The Sleeping

The shores of Long Island, NY are known for producing some of the most influential names in rock. Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Straylight Run, and many others have been born into notoriety out of the Long Island scene. Just as it looked like all hope was lost and every band was becoming faded carbon copies of one another, Long Island‘s latest export The Sleeping comes along to shake things up and insert sincerity and originality back into underground rock. Punkbands.com said “[The Sleeping is] varied and interesting, hitting every genre from prog rock to hardcore, back to a pop sound and then off the wall to ambient party sounds with layered, ghostly vocals.”

The Sleeping formed in/around Long Island, NY in 2003, with founding members Salvatore Mignano (bass) and Cameron Keym (guitar) wanting to try something new and different from their days in the band SkyCameFalling. They hooked up with Joe Zizzo (drums) and started writing songs that drifted from musical conventionality, intermingling well calculated choruses amidst multitudes of cleverly positioned technical guitar work. The band, calling themselves The Sleeping, set out to find a front man for their new collaboration and, after auditioning twenty-two potential singers, came across Doug Robinson. Doug says of joining the band, “We are all brothers. We know each other in and out. Our personalities are so different yet similar, they are my best friends. We all have the same goals: to spread our music all over the planet and let people know it’s okay to attempt something different.”

For three years now, The Sleeping has been writing forward-thinking, dynamic, multi-faceted songs that are as infectious as they are innovative. After The Sleeping released their first full length album (Believe What We Tell You, via OneDaySavior ), Chicago’s Victory Records immediately took notice of the band and their ever growing fan base and hard worth ethic. Shortly thereafter, Victory signed The Sleeping to a roster of legendary Long Island Artists including Bayside, Action Action, and Straylight Run. Perhaps the breaking point for the band was the tour that they did with Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy, and Matchbook Romance in October of 2004 where their national buzz really started bubbling over.

The Sleeping hit the studio in February 2006 with Michael Birnbaum and Chris Bittner at Applehead Studios (Coheed and Cambria, Straylight Run) to record their Victory debut, Questions and Answers. These new songs are packed with undeniable hooks and contemporary textures, but their sonic landscapes are a lot like atmospheric and progressive bands from the 90’s like Incubus and At The Drive In. