Hardcore as a genre is in some of the rudest health it has ever been in, and it’s because of bands like One Step Closer showing just how broad the playing field can be. Spending the last six years building up their name in vigorous fashion worldwide, they’ve kept themselves from being pigeonholed into one corner of the community.

Such sentiment comes to an incredible head on their new record, ‘All You Embrace’. A canvas on what it means to grow and learn with open arms and hearts and a reminder that aggression and melody can be perfect bedfellows, they have created a record that rouses the soul in several different shades. It is a collection of songs that show off the unity at the heart of a style of music that has given them so much and will continue to do so.

To find out more about how the last few years have allowed the band to craft such a masterstroke, Rock Sound sat down with vocalist Ryan Savitski…

ROCK SOUND: What has it meant to put together a record that feels like a massive extension of what One Step Closer is?

RYAN: “On this record, we really didn’t want to hold ourselves back. The band has always meant to be melodic. When we started the band, it was meant to be melodic. I didn’t know how to do that yet. I was 17 and didn’t really know how to write music like that. So, as we all progressed as people and had new experiences, we all learned how to finally hit that mark that we had been trying to do for so long. All without being afraid of thinking whether it is hardcore or not.”

ROCK SOUND: On the last full-length, ‘The Place You Know’, you were writing about home or the home you used to know. It feels like, in the aftermath, you were spreading your wings even further and learning more about yourself because of what the band was allowing you to do. How much have what you experienced these past couple of years affected your view?

RYAN: “My mindset changed a lot. When we wrote the last record, I was 20 years old. All that was on my mind was, ‘I want to play shows. I only want to tour, but we are stuck here because of COVID’. I couldn’t do what I wanted, so the record was centralised around learning, creating, and figuring things out. You know, how I truly felt about things. On this record, I feel like there has been so much life change from touring so much after the pandemic. So much of a change in perspective. I felt like we were always holding ourselves back because we wanted to fit this mould that wasn’t meant for us to fit in. We’re always going to be hardcore kids. We are hardcore kids. We’ll always go to shows; I’ve been doing it since I was 12 years old. But I want to write what I want to write and do what I want to do freely. What’s so cool about hardcore is that that is the ethos of it. You go to this place and have this space to express yourself freely. It took us a while to realise how we could do that, but we all eventually came to the same conclusion. The time is now if we want to do this.”

ROCK SOUND: How did having the chance to travel even further than ever before help cement that feeling? Playing mixed line-ups in different countries, seeing how different scenes worked, everywhere you went was a lesson ready to be learned…

RYAN: “When we went to Japan for the first time last year, the shows were a youth crew band, a pop-punk band, and then a metalcore band. The bills were so mixed, and everyone was excited for every band. Not only did that make me realise how other places were so accepting of multi-genre shows, but the state of hardcore in general is also so vast. There are so many different kinds of hardcore bands out there right now. From Koyo to Anxious to Pain Of Truth to Soul Blind. All of this exists in one world. We could do whatever we want, and as long as we have the ethos of being hardcore kids making this music, then we will always exist in this sphere. Getting to tour and doing all this stuff was cool, but it also showed us the state of the scene. It put everything into perspective.”

ROCK SOUND: Because you started the band at the age you did, you’ve been discovering things about yourself as much as the band. You have grown up with the band and gone from being kids into adults, whilst the band has been at the core of everything you do. In the same way that you focused on opening up the sound, did you find yourself being more open about the things you were feeling and how comfortable you were putting them into your art?

RYAN: “Over the last couple of years, I quickly realised, especially after the first LP, that sitting and writing lyrics was a real escape for me. A chance to shut off the world and put down how I’m feeling instead of conversing with someone about it. I realise that I have this place where I can express myself and have people connect with my words. If I’m not writing and being honest in my words, then I’m not doing my job as a vocalist and frontman. The best thing is always when whoever is writing the lyrics is very open and honest about what they are saying or how their life is going. It just has to be genuine. So, I feel like I have been able to come up with genuine things because they were the exact things that I was going through. It’s nice to see that my escape has also been able to give other people their escape. I’m not the only one dealing with these things.”

ROCK SOUND: What were the main threads you found yourself weaving as more and more songs came to life?

