Review Fix Exclusive: Blue Heaven’s Matthew Full Talks Volume One And More

Review Fix chats with Blue Heaven’s drummer Matthew Full to get insight on their newest album, Volume One, their creative and development process and what is next for 2018.

Review Fix: How did the band come to be?

Mathew Full: Blue Heaven was born from the death of several local bands in the Maryland/West Virginia area in the fall of 2015. 

Review Fix: What was it like to work on this album as a band?

Full: It was without a doubt, the most fun writing experience we’ve all had as musicians. The album was written in the winter and spring of 2016. We were all busy working full-time jobs and some of us were still in college at the time, but every Monday we would clear our schedules and meet at Levi’s place in West Virginia. We would write all day into the night, trying endless song structure combinations and demo songs out several times until we felt we had something worthwhile. 

Review Fix: Who are your musical inspirations? 

Full: As an entire band, our influences are all over the place with no regards for genre. If you were a fly on the wall of our van, going from show to show, you’d hear us go from Frank Ocean to Incendiary to Death Cab For Cutie to The Beach Boys. We just love good music and it all inspires us. 

Review Fix: What’s the background for some of these songs, what lead to their creation? 

Full: Lyrically it’s heartbreak and self-reflection mostly. Every song deals with coming to terms with those you’ve wronged or those that have wronged you. 

Review Fix: What was the process of writing and creating these songs? 

Full: Levi (singer and guitarist) will usually send us something he’s written on his own at his studio. It might just be a quick riff, or sometimes he’ll demo out an entire song. We would learn the song on our own and then we’d come to practice with our parts learned and some ideas in our back pocket. From there, its just trial and error until we all get the song to a place we’re happy with.

Review Fix: What makes “Growing” the standout track for the album?

Full: Two reasons: Firstly, it really sums up what’s the point of the album is (heartbreak and self-reflection). Secondly, it’s just got energy to it, right out of the gate. The song is really short and to the point, which made it a perfect candidate for being the album’s single.

Review Fix: What was it like shooting the music video for “Growing”? 

Full: Super fun. We didn’t want to get lost in an over-ambitious storyline for our first video. We just wanted to show ourselves having a good time playing a song that we cared about. We shot the music video in just a matter of hours with the help of our director/cinematographer, Bradley Atom. He did a phenomenal job and we’re so happy with how the video turned out.

Review Fix: How would you describe the sound of Volume One?

Full: Someone described it as “Turnover meets Jon Mayer.” We all thought that was pretty accurate ha-ha.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Full: Playing lots of shows! We play the Maryland date of Warped Tour on July 29th, and then we just announced a Midwest tour with the band Salt Creek in August.