Have Mercy may have released a self-titled EP last year, but with the release of their Rude Records debut full-length album, NUMB, the trio is officially back.
In 2019, the announcement of Have Mercy‘s farewell tour initially felt like the closing chapter of an era—a victorious lap coming to a poignant conclusion. This emotional goodbye was only worsened and cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. These unforeseen setbacks added an extra layer of emotion to what was already a deeply sentimental farewell, leaving fans grappling with uncertainty about the band’s future and the possibility of bidding them a proper goodbye. And at no fault of the band, again, adding salt to the wound.
Fast-forward to the present and Have Mercy has not only defied the odds by reuniting but has also delivered a self-titled EP followed by the highly anticipated NUMB. In an exclusive interview with frontman Brian Swindle, he candidly opens up about the band’s unexpected resurgence and reflects on the profound journey that led to their latest sonic offering.
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Swindle delves into the band’s mental and emotional well-being, highlighting the personal growth that transpired during their hiatus and led to their natural reformation. He shares insights into the unique approach taken for NUMB, crafting the album without external pressures and enriching the trio’s complete creative freedom. As our conversation unfolds, Swindle touches on NUMB’s central themes of sobriety, natural progression and growth in life, finding love, experiencing loss, and more.
While NUMB is, at its heart, a quintessential Have Mercy album and the album the band always wanted to make, it is also full of surprises. As Brian asserts, there’s a track for everyone on the release—a sentiment echoed by the album’s rich and varied soundscape. Have Mercy has begun to grow and blossom between the cracks of the world, much like daisies growing amidst the cracks of a sidewalk. NUMB emerges as the trio at their best since their initial introduction, but all grown up and then some.
Dive into NUMB with Brian Swindle, and immerse yourself in the essence of Have Mercy‘s latest release—an album that not only lives up to expectations but surpasses them.
I remember very distinctly back in 2019 when the group announced their farewell tour, which ended up getting cut short. I almost, at this time, feel like it was some sort of divine intervention or divine timing that was trying almost to get you guys to not go through with the the finale of this farewell. That’s just my own thoughts—I find it ironic, almost like destiny. But you guys have found yourselves back together. From an outside perspective, it seems as though it happened very seamlessly and naturally. Then you released your self-titled EP last year. What was the catalyst that brought the band back together after what seemed like such a significant hiatus and walking away from music?
So the original lineup was me, our guitarists Andrew [Johnson] and Nick [Woolford], and our drummer Aaron [Alt], who has since passed away. I always kept in touch with everybody, and we never reconciled the band part of our relationship. We had a huge falling out on that end. But we still hung out all the time and went to wrestling events and concerts and stuff like that.
We finally got to take that step back and go, “Well, we’re really good at writing music together, and we enjoy it.” Once everybody else was out of our lives, when it came to the label or management and stuff like that, it was just the band again, which, that’s how it starts, right? It’s just a couple of people in a room doing the thing they love, and we got to do that again. And it went from, “Hey, let’s do one song,” to “Alright, let’s do an EP.” And then it was like, “Alright, let’s do more and more.” So that’s where we’re at now.
It feels like it’s happening organically. Have Mercy is a pretty well-known band within this community, but it’s so interesting to see you guys have this success and take it back to its roots whilst still being a name that a lot of people recognize.
Yeah, it’s weird to me too. When we first came back, I was like, “Oh, we’re not going to have the same buzz,” and we don’t have the same buzz as we did before. It’s kind of like a diehard fan base now. Nobody’s riding a bandwagon, anybody who’s coming to our shows is there to see us. And we’re doing some of the biggest headliner shows that we’ve ever done on our own. So, it is organic. It’s exactly what we wanted initially. All we had to do was take a step back and take care of a few things in our personal lives and then get back to it.
Speaking of your personal lives, from what I’m able to see online, it seems that you guys are in the best place mentally that you’ve ever been in in your career.
I feel the best I’ve ever felt. I know the other guys are in really good spots in their lives. We had a lot of issues over the years that we didn’t address, whether it be substance abuse or problems with our personal relationships and stuff like that. When you get to take that step back, it forced us to go, “Alright, we need to repair everything that we neglected for the last ten years.” We just never had that beat to take a step away.
