Morley Seaver: What is the significance of the band’s name?

Rose Perry: For that I’ll actually turn you over to my lead guitarist because he came up with it. His name is Jesse.

Morley Seaver: How you doin' Jesse?

Jesse Tomes: Not bad, yourself? I’m assuming you’re asking about the name? (laughs) I actually came up with it...even though we’re not a political band, it’s fairly politically aimed. It was back when Bush just came into office and I was fairly mad about the whole fiasco, not that I’m any less mad now, but that’s another story in itself. But it was just kinda…I was questioning why people were just kinda following who they’re told to as opposed to, you know, second guessing their heroes. It’s almost like we live in a society where we’re told these are our heroes and these are who we should be like and that’s the end of it. And it’s just sort of, the name kinda of means opposing the idea of the hero, because it’s almost like it’s a status that’s given to us by society and we don’t question it at all—which really has not much to do with the stuff we write about but it’s, that’s where it came from nonetheless.

Morley Seaver: It’s a personal thing for you yourself.

Jesse Tomes: Yeah but everybody seems to agree with me because they wouldn’t take the name if they didn’t but at the same time our lyrics don’t really get political. That’s just sorta my personal feelings on politics and with the way it’s going right now. I’ll give you back to Rose. (laughs).

Morley Seaver: Can you tell me about the other band members and what it is about them that contributes to the positive chemistry of Anti-Hero?

Rose Perry: Jesse Tomes is my partner in crime in terms of songwriting. Basically how it works is I write the song structure, the lyrics, the melody. And as I’m no Angus Young I bring over the guitar lines to him and he adds his personal flavor, his personal zest and definitely comes up with some wicked riffs and wicked solos...and then Nicole (Nic VanHaverbecke), if it weren’t for her we definitely wouldn’t have as heavy a sound as we do. She is a death metal queen. (laughs) Like her favorite band is Pantera. She may look the most innocent but don’t let that deceive you. (laughs) She’s all about , you know, the head banging and rocking out and screaming just like the guys so with her influence it adds that heavier sound. She contributes the awesome back-up vocals. And also she’s very creative. She started out as a guitarist so her bass lines are extremely creative and I really, really like her personal style. She doesn’t do things that are typical. And I think the thing that makes our band so original with its sound is literally we’re all coming from very, varied musical backgrounds. So we come together with these influences that clash at times but somehow it ends up working and coming together and working for our music to create a really cool sound.

Morley Seaver: So tell me about the record. Is there a statement to be told about your collective songs?

Rose Perry: Each song definitely has a message to it within itself. But I think as a band, one of the central themes that we definitely try to promote is be yourself. Do what makes you happy in life, and the only person that’s really going to hold you back in that situation is yourself, you know. Like there are tons of people who can be out there and tell you that you’ll never get there or that you’re not good enough but really the final factor in that decision and gets you where you want to be is yourself. And if you don’t try you’ll never know and so I guess we want to be a band that kinda inspires people to just go out there and at least try. You’ll never know the possibilities. We’ve all kinda been kids who wanted to fulfill that rock star dream and you know we came together as a band and there are no guarantees in this industry considering how cut throat it is and you know, I still don’t think we’ve entirely made it but we’ve got to a point at least where we can say we’re successful in the indie world and we get a lot great recognition and that’s awesome. But if we had never tried, we never would have known. So we’d like people to go out there and follow their dream just like we did.

See the link below for the third part of the interview with Rose Perry