Playing with a style that mixes tender and aggressive vocals and instruments. They are gaining momentum and turning heads, with their tight live shows, brilliant debut album ‘Vaticinate’ and huge crowd pleasers with songs like ‘SNAFU’ and ‘Paradise’.
The band hail from the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, where there's a small metal presence but a large and loving community.
Having met and spoken to the band on a few occasions it is clear they are as humble as they are talented. Even with this interview Andrew Whiteman was thanking us. Starting at the end, in signing off for the interview Andrew had this to say:“I always love to give love to all the listeners, viewers, anybody that's come out to a show. It was huge going over to the UK and actually feeling like we had people there that supported us and that can't be overstated enough. Bands cannot exist without people in their corner”.
Andrew Whiteman joins me over a Zoom call, from his home in Cheyenne where the weather may be even worse than the wet and windy UK. Andrew tells me there’s lots of snow and wind, and it isn't going anywhere, unlike ANTISAINT who are on the rise. We catch up on the latest goings on with ANTISAINT after their standout performance at the incredibly special Download 20. With 2025 sounding like a promising year for the band - we even get some exclusive news on the next single.
For our readers, can you introduce yourself? Who are ANTISAINT?
I'm Andrew, I play guitar with ANTISAINT. This is a project that started a little while ago, with my brother, (Matthew Whiteman). We were on our previous band name and then during COVID, we changed our name to ANTISAINT, we recruited Jackson (Jackson Daw Drummer) and our bassist Andreas (Andreas Landeck) . Since then, we've done a tour with Drowning Pool, we were also fortunate enough to play Download Festival (2023).
Since then we've done a lot of shows in the Cheyenne, Rocky Mountain regions of Cheyenne, Wyoming, a bunch of shows in Colorado, Denver, Grand Junction, things like that. We are currently working on writing a follow-up album to our debut, ‘Vaticinate’. We just released the Depeche Mode cover of 'Never Let Me Down Again', at the end of January, and then we're gonna have another single coming out, towards the end of April.
I really enjoyed the new release a few weeks ago. How did your cover of Depeche Modes, ‘Never Let Me Down Again’, come about?
Honestly, it came from watching that HBO series, The Last of Us. Like I played that game, loved that game, Matthew loves that game. So, you know, we watched it and at the very end of the first episode they have the song play, it’s like a warning of like, oh shit’s about to go down. And honestly that was the first time I’d ever heard that song. I was only really familiar with ‘Personal Jesus’ from Depeche Mode so I was like, you know, this is a sick song. And we actually had it kind of arranged and figured out how we wanted to present the song prior to us being a Download. That was actually one of the songs that we were debating if we were gonna play at Download. So we had it ready for a little while, we didn’t record it until March of last year. It’s just a fun song because It’s really simple, and they have that middle instrumental break. The original version It’s very orchestral there, and it kind of, repeats itself and then it’s got the vocals, and trying to figure out what we wanted to do for that section. I looked at some of the live videos that they put out and Depeche Mode kind of made a lot of different changes to that area where they did some that were kind of heavy electronic kind of like our version is, some where they kept it a little bit more traditional. So I saw that as an opportunity to kind of do whatever we want in that area and that’s not gonna be too far off from something that they would do, it wouldn’t be disingenuous to the song. So it was a lot of fun to break out of our, I guess habits, how we write our songs and get a little bit more adventurous with some of the electronic stuff, which is something that we’re trying to incorporate a little bit more with our music.
Who are your biggest musical influences, for both yourself personally and the band as a whole?
Personally as a guitarist, Angus Young is gonna always be my biggest influence, AC/DC was like one of the first true rock bands that I fell in love with, Angus is just iconic. That’s why I’ve got Gibson SGs, that’s why I play them. I like the fact that he’s very riff oriented and riff centred with his writing, which is something that I try to approach the band with. But as a broader sense for the band, Chevelle, Deftones and Tool were pretty early influences even though, you know, we’re not as progressive as Tool but Adam Jones is playing in the way that he kind of approaches riffs is something that I connected with. Matthew’s a big Slipknot fan, so Corey Taylor is a big influence for him. I’d say, Phil (Philip Labonte) from All That Remains is also a big influence. With the history that we’ve had, the tour we did with Drowning Pool (I also did their sound). When we were under the previous name, we went out three times on tour, (with Drowning Pool), so it’d be very hard to deny they will be an influence on this band.
