Mike Hranica - The Devil Wears Prada 'We Haven’t Gone Away, And We Haven’t Broken Up'

Thinking back to the end of 2007 when I discovered The Devil Wears Prada due to a very elaborate MySpace profile design based on the Plagues album cover, I definitely didn’t foresee that they’d be still crushing close to 20 years later. In fact, not only crushing, but consistently delivering career defining albums and some of the most exciting and refreshing songwriting in the world of metalcore. Prada’s early era is very much what you’d expect from the MySpace and early Rise Records sound, but modern Prada is something else: anthemic, vulnerable, full of lush pop sensibilities and built for massive rooms. 

Flowers, the latest addition to their catalogue takes all the strengths of the previous few albums and takes them up a notch. From the moment ‘Where The Flowers Never Grow’ enters, you’re hit with upbeat energy, soaring melodies a wonderful balance of melancholy and hope, and just enough bite to remind you that this band can still bring the riff when required. The album is a beautiful journey of vulnerability and honestly, they could just keep pumping them out like this and we’ll lap it all up with joy every time.

Speaking with frontman Mike Hranica, he notes the band’s songwriting process has come a long way from the early days.

"It’s funny thinking back through our entire career, if we wrote song, it made the album.  If the record had twelve songs, it means we wrote twelve songs. Then it turns out the way that all these bands and artists have been working for a long time is they write tonnes of songs and then choose the best ones, and then their albums are better. We’re a little late to that whole philosophy it seems, but here we are. We haven’t gone away, and we haven’t broken up.

It's just what serves the song best. With the songwriting, what the goal is, what the intent is, and when it comes to laying out songs. Whether it’s something that I had an instrumental given to me, and I wrote a vocal to it, then Jon and I figure out where Jeremy goes, or Jeremy and Jon wrote something and then I put my part in. It’s always very seamless for Jon and I just to be looking at the song and holding a physical piece of paper with the lyrics printed out and say ‘that’s Jeremy. That’s the both of us. The bridge is Mike. This and that.’

I’ve never had a moment where I was like ‘I should be more a part of this’. I don’t hear songs that way in any universe of The Devil Wears Prada. It’s what The Devil Wears Prada song is and what I can do best to contribute and play my role and hopefully play my role to the best of my ability in terms of not screwing it up live or coming to recording at the best of my health. That’s the me part, but The Devil Wears Prada part is what makes the song best, I think."

The Devil Wears Prada have worked with some of the most notable producers in the metalcore game, whether it be their early days with Joey Sturgis at the helm, working with Killswitch Engage’s Adam Dutkiewicz or Matt Goldman, who has produced a slew of classic albums from the likes of Underoath, The Chariot, As Cities Burn and more. 

These days, the production side of things is handled internally thanks to keyboard player Jonathon Gering. Gering has handled the production on every Prada release since 2019’s The Act, and has become an invaluable part of the process in many ways. Where originally, the bands process was very basic, Hranica confirms that Gering isn’t afraid to dig in and turn an idea on its head to something completely different.

"For a long time, it was like: you write the song, the instrumental is there, the vocal is there, you tweak that. When we started working with Adam D, it was totally lifechanging for us because he would rearrange songs so much more than we had ever experienced. 

Now, we do all of that inside the house in terms of what Jon does. Taking a song like what ‘Wave’ was originally: it was this very vanilla light post hardcore song, I guess. And now, it’s a single chord, no drum song."

Australia’s love affair with The Devil Wears Prada has been going for a very long time now. The band has consistently visited Australian tours for over 15 years now and with each visit, the rooms get the bigger, the crowds get bigger and the outpouring of love just grows stronger. Hot on the heels of their most recent return in support of Bullet For My Valentine, Hranica notes that it’s something that he’ll never take for granted.

"It’s amazing. We had the privilege of supporting Parkway Drive 15 years ago. With A Day To Remember, we played some huge huge rooms and the Riverstage. It’s crazy to the opportunity to do that once ever, and the fact that it’s happened a few times now is something that I’ll never take for granted, and I’m eternally grateful for it. 

It’s always lovely. I’ve said it forever, but one of my favourite components of playing in a band is being able to see so many parts of the world. It’s pretty crazy to lose count of how many times I’ve been to Australia now, and that just speaks to how amazing it is."

Interview by Nicholas Simonsen @blackechomusic

Stream Flowers here

The Devil Wears Prada - Flowers tracklisting

1. That Same Place
2. Where The Flowers Never Grow
3. Everybody Knows
4. So Low
5. For You
6. All Out
7. Ritual
8. When You're Gone
9. The Sky Behind The Rain
10. The Silence
11. Eyes
12. Cure Me
13. Wave
14. My Paradise