Interviews

Shane Told - Silverstein 'We're Celebrating Our Entire Career'

Kelsey Trevan

Aug 1, 2025

8 min read

The countdown is on until Silverstein hit the stage for the 25 Years of Noise Tour alongside Real Friends.

The scene veterans will be playing tracks from their entire career - including some eyebrow raising, hidden-gem deep cuts - alongside freshies off their forthcoming releases Antibloom and Pink Moon.

Ahead of the band hitting the stage - kicking off tomorrow night in Melbourne - we grabbed frontman Shane Told for a quick chat in the lead up and what he's most looking forward to when those stage lights go dim...

We are so excited to have you back down on the, it's been a little while

It's been a little while. Yeah. And yeah, we've missed you. We always miss you, but it feels like maybe a little more than usual right now with the last time we were there, we were supporting. It was great with Amity, but it's going to be nice to come back and do our own tour and play a lot of songs.

Yeah. Well, you do have a lot of material to pull from.

Yeah. Too much. Way too much. I know. I kind of wish we were doing this record every two year thing. It's like maybe we should have done every three or four and then we wouldn't have had this problem. But yeah, we got a lot of songs. It's an impossible task, but this time we did have our fans vote on some of it, so we tried to be democratic with the setlist, but you can never please everybody, even yourself. So it's a difficult task, but I think we do a good job.

And with letting the fans choose a little, were there any songs that came up and you guys were like, huh? Okay, sure.

Yeah. I think 'My Disaster' from Arrivals & Departures, we had fans choose one from each album. We were going to play at least one from every album. And when it was 'My Disaster', I was like, really? That's the song from that record? Okay. All right, cool. And so we were playing it, and I think we're going to continue to play it on this tour. So yeah, it's interesting, but a lot of them were not surprises. We were pretty much sure it was going to be 'Smashed Into Pieces' and then it wasn't. We're like, 'oh, well it would've been cool' for it to be something else, but it's all good.

And if you hadn't have done that, how do you choose with so much material to pull from what songs to put on the setlist? Do you put everything in a hat or?

No, no. I mean, it used to be I would write the setlist like 45 minutes before we played on fricking whatever was laying around the dressing room. And that was the setlist. We didn't have the same show everyday. We would change it. Literally every day would be different. And that was up until maybe, like album like six.

And then after that everybody was like, 'yo, we got too much shit and this is too stressful and we've got to dial it in a little bit better'. Also, when you plan out your setlist or as the cool word is curate, curate out setlist, then you can kind of pick, 'okay, this is the kind of energy you want here. This is the flow, this is the spot where you talk. This is the spot where you ramp it up' and really just kind of plan a setlist accordingly.

And we've been doing that the last little while, and it does go better. So it's maybe a little more boring day in and day out for me. But of course, I go to every show. A majority of our fans do not. So that's an important distinction, I guess.

But it's become a lot more democratic in the band too. It used to just be like, I wrote it and we played it. Now we spend a lot of time discussing it with each other. 'Oh, here's an idea, here's another idea. Why don't we do this? Why don't we change this? Why don't we flip these around?' And I think that's great because then no one can get mad at me if it sucks.

Yeah. Well, I would assume never a dull day in Silverstein world

There's never a dull day in my life, period. Even. I don't know. I always have fun. No matter what I do. I just went to the pool store, to buy some fricking pool chemicals, and I still have a good time doing that. So yeah, never a dull moment in my life, but especially when it comes to the band, that's for sure.

And you guys are playing Warp Tour before you come out here, right? What's that going to be like playing it again? You played a couple times before, right?

Oh, a couple. Alright. Yeah. Fucking over 200 and something dates on the Warped Tour. We are actually the top international band. We've done more Warped tour shows than any other international band. And I think we're third or fourth overall. So we are Warped Tour poster boys or whatever you want to say.

So yeah, so we did the one in Washington DC and that was a lot of fun. They did a really, really great job putting it together. Obviously it's a little modernised, it's a lot bigger, but, they've done a great job of keeping the feeling the essence of Warped Tour.

So yeah, we're going to go from that. I'm in Vegas already, so it's Los Angeles, just a hop, skip, and a jump for me. The rest of the band will fly in, we'll meet up in LA, we'll do the Warped tour, and then we're just getting on a flight from LAX to, I dunno where we're starting, Sydney, Melbourne.

You start with us in Melbourne

Melbourne. Oh, cool. There you go. Yeah, we're flying to Melbourne and yeah, and that's going to be our tour. So yeah, it's exciting. And yeah, Australia's been such a, you've all been so nice to us

20 years. It's our 25th anniversary of our band, but 20th anniversary of coming to Australia. So it's just always exciting coming back. And I know you live there and it's like normal for you, but it is pretty fricking cool.

No, it's always cool as well. And with you guys especially, you do make an effort when you come out here. I remember a couple of years ago at a UNIFY Festival, I was there and it basically got rained out, but you guys did everything that you could to play for us. And the fact that you guys did that, that means so much to so many people.

Yeah, man. Then 2020 got worse.

Yeah

That was crazy, man. You had all the fires and flooding then what's crazy about that, that was right at the top of 2020 for people listening to this or I dunno if you write this or I dunno what this platform is, I'm sorry. But we started early 2020 right away at the beginning of the year we went to Australia, you had all the fire and the flooding issues.

Then we went to Philippines [and] while we were playing in Philippines. A fucking volcano erupted. And we couldn't leave for days because I don't know, there's ash in the air and you can't fly a plane through it. We were literally stuck in Philippines. We didn't know how long we were going to be there. At one point they told us it could be months. We're like, what? I'll take a boat, man. I got to go home.