What’s the dynamics of the band like: Working with your brother and having Andreas on bass and young Jackson joining on drums?
I mean, there’s obviously different dynamics between members, of course, Matthew and I are very much brothers and that is very apparent. There’s bickering that occurs, of course, between Matt and I,we’re all passionate about it.
The dynamic with Jackson and Andreas though is really good, and that’s not to say that Matt and I are not good because, at the end of the day we’re all on the same team, we’re just brothers. Dude, like Jackson, when we got him into the band, it was for that Drowning Pool tour that we did a couple of years ago. He was 16 at the time and I remember Andreas, like I told Andre I say, we’re gonna have this kid Jackson jump for us - he’s 16. Andre, he just looked at me like, “are you freaking stupid, man? Like, what are we doing?” And I was like, “no, man, you know, like, let’s give him a chance, we’ll see”. And Jackson was great!
In the two years that he’s been with us, I’ve seen a massive growth in his playing, but not only his playing but just his maturity. Like he might be one of the most mature 18 year olds I know! I'm glad we have the musicians we have, in this band.
None of us are content with being where we're at. We always want to push our skill, our showmanship, all of that, it's a great dynamic.
Thinking back to the summer of 2023, what was it like playing Download Festival as your first (and currently only) UK show?
Dude, that was absolutely insane! You know, Jackson was trying to prepare us for it, you know, we're in the small tent, there's 500 people there, it's gonna be sick.
I had zero expectation going in because like that was something that we've never been a part of before a festival of that scale and for it to be our first experience being at Download, so prestigious and world renowned.
We were the first band in the Dogtooth tent on the third day of a four-day, special edition of the festival. I was absolutely floored to see the tent just packed! It was a special moment, Matt’s dad came out with us and he did our sound and that’s the biggest show that he’s gotta mix, the biggest show we’ve gotten to play. It wasn’t without its technical difficulties - it’s kind of to be expected, it’s a festival, it’s kind of a throw and go. But man, it was awesome - that was the best 25 minutes of my life.
When can UK fans expect to see you next?
It’s absolutely something that we wanna do, our time over there was excellent, we were there for about a week and all of us want to get back as soon as we can. It’s a matter of not necessarily being able to get over there, like we can get over there, it’s more of, we just need to figure it out. A circuit or a band that we can tour with, because we can’t go over there as a headliner, obviously. We just need to find, either a mid-sized band or maybe somebody who’s also breaking out. I’m not going over there expecting like, hey, let’s play these, you know, massive halls or anything like, dude, I want to play some grungy underground like thick vibe shows where everybody’s just kind of getting hot and sweaty with each other and it’s really, you know, small and tight like absolutely doing a circuit of that.
Obviously financial consideration has to be a part of that. To me it’s more of like I’d rather just get out there with somebody who’s willing to take us on and work with us. We’ve got plenty that we can offer whatever band too like we can offer services with sounds etc, we just want to play!
What’s next for ANTISAINT? Do you have any specific goals for the future?
The immediate thing right now that we're focusing on is writing this new record, we've got a handful of songs right now that are done that we're gonna slowly release throughout the year.
The next thing that we're doing is, we're getting together at the end of this month, for another big writing session, going out of town just secluding ourselves for a good weekend to knock out some songs.
Goal wise, the band needs to be touring more. That's what it needs to be and we have no ego about where we are, in the position of a tour. I'm happy being a 25 minute opener every night, I don't care, we just need to tour more. I'd like to get a special release again. Either do a seven inch for two singles or when we get the record done I want to have a vinyl release. I love collecting vinyl records, I think they're awesome, I've seen a resurgence of it obviously in the last few years, that's something important to me for us to get done. We've got some shows that are locked in, we're not able to announce them just yet, but it's gonna be at the end of April/May right now.
So talking about new music plans, can you tell us more about the next single?
I’m very excited for you to hear the new song coming out. The next one that comes out is a big heavy one, it’s a little long and there’s definitely a moment for a little circle pit action. It’s gonna come out on April 25th. It's called ‘Punchline’ and you are the first one to find that out!
So for a bit of fun, if ANTISAINT were a dinosaur which one would it be and why?
I'm just gonna go with the first one that comes to my mind, a Velociraptor! It's still vicious, but from far away you just think, wow, that looks pretty majestic!
So a “vicious and majestic band” - is that your closing summary of who you are?
That's what I'm trying to go for at least!
Rhys Tagg
Image: Kristin Daw KJDawPhoto
