With tours around the world and the release of the deluxe edition of LOST IN HEAVEN , CHASE ATLANTIC have had a year to remember. The latest milestone for the band is the EXCLUSIVE premiere of the music video for “FACEDOWN,” recorded entirely in Japan. As part of this premiere, I had the exclusive chance to chat with singer Mitchel Cave aka Mitty about the video, the song, and about how he’s been getting everyone he knows into Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba . To start things off, you have been incredibly busy over the past year! How are you doing? What's life been like? How are you feeling? Mitchel Cave : I mean, it's been… it's been a hectic year. I feel like the year's kind of flown by, you know what I mean? It feels like we've done so much this year, but at the same time, it feels like the year's almost over. It feels like we just jumped from January to where we are now. But, yeah, it's been an amazing year. At the end of 2024, we released our LOST IN HEAVEN album , and now dropping the deluxe is cool. We had lots of fun with it. We were touring and then we took a little bit of a tiny break to kind of recharge our batteries. Then, when we started working at Deluxe, we thought it was gonna be a short process, but we kind of made it lengthy because there were so many other songs we wanted to kind of put on there, but then we had to…we wanted to take a risk. So we bounced between different songs and the different genres and what fans would want, but what they wouldn't expect, kind of thing. RELATED: Fish Narc's Ben Funkhouser: I Can't Conceive of My Art Without Anime It must be a unique challenge to focus on a deluxe edition of an album more than an EP or another new album. Mitty : Yeah, because you're continuing that work. I think it was good in a way that we put “DON’T LAUGH” at the end of the album because going into “FACEDOWN” next flowed so well. It almost felt open-ended, the album. It felt like an open bookstore. With this deluxe edition, we were able to kind of close that chapter. I’m also sure the real heads noticed that the deluxe edition album cover was reminiscent of a certain part of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train … Mitty : Yes! I’m a huge fan of Demon Slayer , even before it got to the level it is now. I was put onto it early, which sucks because I’ve had to watch most of the series week to week and that wait kills me. Now that pretty much everything is out, I can show my friends and watch along together. Plus I like to wait for the dubs because I suck at watching with subtitles on. Even if there's a show in English, if I see writing, I'm gonna look at the writing. So you just mentioned “FACEDOWN,” which is the video we’re exclusively premiering together today! What can you tell us about the process for making that video? It’s got to feel hype as hell to go record a video in Japan, right? Mitty : We were pretty stoked because we were going over to Japan to play Summer Sonic. We had a headline show and then two festival shows. I didn't know Japan got that hot, I'll be honest with you! I know why it's called Summer Sonic now. While we were over there, we did a bunch of stuff with Spotify. It was cool to do Japanese press. Everyone's very respectful. And then while we were there, we said if we're gonna fly over to Japan, we should make a music video there as well. So we got our good friend, who's worked on a few other videos with us and can work crazy quickly as a producer and director. He usually just rolls the ideas, and he developed a cool concept, and it's just such a beautiful place to shoot videos. No matter what you're looking at, it's beautiful in some kind of way. RELATED: BABYMETAL on the Success of METAL FORTH and the One-Punch Man Season 3 Opening That style fits the song so well, too. Were the anime references in the video on the fly as well? Or did you plan those out? I for sure caught the Evangelion reference. Mitty : I'm glad you caught that! We kind of planned that one, like a little wag while we were shooting, you know what I mean? Like, run and gun. We implemented shots that we wanted to do, but at the same time, it was still kind of ad-libbed and it was just a rough idea. We got it all done and the music video looks insane. It's just really cool to say we've shot a music video over in Japan. Was “FACEDOWN” part of the original LOST IN HEAVEN writing session? Have you been sitting on it for a while? Mitty : No, that was well after. That was this year, actually. Was anime kind of on or around while you were working on that song? Mitty : Anime's on or around 24/7! If I'm in a studio and there has to be something up on the screen, it's anime. It provides the ambiance for our working space. I love the dramatic flair that anime has in general. That's something that we try to incorporate into our music regularly. That kind of theatrical artistry. It's very larger than life. RELATED: Blessthefall: Anime is a Vessel That Connects Heavy Music Fans So it’s truly your creative inspiration? Are you actively watching the show or are you mostly channeling the visuals toward artistic creation? Mitty : I think it's kind of subconscious. It's a bit of both. Our music is subconsciously inspired from that realm, but at the same time, seeing something or hearing a phrase from an anime could trigger a whole song. Or from a scene that evokes a strong emotion. I'm not one to really cry at movies, but I think it was the Swordsmith Village Arc of Demon Slayer , that final scene with that song brought me to tears three times in a row because I kept going to show my beautiful girlfriend and she kept falling asleep, and so it was just me crying watching it over and over. I took my mom to see Infinity Castle and had a very similar experience. Mitty : I've shown my mom anime too! We binge-watched JUJUTSU KAISEN and I remember we sat there for eight hours straight after one day. Obviously we made meals in between, but she was just into it. It was her first time watching anime, like, binging it properly, and she was just saying, “It's so cool how they can make you feel this way with animation.” What have you been watching lately or is on your watchlist? What has consumed your anime time since the last time we chatted? Mitty : JUJUTSU KAISEN . I need to watch the rest of the episodes, because you know how you binge, then you stop, and then you have to go back? I've forgotten what the storyline is. My Hero Academia , I'm excited to see how it all ends. But also I stopped after My Villain Academia so I have a bit to catch up on. I’ve mostly been putting everyone I knew onto Demon Slayer . Evangelion is one I go back to a lot. I tried starting ONE PIECE but it’s just too many episodes for me. But I always can find time to rewatch Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood . I watched that with my brother when we first came over to LA, and that one stuck with me a bunch. I’ve got to catch up on DAN DA DAN as well. It looks like it has a perfect crossover of the cool and the silly. RELATED: Melancolia's Alex Hill: I Didn't Realize How Much Anime Was In Our Album Until I Listened To It So, I know everyone's been asking, what's next? And I know we're even kind of leaning into that for the premiere, so what can you share about what's coming up for you, whether it's in the immediate term? I know you've got some tours coming up. What should Crunchyroll fans be looking for next from CHASE ATLANTIC? Mitty : We've got a tour in South America in November. The deluxe edition of the album just came out, which is cool. We obviously have the video out now with you guys at Crunchyroll, which is dope. Really dope collaboration. Like, we've done clothing collaborations and the like, and I still think this one takes the cake. Because you always kind of fantasize being an anime character, you know? Like if I could trade out something that was almost as important as making music, it would be to become an anime character, you know what I mean? It's so cool. Any message for the Crunchyroll fans? Mitty : If you're a fan of anime, then 100 percent you're going to be a fan of CHASE ATLANTIC. I feel like that's a given. Larger-than-life animations, larger-than-life music, and also moody. No matter what anime that you're into, I promise we have a song for that anime, or multiple songs that fit that anime. And we also have multiple songs that are based off of anime. And so, if you're an anime lover, then you're gonna be a CHASE ATLANTIC lover.
