Interview by Kris Peters
“Each Armored Saint record, to me, is like a new skin for the band, a different chapter. I don't think we've ever repeated ourselves,” stated bassist Joey Vera. “Every album has been pretty different from the previous one, a snapshot in time. In 2026, Emotion Factory Reset is where our heads are at.”
Emotion Factory Reset, Armored Saint's ninth full-length studio album since 1984’s March of the Saint, bears out his words, the LP a resurrection of sorts, a tearing down and a rebuilding in 11 songs of diverse musicality and lyrical themes. Produced, as were the previous four albums, by Vera and mixed by Jay Ruston (Anthrax, Stone Sour), Emotion Factory Reset finds the quintet challenging themselves. Songs like Close to the Bone, Hit a Moonshot and Every Man-Any Man has Saint honoring their past as one of the most respected and recognizable bands in heavy music while making forward-thinking music rooted in the present.
As with 2020’s Punching the Sky, Armored Saint are always about punching above their weight and succeeding. Emotion Factory Reset reaches further, both inward and outward. “I mean, there’s never gonna be another Master of Puppets or Appetite for Destruction,” vocalist John Bush says. “We can all take inspiration from our previous records, but that was a different time. Armored Saint don't want to make another March of the Saint. I want to keep moving forward, but we know who we are, it’s not like we're going to dish out the new trip hop, black metal, bluegrass album.”
HEAVY sat down with Vera to dig deeper.
"You know, every time we make a record, I try not to think too much about that," he replied when asked to describe what the band were going for musically with the album. "Like what are we going to do? What kind of a record are we going to make? Or what direction are we going in? All that stuff. I don't like to really talk about it too much. Because for me, it puts on a little bit too much expectation; it puts like a boundary on it and I'd rather the playing field be able to just be wide open.
So the only thing that I really was attempting to do this time was to write songs that were a little more concise in their arrangements and the song length. I have a tendency to write long songs; longer songs than normal. So I wanted to challenge myself and challenge the listeners along the way to see if I could write shorter songs, basically, for lack of a better explanation.
Our goal is to really just challenge ourselves as songwriters and try not to make the same record twice. We're always trying to push the boundaries a little bit without alienating all our fans, of course. So there's a fine line between brilliance and stupidity (laughs), but there is a fine line between and paying homage to where we come from."
In the full interview, Joey described the band's deliberate songwriting approach for this record, noting they intentionally wrote shorter, more concise arrangements while pushing stylistic boundaries and maintaining continuity with their past work. He explained the album balances influences from 1970s classic rock, early 1980s hard rock, and contemporary sounds to produce a fresh yet familiar record for longtime fans.
Joey also described the album-title selection process, saying the title came from a line in the song Close to the Bone after the band considered many lyrical options before settling on Emotion Factory Reset. He reflected on the creative challenge of beginning a record, stating that starting the first songs is the hardest part and that inspiration requires sustained effort and patience, the early days of the band and more.
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