"Plot Twist": NIGHTBREAKERS is ready to become your next obsession with debut album 'Not Like We Used To'—Interview
by amber bintliff
Not Like We Used To isn’t just any normal debut, it’s a defining first impression of NIGHTBREAKERS. consisting of zakk giordano (vocals/lyrics), dan smith (guitar/production), david caban (guitar), logan lavo (drums) and spencer giordano (bass), The Florida pop-rockers have been breaking into the scene with their strong online presence and blossoming fan community since their arrival in 2019. Now, the band spent the last two years thoughtfully crafting their first full-length release while simultaneously finding their collective voice in the process.
The 10-track album seamlessly introduces the band’s identity, balancing musical influences through an emotionally resonating narrative of love and heartbreak. However, Not Like We Used To is more than the story of a relationship that isn’t what it used to be. The new record feels like a turning point for the band as their shared intention in creating this cohesive body of work shines through on every chord.
NIGHTBREAKERS sat down with Televised Magazine to share how they’ve grown as artists throughout the creative process, the emotions surrounding Not Like We Used To’s release, favorite memories from their recent tour with Beauty School Dropout and more.
You guys recently released your debut album, Not Like We Used To, last month. Congratulations! Can you walk me through the meaning behind the album and how that comes through on each of its 10 tracks?
ZAKK: This album was the first time that we started with the idea of putting out an album. Usually we would just have a bunch of random songs that we would release one by one, maybe make an EP. This was the first time we said, you know what? Let's put together a body of work that is definitely going to be an album, take our time, write a bunch of songs that kind of scope Everything we've ever done—whether it's pop, whether it's rock, all the emotional lyricism that we like to put into music. To us it was the first time that we knew who we were, what type of music we wanted to make and really just set our minds to that.
DAVID: Adding on to what Zakk was saying, I think for a while we approached songwriting just as the framework of singles only so This was a really cool project for us to actually express ourselves through the lens of an album.
For the first time we were writing songs that were like, “This isn't a single” and we're like, “Well, who cares?” Let's just put it out and see what it does. I felt like we could truly write how we wanted to write and express in the way that we wanted to, which is a lot of fun. It was just a breath of fresh air for us as songwriters this time around.
Again, congratulations! I read that you guys worked on this record for quite some time as well. Now that it's been out for the last couple weeks, what emotions are you guys feeling as you get to finally watch people listen and connect with the project?
DAVID: I think a fun thing that I did was I purposely, after the record was submitted and everything, made an effort to not listen to it at all. I really tried not to. It sounds crazy, but I didn't until the album actually came out. So getting to hear all the songs again was emotional for me because we put the past two years into this and getting to listen to it from front to back was such a cool experience again. I really appreciated it this time, especially some of the songs like “Hate Me” and "Polaroids."
ZAKK: He's like, “Oh wow, I actually like this song! I forgot about it!”
DAVID: Yeah, I felt like I got to experience it as the supporter also because I felt like at the same time I was hearing the songs for the first time.
ZAKK: It's kind of crazy because when we're writing songs, we listen to it a thousand times while we're writing it. We listen to it a thousand times while we're recording it. We listen to it a thousand times when we're reviewing it to see if it's done. So when we let it sit for the time after we submitted it, it was nice to be like, “oh wait, I forgot how much we love this music!”
DAVID: Certain songs like “Hate Me” and “Polaroids” definitely hit me the hardest. You could just feel the emotion with Zakk’s songwriting and stuff.
ZAKK: It was cool to feel that, but now we're like, “what's next?” We're already talking about when we're gonna start writing again and when we're gonna tour the songs that do the best on the album.
When people listen to this album for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them the most?
ZAKK: Oh, that's a good one. I hope that honestly people listen to it as much as they can as a unit because we wrote it as a unit to have everything flow. [We] took a lot of time putting in the work with the visuals to help people get into this frame of mind while they're listening to it and seeing the canvases, things like that. I just hope people can see all of our influences and the type of music that gets us excited.
DAVID: Piggybacking off what Zakk was saying, we spent a lot of time this time around, especially with world building and creating this world at the same time with Not Like We Used To. Hopefully people get to experience that in the way that we experience that. I think that'd be a lot of fun for people to see here.
If this record is someone's first introduction to NIGHTBREAKERS, what track on the album would you recommend the most and why?
