Marcel Gadacz, vocalist of young post-hardcore outfit Dream On Dreamer, is enjoying the weather at Wilson’s Promontory in Victoria with his wife for a few days. It’s been a busy year, and they need of a break. We chat for a while over the phone as he sits in the sun – the last piece of business for the day.
“Last year sort of changed us a lot as a band,” Gadacz says. “With everything we’ve had to deal with, there’s been some negatives and we went through a lot of rough patches. Our drummer [Aaron Fiocca] was in hospital with cancer for a couple of months.”
It was a lot to deal with for a tight-knit group of young guys who’ve been practically living on top of one another for the last four years, touring and recording.
“It’s made us grow up,” says the singer. “Now we’ve all recovered, his cancer is gone, we’ve been in Europe for a while. We’re writing new music, and after what happened last year we have a lot to write about. I’m feeling really good about everything. We’ve got cool things coming up. The next little period we’re trying to get out to more and more people.
“The last year has been pretty exciting too, though. Our bassist had a baby and he wanted to embrace that with his girlfriend. He wanted to be there, be a father, be a good father. Don’t be on tour when you’re having a kid. Who knows what will happen in the future? He might be back, no-one left on bad terms or anything. We’ve gone through so much bad stuff as well in the band… we’ve never taken them as bad situations, we just took them and tackled them and became stronger from it.”
The band released its second album, Loveless, in mid-2013. “I think it has been really well received by people,” says Gadacz. “Some people still don’t know we have that album out, which is weird, but you take your time, you know? I’m feeling really inspired about it. Our main goal with it was to connect with people, to help people.”
Loveless was the first studio album with rhythm guitarist Zachary Britt, who also contributed clean vocals to the recordings. “Zack is artistic. He’s definitely been a great addition to the band. He’s a great person – he’s been through a lot in his life.”
The band’s early recordings found stellar levels of success. Dream On Dreamer quickly secured a worldwide record deal, toured with The Amity Affliction, Avenged Sevenfold and The Devil Wears Prada, and ended up in Florida to record their debut album, Heartbound. By comparison, Loveless seems a slower burn, but the band is happy with it.
“A lot of people in the industry and stuff are still really behind us,” says Gadacz. “This has been our best record yet.” He explains the quintet feels they’ve achieved a higher level of musical skill and creativity than before, and that Loveless is their “truest” recording so far.
“For now, we just want to shape Dream On Dreamer – move in a direction we can feel confident in. We want to become better musicians, better artists. We don’t want to be put in genres – not ‘a metalcore band’, not ‘a hardcore band’; we’re just a band. There are plenty of people out there who do music better than us, but we just want to be Dream On Dreamer, we just want to be us. That’s what we want to do. Whether fans like it or not… we’re just writing to express ourselves. We hope they can relate.”
Dream On Dreamer plays atSoundwave Festival 2014 with Green Day, Avenged Sevenfold, Alice In Chains, Placeboand moreat Sydney Olympic Park onSunday February 23.
Loveless out now through UNFD