And then, so then we barely made it out of there and then a month later was COVID. So yeah, it was a really shitty start to that year.

And I think about it as you were saying, it's 20 years of coming to Australia and 25th anniversary as a band. When you think about it, there's going to be people in the crowd that weren't born when you started.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. And I don't lose sight of that. And I think what's really cool now is our music has literally transcended generations. And we have parents that are my age or close to my age or younger, I guess, even bringing their small children out to the show. And these are people that I remember from when they were teenagers and now they have families and they're bringing 'em to the show. And it's pretty fricking surreal to see that.

And then that our music has been a constant in their lives and now their families and their homes and their own legacies that they're growing. And it's really, really awesome to be a part of that. And it's special.

And not only that, but sometimes we're seeing younger people coming out. I remember we played a show in Paris, which it's not like we don't do that great there. It's kind of a mid-market for us, I guess. And the whole front of the crowd was like everybody, it was like 15, 16-year-old kids, the whole front of the crowd. I'm like, okay, cool. Something is happening. There's a moment here where people are younger, people are discovering our band and others in our scene and they're really finding something in it that they're latching onto and it's special to them and important.

And I think that reminds me a lot of, when I was that age and I discovered the bands that had come out in the eighties or even the seventies, and those bands had spoken to me for some reason the same way that they are now speaking to this generation after generation.

So for us to be a band in that ilk, I guess, I dunno if that's even the right word, but for us to be that type of thing going on is pretty cool. And yeah, I guess if you make it this far, that's what happens.

‍And what's the prep for a tour like this?

Well, luckily we've been touring a lot this year already. 2025 has been really full, and 2024 was actually kind of light. We only really did one tour the whole year. So moving into 2025, I spent a lot of time singing, strengthening my voice. It really is like a muscle.

And before a tour, you kind of have to hit the gym if you haven't lifted weights in a while, and then you freakin' don't even do much and the next day you're like, 'oh God, what have I done?' Actually, I went bowling yesterday. I haven't been bowling in a long time and my arm is fucking killing me. I'm like, 'I didn't even do anything that crazy'. So singing is like that.

I'll basically sing the set through every other day... I set up a microphone, I jump around the room and I sing and scream, and my girlfriend thinks I'm crazy downstairs. And that's what you got to do to prep your voice for the onslaught, which is singing for my band.

I'm sure she's kind of used to you jumping around like a crazy person and singing there, right?

Yeah. It's funny because we spend so much normal time together doing everyday things. We went to Walmart and shit like that, and then it'd be funny, sometimes a song will come on in the car and I'll sing for a second and she'll be like, 'oh, you're a good singer'. And then she'll be like, 'oh yeah, that's literally what you do'. Or we didn't play many shows in 2024 and then she saw me play in 2025 and she kind of forgets for a second that I'm like the same guy. So it's kind of a weird thing, but I guess that makes sense.

And I'm sure it's probably weird for you too, when you don't play for a little while and then you get up and you start getting prepared for a tour and you're like, oh yeah, I do this thing.

Yeah. It's always funny though, is especially with, I don't want to call it a hiatus, it really wasn't, we didn't go that long without doing stuff. We made two records in 2024, and then we did do a whole tour, and then we did a bunch of festivals and stuff like that. But I always do find if I've been off the saddle for a little while and I get back on it, there's always, in my head, I feel like I'm like, 'oh, this is going to be hard or weird or whatever'. And then it's just not, I'll kind of have a weird anxiety about it. Like, 'oh, I haven't done this in a while', and then it's just fine. It turns out it is kind like riding a bike and that's a good thing.

Yeah. Nice. And is there a city that you're looking forward to most coming to in Australia? It's okay, I won't let anyone go at you for picking a favourite.

Well, Melbourne has always been kind of like the home base when we've been to Australia, I think the first person, Destroy All Lines, brought us down there the first time and we had this really great tour manager, Bronwyn, who is from Melbourne and showed us around, and we had all these days off in Melbourne, and it became just the place that we, I guess we called home within Australia, if you will. And the shows are always so good there. It's such great music community.

The record stores and stuff are there. And what's interesting about Melbourne is it reminds me quite a bit of Toronto, the way it's built or something. I can't really describe it. Brisbane doesn't have quite the same, and don't get me wrong, I love Brisbane. Brisbane doesn't feel like the same as Melbourne, but Melbourne has sort of a Toronto sort of vibe, so that's part of why it feels like home for us.

And what's one thing that you want the Australian fans to know before you come out while we wrap up here?

Well, this is the 25 Years of Noise Tour. We're celebrating our entire career. All of the records we made, we're playing something from every record. And it really is the show you do not want to miss. We have great support with Real Friends as well. If you don't know Real Friends, they're fricking awesome. And even better live. And yeah, just a tremendous band. And we also have tonnes of new music coming out. We just released a song 'Drain the Blood' featuring Rory from Dayseeker, which is a really fun jam. And we've got a couple other songs coming out soon. And then we have a whole other album coming out in September. So it's a really, really exciting action packed time for our band, and hopefully people are on board.

Yeah. Well, I know we're really excited to see you. I'm personally really excited to come out and see you guys, and I can't wait.

Yeah, Kelsey, well, thank you for the chat. And yeah, I'll see you Melbourne.

Interview by Kelsey Trevan

Silverstein's Aussie Tour kicks off Saturday! Tickets Here