ADVENT

1. Welcome to All the Cores and More! I’m very excited for this interview, having been a fan since Remove the Earth! Would you please introduce yourself and what you do in the band?

My name is Joe Musten and I am the vocalist of Advent. I’m grateful to be doing this interview with you! Thank you so much for your interest in the band.

2. We met at Hellfest NJ after your sick set—how was Hellfest for you?

We really enjoyed our time at the fest and our set was fun, even though it was short… at no fault of the fest organizers… The people were great, the guys who put the fest on are amazing people, the other bands were really cool and we made so many good connections and got to see so many old friends. It was a blast! 

3. Let’s go back in time and we’ll work our way forward. How and when did you discover heavy music and what made you want to play it?

I think some of the first heavy music I ever heard was in my brother’s bedroom - he was listening to Pantera, Prong, Type O Negative, Down, etc …… but my first band I really got into was probably Snapcase (in a skate/surf shop), Sepultura, Living Sacrifice, Strongarm. The 90s encapsulates my love for all things heavy or hard!

4. When did Advent form and what was your initial mission/vision for the band? 

We formed in February/March 2005 and I think for me and maybe the other guys it was just something we were gonna do to play some local shows with some of our friends around North Carolina. We wanted to do something at the time in North Carolina that not many other bands were doing and so we went with the type of music that we were listening to in the 90s/early 2000s and blended it all together.

5. Your two LPs (2008’s Remove the Earth and 2009’s Naked and Cold) were released by the legendary Solid State Records. How did that relationship come about?

That relationship came about from the Beloved days. Matt, Johnny and myself were in a band called Beloved from the year 1999 until 2005. We were signed with Solid State by the beginning of 2002 and our records were released with Advent on Solid State because of contractual obligations… Which we had no problems with that being the case.

6. In some ways it’s a very different musical landscape now than in the band’s first go-around, particularly as regards the Christian metalcore scene that was absolutely massive then. Do you look back on this era fondly? What would you say were the main highlights of this era of the band?

We were never deeply connected with the Christian metalcore scene… We were friends with many of the guys in those bands and would meet them on random one off shows around the country, maybe even in North Carolina at times, but that music scene was not our focus. We didn’t really put all of our eggs in that basket. I don’t say any of that with disrespect, but we really wanted to be a part of the underground, non-Christian hardcore scene. What better place to be who we are than there? 

I can definitely see that scene has gone the way of the buffalo, but all things come to an end….. but eventually they also come back around….. Maybe there will be a resurgence at some point…?

7. The band initially disbanded in 2011. If you’re willing to discuss it, what made you decide to call it a day, and what made you want to reunite four years later?

I was playing drums in a band called The Almost and I was gone a ton…. Which was hard for our schedule …. Johnny was about to start a men’s workwear/clothing store in Winston-Salem, NC - he wanted to focus on that….. He called me one day and said he had made the decision to leave the band but that he would finish the year out and since we are brothers (not by blood) we saw no way of moving forward without him. It was hard, but I think it was exactly what the Lord wanted.

8. The EP Pain and Suffering was released in 2017 on the legendary Bridge Nine Records (you can read my interview with B9 founder Chris Wrenn here. A few questions related to this: 1) how did that come about? 2) was it strange being what I believe is the only Christian band on B9 then or I think ever? and 3) did anyone ever give you a hard time for your beliefs?

1.) I think that someone who worked for the label reached out to us initially after having shown Chris our material.

2.) We just thought it was super cool! The fact that someone like him with all of the clout, history and reputation would take a risk to put out something like our EP felt so cool. We will always be grateful for that.

3.) We’ve had bands who refuse to play shows with us, promoters who refused to book us, promoters who would cancel shows on us (because they didn’t like our beliefs), promoters who told us if we said anything about God they would cut our set short, etc …… but I thank God that there were people in our lives who understood who we were. There were people who actually decided to get to know us and they soon realized that yes, we believe in God and we follow Christ but we were not the “Christian band” that people in the hardcore scene painted us to be….

9. Your Hellfest set was just shy of the one-year anniversary of the God is the End EP. Two questions here: 1) Was the release date of July 11th connected in any way to the Feast Day of St. Benedict? and 2) What can you tell us about the album—its thematic and musical contents, the writing and recording process, etc.?

1.) No! We just wanted to get it out in a hurry after it was finished! That’s cool though!!! 

2.) Well, we recorded the album back in May 2023 with Jeremy White in Kernersville, NC (Jeremy is a maniac and has recorded some of my favorite bands from our state. He just captures energy so well from bands and has such a unique sound. A true artist in his own right). The writing process was a bit different this time. We wrote it over the course of a few years when we would have time to get together and work on parts and assemble songs together… Mike and Jordan worked a lot together on songwriting from Nashville also …. We finished up writing together (as a unit) in North Carolina - early 2023… I knew that I wanted to make a bold statement about my faith on this EP… And I did. “Born From Struggle” is about the strength that comes from struggle, and the Spirit of God at work within that struggle. “Foundation” is literally about Christ Himself. Matthew 7:24 - God is the End - is confrontational in a way… not exactly in a pointed finger kind of way, but questioning the arrogant person who thinks they have the world, universe, God, this whole thing called life figured out, there are many people that think they have eternity figured out and I’m just posing the question - “Do you really think God answers to you?” - “One Crushing Blow” - the first song we ever wrote. There were multiple themes in this song when I first wrote it you’d have to come to an Advent show to fully get it, but it’s still one of our favorites!

10. What are some upcoming plans for the band we should be keeping an eye out for? 

We have a show in Alabama that we are playing with No Innocent Victim and a show in Nashville that same weekend… That should be cool. I’d love to think that we’re gonna get back on the train of writing some new music soon as I have lots of things in my head to let out…

11. Thank you so much for your time! Do you have any last words for the readers?

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away.”

James 4:13-14