Singled Out: Redeem/Revive's Somehow

Keavin Wiggins | 05-20-2020

Redeem/Revive recently released their new single "Somehow" and to celebrate we asked vocalist Aldo Escobedo to tell us about the track. This is the band's first song with Aldo as clean vocalist. Here is the story:

Very early on we knew we didn't want to tackle a full length again just yet. We thought instead of focusing on ten songs why don't we just write one song at a time with no intention of them being grouped together. It was creatively freeing because we could really tell individual stories and have each single be like it's own independent story.

Early 2018 our producer Jacob Mares flew in from Texas to work for 2 weeks with our guitarist Kriss at his home in Perris CA. Within the first couple of days they produced, I want to say they had 5-6 rough ideas; some were only like 20 second clips. The one that stood out to me was by far the simplest idea of them all. It was only a clean guitar loop, simple bass line, and very simple drums. It was almost like an R&B song by nature but it was definitely driven by that guitar loop. I fell in love with it. Jacob came up with the topline melody which ended up being the very first line of the song "Maybe you know me better" and from then on it was a wrap--the whole song came together like a Tetris puzzle. Perfect. The original final version of the song was just that, perfect. Exactly how I envisioned it. We only had 2 clean guitar loops, bass line and very simplistic drums. I sang the first verse and Josh sang the rest. That was it. I didn't want to add distortion on the guitars I wanted it to be light and to the point. The song was done. Months passed and we were gearing up to do our very first EU/UK tour when Josh was raising concerns and uncertainty about the tour. He didn't feel comfortable doing a tour in another country and at the same time he was already wanting to pursue other interests and we really needed all of us to be completely committed. We eventually decided to move forward with the European tour without him.

I handled the majority of vocals and with the help of our friend Maxwell James, we were able to pull through. We played around with the idea of getting another vocalist or just throwing in the towel but we landed on having me handle all the vocals from here on out. When we got back from Europe I immediately went into the studio the day after I landed and got to work on the rest of "Somehow." Thankfully I'm friends with another amazing and talented producer Joseph Mac, so I could track as much as I wanted and really shape my voice to fit this song. I was pretty nervous, seeing as I had never sang an entire song by myself. I had always been a "screamer" so the transition could be looked at as a bit daunting. The whole process took a couple weeks but I was sending ideas to Kriss and Gerardo pretty regularly, so we were all pretty confident we could make this work. At this point I had finished the majority of my parts when I get a Dropbox link to a song. I thought maybe it was a new idea or just a simple new mix but it wasn't either of those, it was better. Kriss had continued to work with our producer Jacob on the instruments while I was busy recording the vocals. It was "Somehow" but with heavy guitars and updated drums. I didn't think the instrumental could get any better, but I was blown away. This was it! This was the song! It sounded better than ever before. Capturing all of the soft elements that I fell in love with and at the same time all of the aggressiveness that our fans love. This was it. This was the song. Fast forward to now I'm really happy of how far we've come. It wasn't easy. If it wasn't for the support of our amazing team, friends, family and fans. I don't think this would've been possible. Thank you.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the bandhere