AN INTERVIEW WITH FLOOR 13

1. In this interview, we welcome Floor 13 to All the Cores and More! Would you please introduce yourself and what you do in the band? 

Paige - My name is Paige Fowler and I am the vocalist and lyricist.

Emma - My name is Emma Benoit and I am the guitarist. 

Alexis - My name is Alexis Kiffer and I am the bassist and the artist. 

AJ Dehetre - My name is AJ Dehetre and I play drums and write instrumentals and lyrics (sometimes). 

2. Fill us in on the band’s origin story if you would be so kind. Where are you from, when did you form, how did you come together as a unit, etc.? 

Paige - Floor 13 was formed over multiple years. I met Emma at SMCC in a guitar class and we became friends pretty quickly and realized we had a common interest in music and starting a band. We went through many members trying to find the right fit for the sound we wanted. I brought in my friend from high school, AJ, and Emma brought in her friend from high school, Alexis. We worked together for several months with another guitarist who ultimately decided Floor 13 wasn’t the project for them. AJ left the band for a period of time due to personal life reasons and other commitments. Emma, Alexis, and I kept going forward with the project to make it happen. We recorded and wrote new songs in Emma’s closet, and practiced a lot at Sun Tiki Studios. Eventually, Emma ran into AJ at Rumors in Biddeford and talked about AJ potentially rejoining Floor 13. Which he did and after that, we rewrote the majority of the material and shaped our sound into what it is right now. 

3. Who would you say are the band’s primary influences? 

AJ - My primary influences are Botch, meth., and Disembodied. 

Emma - My primary influences are Vein.fm, On Broken Wings, and Second Impact. 

Paige - My primary influences are homewrecker., Dying Wish, and Oathbreaker. 

Alexis - My primary influences are SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Holder, and Wisdom and War.

4. What about your personal heavy music origin story? What attracted you to it and made you not just love the music but feel like you had to make it yourself? 

Paige - The energy and raw emotion. In high school, I learned to scream and in my senior year, I would go out on the football field and scream whenever I got overwhelmed. It was really therapeutic and I’ve been writing lyrics for a long time, so I wanted to have the band as an outlet to express what I was feeling in the most real way. 

AJ - I started playing drums in 2019 and then I got into heavy music not much later. I liked the way that performing hardcore felt because the genre itself doesn’t hide behind anything. It expresses so much passion and talent that not everyone will like, but everyone can understand. 

Emma - I grew up performing all throughout my life in school bands, choirs, and talent shows. I have always loved heavy music because my dad introduced it to me at a young age, and I knew that I wanted to be in a heavy band since the 7th grade. I fell in love with hardcore really quickly and it felt natural to perform because of my passion for the music. 

Alexis - My mom signed me up for all the extra curricular activities in and outside of school including sports, dance, swim classes, and a lot more. Music is the only thing that I felt like I pursued because I wanted to and it is the only thing I stuck with. I like working within a group rather than on my own, especially in the spotlight. The more music I discovered, the heavier my taste became, and being a part of a group of people who liked the same kind of music as me made performing feel genuine and fun. Over time, music really helped me find myself and separate me from what other people wanted so I could live for myself. 

5. The EP Hit by a Truck just dropped. What’s the larger story being told, and then would you walk us through the track list? 

Emma - Walking through the track list, we start at Dead on Impact. That song is essentially the deer getting hit by a truck and dying. Boiling Slam follows the truck driver and his grotesque fantasies of mutilating the deer and boiling the carcass into a meal. Dear 1992 Ford F-150 Driver is a song written from the deer’s perspective. It is focused on the deer being in a dark limbo between wanting to die and reminiscing about other friends that the deer had lost in the past to drivers on the road. At the end of the song, the deer decides that it wants its spirit to live on. Premeditated Murder is about the deer coming up with a plan to take revenge on the truck driver for being so reckless. Hit by a Truck is about the deer’s spirit getting into the truck and hitting the truck driver with his own car, ending the story. If you want to read the entire version, you can visit the website in our Instagram bio! 

6. What was the writing and record process like? 

We knew that we wanted it to be short and have a cohesive concept that stayed in line with the hard-hitting genre. We wrote Hit by a Truck first, which set the overall sound and vision for the EP. When we all had our first practice after AJ returned to the band, we wrote Boiling Slam on the spot. AJ wrote Dead on Impact and Premeditated Murder on his own, and we practiced and fleshed them out. We wrote Dear 1992 Ford F-150 Driver last, and there was a lot of thought put into that one in both instrumentals and lyrics. 

When it came to recording, we recorded it live because keeping up the energy was really important to us and we wanted that to come across in the recording. We worked with Ethan Fowler and Emmett Benezra from Monaco Studios to make sure that everything sounded cohesive. It took a while for us to get the tones we wanted on the guitar and the bass, but we got them eventually. There are no comps in any of the songs; each song is a singular take representing how we would play it live. There are a few additional layers put in to make it feel more full. The vocals were recorded separately but we all stayed in the room for emotional support and energy. 

7. Your artwork is sick. You said that’s done in-house, correct? 

Alexis - Correct! We talked about how we wanted things to look as a band and I interpreted everyone’s ideas into what our artwork turned out to be. The artwork for Two Steps Behind was done last minute and digitally. I wanted it to have a cleaner, more bold feel because that’s how I perceived the song to be compared to our other music. For Hit by a Truck I wanted the complete opposite feel so I used multiple different mediums on paper with graphite, water color, ink, and whatever else was lying around my room. I wanted it to feel very sketchy, messy, and raw to represent how the music makes me feel when I listen to it back. I scanned it and did some editing before sending it over to Emma, again, last minute. The franticness of doing it last minute kind of unintentionally gave it the effect I wanted.

8. What would you say are some of the highlights of the band’s young career so far? 

Definitely our first SVU show on December 12, 2025 with Stab, Vice Grip, and Last Embrace. On our way there, ironically enough, we actually saw a dead deer in the road and took it as a sign (because of Hit by a Truck). We got overwhelming support from that show. So many people showed up early, bought shirts, and Emma ended up having a discussion with Ethan from SVU later on that night, which led to Floor 13 and SVU working together for Hit by a Truck and potentially other things later on. 

When we played at the Old Town Theatre on January 23, 2026, there was a moment where a fight almost broke out. While we don’t want people to get seriously injured, we love hard moshing and it was rewarding to see people express themselves to our music. 

9. Do you have a long-term vision for the band or major goals you’d like the band to accomplish? Anything else that’s coming up we should be looking out for? 

We’re working on writing new material, and we have accepted a lot of opportunities to perform that are not yet announced. We tend to write our music with the intention of performing it live, so a lot of thought has been put into what the crowd interaction will look like. 

We also really enjoy experimenting with our sound, and do not want to be labeled as just one genre. We take creative liberties that in many ways would not apply to traditional hardcore and we want it to stay that way. We have always felt like that is what makes Floor 13 sound unique and undefinable. 

10. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions! Any last words for the reader? 

HIT PEOPLE NOT DEER.