RYAN: “I wrote many of the lyrics for the UK/EU tour we did last summer. I had a strong feeling that I had been gone for so long. Just looking ahead at everything we would be doing, music stuff non-stop for the next five months. It felt like I didn’t really have a break because we were doing so much. So I was writing about being on the road a bunch, writing tour songs. Then I would realise that the way that my life is now has been affected by this thing that I love so much, but it is changing so many things around me at this point in time. I just found myself diving deeper into this hole of, ‘This record is going to be about how much my life has been changing’. This thing I love and this thing that, no matter what, I’m going to continue to do. So I had a couple of songs together that I brought to Ross [Thompson, Guitarist], and he felt that they were very much the vibe of the record. It worked perfectly. So, it ended with me continuing to go deeper rather than just dealing with surface-level stuff. It created this whole atmosphere. Being the age that we are and having this crazy business that not many people get to experience in this way changes your perspective on life and on being yourself.”

ROCK SOUND: You can quickly become overwhelmed by those things, which become a detriment to yourself and your progress. But in harnessing them and using them to an advantage, and seeing what you’re doing as a positive, gives you so much power over the direction you want to go…

RYAN: “I think it comes from the fact that it’s a collective of people in this band. We’re not solo artists who are experiencing this and feeling so alone. I have a group of some of my best friends with me on every tour, and we are doing the things that we are so lucky to do. I wouldn’t ask for any other life at this point. There are the hard times in life and the effects that they have, especially when you have a lifestyle like this. There are positives and negatives. But it makes it all worth it to get to somewhere like Southeast Asia and have 300 kids singing along to every word of our songs. Or going to Australia and selling out shows in Melbourne and Sydney. That is such a crazy feeling. It never gets old.”

ROCK SOUND: Lifestyle feels like the best word for this. You’ve shown what One Step Closer is as a lifestyle choice across the last few years. That’s not just in terms of the music but in terms of the merchandise you have put together. Like, you have made a pair of custom jorts for this album! How important has it been to cover all bases with how you want One Step Closer to be perceived?

RYAN: “It’s pretty awesome. If we weren’t doing a band, we would all be doing something in fashion. Whether that’s going to school and getting a job in creating clothes, or working as an art director or doing our own brand. We love fashion. I’ve been obsessed with clothes and shoes as long as I have been obsessed with hardcore. We are in a cool position where we can put ourselves into the merch. We are creating things within an outlet that allows us to do cool things that people enjoy. Plus, it’s stuff we would wear ourselves. So, we take the time to make everything we do as cool as possible. The jorts, for example, I went back and forth for a couple of days on designs until we finally landed on one that felt like it. They ended up so cool, and it feels really special to do that. We want to bring our personalities out in ways that aren’t just within the music.”

ROCK SOUND: It’s about having the confidence across the board to stand out how you want to stand out. Once you have found that footing, when you look to the future, it helps to redefine every single decision that you make. It allows you to reach a completely new level…

RYAN: “We’re in this position now where we are having thoughts that, a few years ago, wouldn’t have been able to happen. It’s within reach, and we no longer have a ceiling. It’s cool because everything we wanted to do for this record came from moodboarding for months. How we wanted the promos to be, how we wanted the merch to be, and what the vibe for everything was. Then, we would storyboard the music videos. We put in the time for how we wanted to portray ourselves. Now that we are there and succeeding at what we are trying to do, it’s what we will do next. I’m excited to see what we sound like, whether we will stick with where we are or dive deeper into the more emo-style stuff. I don’t know, but it does feel like the possibilities are endless. Being able to be ourselves is the focus.”

ROCK SOUND: It’s a case of being on the right side of why you found yourself in hardcore in the first place. It’s why you felt it was a community you belonged in. Hardcore is getting more exposure than ever before, but that means many more voices and opinions are coming into the picture. Bands like One Step Closer need to keep the reasons that matter as the focus and show why this scene is so vital to so many…

RYAN: “I see this band like I see the hardcore scene in general. This is my outlet. This is where I can express myself freely. That’s what I feel like; all my friends and I fell in love with it. We felt like we could go to shows and feel comfortable. We didn’t feel like anybody was judging us and could be 100% the skater kids that we grew up being. That’s what I want this band to be forever. I want it to be an outlet to do what I want to do and be happy and confident in what I create. As the sound changes, some people will hate or talk about it because they don’t like what we are doing. But I like what we’re doing, and because of that, I don’t think we will ever change.”

‘All You Embrace’ is out now via Run For Cover Records.