When you guys started working together on what would eventually become the album NUMB, did you set out to achieve anything in particular, or were you guys seeing what happened organically?
There were a few things that we wanted to do. We wanted to track at least some of the record at the studio that we first recorded at, which was called Magpie Studios here in Baltimore—we did The Earth Pushed Back there. We wanted to do that, and we also just wanted to take as much time as possible to create this record and not really settle for anything. I felt like when we were with labels in the past, we always had deadlines. On this record, there was no deadline. The budget was all us coming out of pocket, everything was just on our terms. So I think we got to create the best—maybe not the best album possible—but it’s the one we’re most happy with. We’re so satisfied with this album.
That’s something I did want to address with you—this is your debut full-length with Rude Records. Obviously, you guys have been on major labels within this scene and community before. But going with Rude Records, did you guys experience any of those “typical” pressures or expectations when you started working on NUMB?
We made the record in its entirety, and then we shopped it, which is super nice. We’ve never gotten to do that. So we went out and took it to a few labels and got a few offers. Rude Records just seemed like the best place for us. They kind of just opened up the doors and said, “Hey, what do you want to do? We’re here to back you however you need it.” And that’s exactly what we needed: a partner who believed in our vision and wanted to do it our way. We can’t tour all the time and hustle merch and do all of this heavy lifting. We’re family men now, and we still want to make our art and keep that work-life balance. They’ve been working with us in a perfect way. I have nothing but good things to say about them.
We have been with awesome labels over the years who do fantastic things for other bands in our same genre, but I don’t know if we were ever the right fit for any of those labels. Have Mercy never fit anywhere, and I feel like we’re home now. I hope our fans recognize it. But if not, like, I feel like we’re making the best that we have so far, and we’re at a good place. We’re happy. So I think that reflects at least our live shows.
I think it reflects greatly on this album as well. It seems to me that Have Mercy as a collective has achieved something really special and what I consider to be a little bit rare on NUMB. The album’s lyrics are extremely pointed, arguably some of the best in your discography. I would say the instrumentation and arrangements are just absolutely mesmerizing. Did you, Andrew, and Nick have to adopt a different approach to the writing and recording craft process compared to previous releases?
Yeah, there are no producers on the record, so it was just us three, and we had no drummer, so we had to write all the drums for it and take over that role. It was a completely different style of writing. We’ve hit a new plateau and taken ourselves up a level. I read a review the other day that said, which I don’t even know if they have the record or if this was just like some nonsense, but they called the record a “safe record.” I was like, “I think safe is fine.” It feels good to listen to something comforting and not push you out of the norm. This record is very content.
I feel like there are two types of people in this world, and usually we hear safe in terms of like, “Oh, you know, it’s a safe relationship, it’s a safe release. There’s no risk in it.” Well, my big question for people who think that “safe” is a bad thing is, “Why do you want the the risk and drama in your life?” Because to me, I’m like safe. [Laughs.] That’s comfortable. That’s familiar. That feels good.
The world is a crazy place with a lot of uncertainty. If we can give our fans a safe record, I’m fine with that.
Yeah, definitely not an insult. When you were sitting down to create the album with Andrew and Nick, you mentioned that you guys had to take on all of the the drumming as well. Was that something that was particularly difficult for you guys just based on everything that you’ve endured together and the passing of Aaron?
Yeah, we’ve never written drums. It’s probably easy for a lot of people to take over that aspect of the songwriting, but then you get behind a kit or in front of a computer, and you’re like, “I don’t know what a drummer is supposed to play here. I’m a guitar player. How does this translate?” So we hired a buddy of ours, Steve Wootteon, to actually play the drums on the record. He’s been playing with us live lately. He translated our ideas in a way that actually makes sense and sounds like it should. But I think we did an alright job writing the drums. It was just different.
While you guys were writing, recording, etc., were there any subject matters that you knew you wanted to delve into on this album or that you wanted to avoid discussing? Across the album, there are a lot of different themes—sobriety, growing up and maturing, life changing, loss, love, etc.
No, I feel like when we go in to write a record or when I’m writing lyrics, I don’t really try to avoid anything. I feel like whatever I write is going to be a reflection of my life at that time. So, I did get sober, which is awesome, and I’m super proud of that. And I got married. So all of these things are going to bleed into the songwriting, whether I like it or not. It’s great because I have a lot of material, but at the same time, if I’m writing a song that sounds like it’s about somebody in my life, it’s probably about my wife, no doubt. [Laughs.]