LOGAN: “Plot Twist”
That's my favorite!
ZAKK: It's kind of crazy because that is probably the most ‘NIGHTBREAKERS’ song on the entire album. It's got a mix of our super catchy melodies and poppy type of happiness, but then we tune the guitar to a very emo-like post hardcore tuning. When the chorus hits, you can really hear that it's in that tuning and it brings all this rock forward. that’s also something that we love to add into the songs. So that would probably be the first one. Honestly, I think we all agree on that.
LOGAN: Yeah, I feel like that's the most NIGHTBREAKERS sounding song on the record.
ZAKK: You've got the poppy stuff that's way out here. You got the rock stuff that's way out here, but then you meet in the middle there.
Since this is your first full-length release, like you said, this is your first time really sitting down with the intention to make an album. How did your creative process differ compared to when you were just writing for singles and EPs?
ZAKK: a lot of the time when we're writing a single, we'll be like, “Man, I'm really digging this Fall Out Boy song,” or “Man, did you hear what this 5sos album had on it?” We'll take one little guitar part, one little drum part and be super inspired and try to build a single around that. This time it was a little bit more like, “What are you guys feeling today?” and then we'd end up with something. “Polaroids” is the best example of that, where we would never put out something that's so vibey if we weren't doing an album.
So our approach kind of changed. We would literally sit down, whether it be in the studio or in the rehearsal room, and just try to catch a vibe. As weird as that sounds, we try to find the moment and a lot of times, it would bring us in a direction where we're like, “Whoa, we didn't expect that.
We didn't have to be like, “I don't know, does this song need another chorus? Is the guitar solo too much?” Things like that.
DAVID: Another example of that is one of the songs called“Side Seat.” We actually worked with one of our friends named Levi, he's the one that wrote that song, so that's something we usually wouldn't do for a single. Getting to work with other songwriters and stuff like that.
ZAKK: Yeah, he literally had the song completed, sent it to us, and we were like, “You know what? We could put a spin on this. That could be pretty cool.”
DAVID: So we put our little flare on it and then that was a lot of fun to do as well. It got us out of our comfort zone a lot more this time around compared to the singles and stuff.
I saw on your Instagram that when “Not Around” came out, you guys said that “Rome wasn't built in a day, but ‘Not Around’ was.” Can you talk about the process of making that song?
ZAKK: That was such a crazy situation because Austin [Hull], the guy we produced it with, has produced most of our discography up until recently. Every song we put out, he had produced. He and Dan text all the time about basketball and production stuff. They're always texting, so one day he was like, “You guys should just come through, write a song. If you hate it, whatever, it'll be a fun day.”
A lot of times, this is how it works in Nashville. you'll have a writing session and you do this. But for us, we write with a lot of intention. We know that when we put a song together, we're gonna try and release it. So for us to go in there and maybe it be a flop, maybe nothing comes of it, it was a scary, unusual thing for us.
It usually takes us at least a couple weeks to write a song. With “Not Around,” the guys were with Austin in his home studio, building it all out. We were inspired by “Change Your Ticket” by One Direction, The 1975 and all this stuff and we're like, “Alright, let's see what happens. Let's just see where it goes.”
ZAKK: By the time it was 2:00 or 3:00 PM, they had the song done. I had all the lyrics done. I did like a quick little demo vocal over the top, and it was done five and a half, six hours [later.] Again, a lot of other artists do this a lot. This is the Nashville way. You go in, you throw some stuff at the wall and if it sticks, it sticks. For us, it was cool to do that ourselves. Austin is so good at the production. He does the coolest things, like he's messing with guitar pedals to make crazy effects.
It was just something where we were just as creative as possible with no structure, with nothing. We didn't start with anything. We had some cool guitar ideas and things and that was it. So, we built it in one day.
DAVID: I guess the crazy part about that too is the opposite would be like a song like “Disaster,” which took us 10 years to pretty much write.
ZAKK: I had verses of "Disaster" from 2018, so some of these songs are literally one day, some of them are given to us by somebody, and some of them have literally been sitting on a laptop that has dust on it that I haven't opened. So.
It's so crazy because the album itself was so cohesive, so the fact that everything comes from different points in your career is really cool to see it all come together.
