Post-hardcore band Thousand Below are drumming up even more hype for what’s to come with the release of their latest single “Save Me (feat. Lø Spirit)” taken from their brand new album Buried in Jade , which drops on August 8. This track takes a little bit different approach but has all the hallmarks of a banger Thousand Below song: catchy chorus, lyrics you want to memorize immediately, plus a killer guest feature from Lø Spirit. In celebration of this brand new single and the upcoming album release, I got the exclusive opportunity to chat with vocalist James DeBerg and guitarist Josh Thomas about how the song came together, the exciting things they have on the horizon, and how Zoids is the coolest anime ever. You’ve been dropping a few singles over the summer, plus the headliner and album announcements. The build up is all capped by the brand new single, “Save Me.” How are you feeling about all of the excitement? Josh Thomas : Excited dude. This is my favorite part about being in a band. Touring and stuff is cool, but releasing music is the best. James DeBerg : Yeah, putting things out and watching people react. To me, everything else is secondary. Playing shows is cool, and traveling is fun. But ultimately, putting out music is the best thing. Some types of artists or some genres are putting out music more consistently throughout the year than bands like us. We're only dropping stuff like this every year and a half or two years. I think we waited too long, but it's exciting. It's game time You probably finished the album a while ago and I bet it’s been hard to wait for everything to be out in the world. James DeBerg : Yeah, we’ve had it done for a while. With the way stuff like this works, you have to turn these things in so early. Josh, how long have we had this album done? Josh Thomas : An insane amount of time. I think there are some files that are over a year old that have been finalized on this album. James DeBerg : Yeah, we've been sitting on it for way too long. But that's just how it goes. When you finish something, it's not gonna be out for, at the earliest, six months. Josh Thomas : But for us it's always a year. RELATED: Naethan Apollo on His New Album and the Art of the 12-Episode Anime And you’ve got to re-learn everything by the time the tour comes around. Josh Thomas : Yeah, that's my favorite part, for sure. Listening to a song being like, “Dang, what did I play here?” James DeBerg : Trying to remember the lyrics like, “I haven't heard that one in six months. What the hell is happening?” So was there anything new or different you tried this time around? James DeBerg : We were in a studio that was cool, because last time was our COVID album. So we were just in our rooms for the most part, which was kind of fun, I think. Josh Thomas : It was fun for the pacing of being like, "Oh, I just get to write everything in my room, and then it's just being sent out somewhere." We haven't done a studio thing since Gone in Your Wake . It was fun to all be back in a room together in this scenario. James DeBerg : Working with an actual producer that really understands the band and knows what we're trying to do and locks in with us was fun. There's this guy named Austin Coupe that we worked with for most of the record and he's our buddy now. I feel like he brought out the best in us. Josh Thomas : He was like the perfect choice. We're friends and I text him all the time. What excites you most about fans now being able to hear “Save Me?” James DeBerg : I mean having a collab with Lø Spirit is really really awesome. He's like a super super big artist. I mean his Tiktok is how many? How many followers does he have on Tiktok like 2 million? Josh Thomas : Yeah, a lot. James DeBerg : His audience is really big and he makes great music. He and I became friends. While we were working on the record he would pop into sessions. Usually these sort of features would be us reaching out to someone being like, “Yo, please be on this song, work with us.” But this was mutual interest. He brought up that he liked the track and he was like I want to be on this thing. And so we worked it out. So that's exciting. He’s a big artist and he has a lot of really huge opportunities coming. He's written songs for Valorant releases and League of Legends . Josh Thomas : He also just made that song way better. We had like a version of that song without him. And I was like, I love this song. And then once he hopped on, I didn't know it could be this good. James DeBerg : Yeah, it wasn't as good before. We had a bridge where I was just like, this needs work. And then he came in the studio and he was like, "Do you mind if I fiddle with this for a second?" In like five minutes, he rearranged a couple of things and we all were like, there it is. Yeah. Do you have an anime character comparison to his super power to rearrange tracks? James DeBerg : Yeah, who's the guy that comes in and just fixes everyone's problems? That's also more famous than you. I'm trying to think. Josh Thomas : The first one that comes to mind, just for what that track was and what that track is, is just like a civilian doing everyday things and all of a sudden All Might comes out of nowhere and makes the day amazing. RELATED: PSYCHO-FRAME on How Anime Provides That Creative Spark While when you're writing riffs or lyrics, is anime on in the background? James DeBerg : We both watch it pretty actively and I think it helps us lock in. Josh Thomas : I'll have something up on one of my monitors while I'm working on another. Anime fight scene music is some of the most active, energetic stuff. So like I've tried to take a lot from that. James DeBerg : Yeah, when you were on your One Piece quest of watching every episode, I remember we'd be playing video games, and he would just be watching while we were trying to win. Josh Thomas : It takes a long time to catch up on 1,200 episodes, so… Did you catch up? Josh Thomas : Yeah, I did it in like seven months, I think. