30 Seconds To Mars’ nationwide tour and a spot on the ever-popular Vans Warped Tour.
Along with the band’s current stint on the Taste of Chaos tour, these arena tours have given Aiden the opportunity to play in front of bigger audiences than ever before, something that even now has apparently yet to sink in for Francis.
“It’s crazy, crazy, crazy. It’s almost unsettling, like, ‘How did I get here? Is this a dream?'” he said. “But at the same time, it’s such a dream come true to look out in the crowd and see this arena full of people. It’s ridiculous. It’s magical.”
After embarking on a brief European tour with Taking Back Sunday and Lostprophets in the spring, Aiden will head back to the U.S. to record its third full-length album, which is tentatively scheduled to hit shelves in August.
According to Francis, this upcoming release will be much different from the nonstop barrage of “Nightmare Anatomy” and the band’s follow-up EP “Rain in Hell,” which was released last Halloween.
“There’s going to be some progressive songs, some really slow, epic-sounding songs,” he said. “It’s going to have an ’80s vibe, and the songwriting style of the new stuff is way different because the songs are all written in my range. They’re all kind of written in my range to be a lot lower, more Depeche Mode-like.”
Although Francis is aware that this change in sound might alienate some fans despite his insistence that “you’re still going to be able to tell it’s Aiden,” he and the band are looking far beyond what those fans think about their music.
“I can’t write songs that just please our fans, you know what I mean?” he said. “Who are our fans? I know that there’s a lot of kids who come out and sing along to the words when we play shows, but I really feel like if I try and write songs for that crowd, I’m really limiting myself on what I could really accomplish.”
Still, it is very much apparent that Aiden is looking out for its fans, a connection that is reflected in songs such as the “Rain in Hell” track “We Sleep Forever.”
“That [song] really means a lot to me,” Francis said with a sense of pride. “It’s about these letters that I received from kids, from fans who say that our music has helped them so much that they’ve stopped cutting and harming themselves because of something that I wrote on a record.”
Francis has always been a believer in the positive influence of music, whether it is music by Aiden or anybody else. Ever since he was first inspired to pick up a guitar after seeing a Nirvana video on MTV when he was eight years old, it has been his life.
“[Music] has carried me through the darkest times of my life when everyone turned their backs on me, yet I still had all these records that I knew would never say, ‘Fuck you.’ It always had my back,” he said. “I believe music has the power to save lives.”
Aiden will be playing on the Rockstar Taste of Chaos tour through April 6. For more information, visit www.myspace.com/aiden.