ZAKK: I feel like a lot of artists with their debut, that tends to happen. I always look at The 1975. Their debut album had songs that were written in 2010 and then it has songs that were [from] 2009 like “Sex,” “Chocolate,” and “Robbers.” Those were old songs, but then they had brand new ones. I feel like a lot of debut albums, they get everything that you've been working on that never made it onto a single or an EP.
It's kind of a segue as now we're excited to start with a fresh slate. Everything that we thought was worthy of an album is now out into the world and we can start from scratch. It's cool on both fronts.
Definitely. Again, congratulations on everything! You guys also recently wrapped up a tour supporting Beauty School Dropout in the United States. What was your favorite memory from playing those shows?
ZAKK: Oh God, there's so many! We haven't even fully decompressed from it yet. We've been home about two weeks and I swear I'm still catching up on sleep. Man, there’s so much. Playing a sold-out [show at] The Roxy, which apparently is Justin Bieber's new home, like how cool was that? Being the final stop of the tour, sold-out at The Roxy to end it all. That's probably my favorite memory, but literally just meeting everybody was so, so cool.
People singing our songs. Dan and I would do acoustic sessions every single night out in the 30 degree weather, but people would stick it out with us. Those are probably my top three–meeting people, acoustic sessions, and The Roxy.
LOGAN: I think one of my favorites was Atlanta. So many people from Tampa drove up to see us in Atlanta, which was just so cool. All the people that we've played to here for years and years and years came up to see us in another state, so that was awesome. It felt like a hometown show. It's really special.
DAVID: I think for me it would've been the New York show because we got to play in a really cool room there called The Bowery Ballroom. That was a venue I've always wanted to play there. I had a lot of family out there text me like, “There's no way you guys are playing The Bowery Ballroom!”
ZAKK: Even since we've been home, we'll see people at the beach and they'd be like, “I'm from New York.” We’re like, “Oh yeah, we played the Bowery Ballroom,” and they're like, “You played the Bowery Ballroom? How?” I guess we got very lucky.
DAVID: We’re thankful to Beauty School Dropout. They were so good to us. Absolute angels. Even going back to the album writing with Bardo, two of the songs in the album, that was a lot of fun too. Great guys. Can't say enough good things about those guys.
You guys talked a little bit before about how you hope to get to play these songs for a headliner and stuff like that. What are you most excited about when it comes to possibly putting on a show with all this new material?
ZAKK: The thing I'm most excited about is now that we've run the circuit of the US a couple times–besides Texas because for some reason we've never been able to play in Texas. That is the one place we've never played a show. It is so weird.
DAVID: It doesn't make sense!
ZAKK: Literally everywhere in the country that you can name, except Texas. I think it's just because all the tours that we end up booking on either don't go to Texas or we're off the tour by the time Texas rolls around.
But I think what's cool is now the next time we go back, no matter where we play, people will know the words, people will know the songs. I think I'm most excited to get back out there for that. Even at some of the Beauty School Dropout dates, people went to multiple shows and by the second or third show that they went to, they'd be singing the words so loud back to us and it was so cool. It means it's working.
Obviously we do these tours to put our name out there and if people are already feeling it a couple shows in, it means so much to us.
What song on the album would you say you're most excited to play?
ZAKK: “Not Like We Used To.” We've already been doing that for the whole tour, but people are really singing it. It's very fun to play. Some songs, you play them and you're out of breath or some feel slow, but “Not Like We Used To” is the perfect live song. People are singing along. It is very, very cool. We're excited to play it again.
LOGAN: Mine would be “Hate Me.” We played at the last two shows in San Diego and LA, but I love playing that song. It just felt so right.
DAVID: It Felt like an out of body experience. That's the way I described it.
DAN: I’ll say “Not Like We Used To.” That one's such a vibe. There's so many moments in that song where everybody can just scream “Not like we used to” when it happens, you know, vibes.
What do you hope people who attend a NIGHTBREAKERS show will take away from the experience?
ZAKK: I just want everybody to have a good time. There's a lot of times, especially when nobody knows who we are, where I'm like, you're here, you've spent the money to see the band that you love, the headliner or even us. Even if you don't know the words, jump around, have a good time, meet people, meet us, come say hi to us.
I just want everybody to leave the show smiling. That's my biggest thing, especially with some of these shows that we were playing on tour. Seeing people be like, “wow, I didn't know who you were, but that was so fun. Can't wait for you to come back.” I want a NIGHTBREAKERS show to always be the best time ever.