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. How did you both get into anime? Josh Thomas : Adult Swim for me. I didn't want to go to sleep early because going to sleep early sucks. I would watch until 2am when they started over again. That was the era of Inuyasha , Trigun , Cowboy Bebop and I was committed to watching it because I didn't want to go to sleep. James DeBerg : Did you watch Zoids ? Josh Thomas : Dude, yes. James DeBerg : That was my favorite show. Josh Thomas : I love it so much. Zoids is the reason that I like ramen. Because at the end of every episode they’d have it. They had Zoids: Chaotic Century , and then I forget the name of the other one. It had the white Liger, but at the end of every episode, they'd be at a campfire circle slurping a cup of noodles. So like when I was a kid, I was like, I just I want to do that at the end of every episode I want to freaking eat ramen with them. Some people get into ramen because of Naruto . Real heads get into ramen because of Zoids . James DeBerg : Me and Josh were talking on the last tour we were on. Do you remember in the movie Step Brothers when the dad admits that he wanted to be a velociraptor? Well, I wanted to be the white Liger when I was a kid. I didn't know how I was gonna pull that off like, obviously not an easy strategy. But yeah, I wanted to be that thing. Josh Thomas : I loved all of the attachments. You put some blue stuff on you all of a sudden you're just twice as fast. Did y'all ever build the models of the Zoids? Josh Thomas : I never had one with the motors. James DeBerg : Dude, that reminds me. I literally just found it yesterday. I have a Gundam thing in my trunk from Christmas that I completely forgot to build. It's just been sitting in my trunk for like six and a half months now, like, yeah. James DeBerg : On my end, I didn't understand how much I watched and liked those shows. And then when I stopped watching them, I realized how much I missed them. But yeah, I didn't watch as much Cowboy Bebop as I should have. And then when I got into that later, I was like, "Wow, this is incredible." Have you watched Lazarus at all? It's incredible. The the storyline is great. RELATED: Speed's Aaron Siow: I Would Love For People To Make AMVs With Our Music Was there a show that you both saw when you realized there was no going back as a full-time anime fan? Josh Thomas : Honestly, Inuyasha ! That was the one where I would try to figure out what episode we're on every day, because it never played in full chronological order. So I'm trying to fully piece together the story. But it was Inuyasha for sure. And then once, like Sesshomaru came on the screen, I was like, "Damn, this guy's hot." So yeah. James DeBerg : There was also, like, there'd be times where you want to go to sleep and certain arcs of Dragon Ball Z would come on, and you'd be like, "All right. I'm staying up." Josh Thomas : That happened to me with Yu Yu Hakusho two months ago.I thought I watched it all and then my friends were talking about an arc and I was like, "What are you talking about?" So I had to go back and do a full rewatch. I knew nothing after the Dark Tournament. Also, that intro song is a freaking bop. That is one of the best intro songs in all of anime. Was there a series or moment that solidified your favorite genre of anime? James DeBerg : For me, I liked a lot of stuff that was slow and broody and sad. There's this anime called Black Lagoon that I'm a huge fan of. It's funny, like a bunch of my friends haven't seen it, and I'll tell them about it. And they're like, yeah that sounds sick… and they just don't watch it. But I like that and PSYCHO-PASS and things like that where it was slow and gloomy and kind of depressing. I prefer things with people that are like regular people, that don't have some sort of crazy power. They’re up against very extenuating circumstances. Those are usually what I gravitate toward. But once in a while I'd be into something like Attack on Titan . Everyone loves that one, but I guess you could say magic or fantasy or science fiction is involved. Josh Thomas : You were mature when you were young. I just liked battle shonen at first. James DeBerg : I guess you could argue like in the grand scheme of things Dragon Ball Z is magical. Josh Thomas : Dragon Ball Z had me thinking that I could actually do that stuff when I was a kid. I was like, this isn't magic. I'm like standing out back trying to do a Kamehameha. Was there anything that you learned from the music of anime when you were watching it growing up? Was that about the time you were getting into heavier music? James DeBerg : I wasn't even music conscious back then. I got into making music and all that pretty late in my life, like when I was 15. So when I was first watching anime I wasn’t paying as much attention. It's funny when people ask this. "Oh, like what got you into music?" When I was younger I had only like 20 songs on my iPod and I thought that was how people listen to music. I thought you'd pick like 20 songs and you just only listen to that for the rest of your life. I thought that was how it was. So I wasn't really that aware of stuff back in the day. But now, there's, dude, there's some incredible music in anime. What was it, VINLAND SAGA Season 1? It had the crazy metal song by Survive Said the Prophet. That song is great. Josh Thomas : Music and anime were two separate things to me for a while. There was FLCL , which I remember being when I first thought about them together. They just made me want to play music, but it didn't inspire me as far as what I was writing or what I was doing. I was just like, this is really fun, and there's instruments, and I want this to be my life. But other than that no, nothing until honestly, the past few years getting into Creepy Nuts and all of the songs they've done. Some of the stuff they just do production wise or like how they structure songs is amazing. Their music is so freaking good that I've delved into that a little bit and been like, alright what are they doing? Because it sounds sick and I want to figure out how to do it, too. What has it been like for you to see both anime and heavy music go more mainstream? James DeBerg : It’s wild. My “civilian friends” watch things that I haven't even watched. They'll meet up and do watch nights for things I'm not even versed on, but it's cool they'll throw down recommendations for me and if I hear them talk about something enough, I will check it out. Same with music. It’s cool to be able to be so open about liking this stuff. Josh Thomas : Yeah, I like, I think it's a good thing. There's so many good lessons in anime. It was nerdy before to watch it. But I'm glad that just everyone's watching it now. Like VINLAND SAGA ! You can learn to be at peace by watching it. RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Saint Blonde Drop New Single, Talk Learning Musical Language from Anime Is that why you think they go so well together? James DeBerg : I'm trying to think of what the psych theory of why those things are connected. Because it is. Anime is more of an “alternative” TV consumption model if that makes sense. And then, heavy music is more like an alternative music consumption. If I was trying to draw the parallel, that's how I would do it, but it could be a stretch. I don't know. Josh Thomas : You know, that's what my mind went to like right away. All of my friends that watched anime were also into alternative music. It's much more mainstream now so it might be different. But back then it was just like the non-popular alternative kids that for some reason, found both of them and liked it. Maybe because they weren’t popular. I don't know what connects them, but for some reason it just draws in both. Pre-save "Save Me" here .