With sobriety, a lot of people say artists lose their edge whenever they get sober. And it’s the same thing with healthy and happy relationships. You do lose that edge. It’s a good thing in the grand scheme of life you’re rounding off those edges. I’m not going to fight it. It is what it is. The lyrics are deeply personal on this record, and I feel like with our last two albums, maybe they weren’t as much. But this one is, this is my bread and butter. This is where I’m at in life, and I think it tells a good story.
Obviously, we’ve got the lead single, “Alive,” which is also the first track on the album. And to me, when that song dropped, I was like, “This is quintessential Have Mercy. This is amazing.” Everything about it is what I expect from you guys. However, after I got the album, I was listening to it, and I was like, “Wow!”
The thing that I love about it is there are surprises here. There are songs that are quintessential, go-to Have Mercy, and there are songs on there that are different. There’s a new spark here that I really love. And to me, the album really reflects that. You’ve experienced an immense amount of growth as individuals as well as singer-songwriters, performers, and instrumentalists. Which track do you anticipate will surprise fans the most? And on top of that, which track surprised you the most?
That’s a good question. I think the song that surprised me the most is called “Big Surprise.” When I hear it, I’m like, “Oh, this song is bigger than life. I can’t believe this came out of us.” That one surprised me the most.
I think fans will be surprised when they hear “Sick Of It,” which is a very weird piano-driven, rapping in the chorus but very lyrically rhythmic song. There’s a lot of surprises on there. “Hit The Ground” is another song that’s kind of out there and spacey. We didn’t have a label or anyone tell us the direction to go. It really gave us the freedom that we needed. These are songs we’ve always wanted to write, and people would be like, “Oh, you have to really stick in this box.” We could try to fit in that box, but we want to be over here. I think there’s going to be a lot of surprises for fans on this record, and I hope they like it.
It’s a fantastic record. It’s nice that you guys have had a chance to walk away from everything and come back on your own terms. You’ve come back with so much growth in your sobriety, and you’re family men now, and the fact that you were able just to write this record with no rules, no obligations. I feel like this record is one of those records that’s going to turn a casual listener into a diehard listener.
I hope so. If they give it a chance, I think people will really like it. I think it’s got a song for everybody on there.
Agreed. Now I want to talk about the album title, NUMB. When I was told the album’s title is NUMB, I was like, “Oh fuck, this is going to be so emotional, this is going to be taxing.” And it’s the opposite to me. It has so much emotional depth and range, but what it didn’t do is make me feel numb. It made me feel everything but numb. So I want to ask you what specific emotions you were aiming to capture with the album, and how do those emotions that you did capture relate to the seemingly paradoxical album title?
I don’t know if I’ve thought about it as in-depth as you just said it. [Laughs.] I thought NUMB was kind of how I summarized how I treated my life for the past ten years—numbing every day with different drugs and alcohol. There’s the title song in the record called “Numb,” and the main line is, “The more that I speak, the more I feel so numb.” It was how I felt over the last ten years. So that’s kind of why I called it that. It’s not as dark of a record as the title claims.
That juxtaposition is just incredible, that was a great answer. Now that Have Mercy is officially back with their first full-length since going on hiatus, what’s next for the group? Are you guys planning a massive future, or are you trying to take it day by day?
I guess we’re taking it day by day. I think the response to this record will determine how much of ourselves we want to put back into this machine. We definitely have some tours planned for 2024, but we’d like to be out on the road more if the fans are there, and then we’ll go. But as of now, we’re just waiting for the record to come out and see if people like it. Because right now, with just two songs out, it’s kind of hard for people to get a real grasp on it. I hope they spend the 36 minutes just to check it out. Like that’s all you need to do is give us 30 minutes of your life.
The last thing I wanted to ask you really is more for the fans. Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to discuss, or is there anything that you want to say to the fans now that the record is here?
Thank you. Over the past ten years, I’ve met and forgotten a million faces and had some great times in my life. This band has completely set the course of my life as it is now. So I really appreciate every person that’s given us the time of day.
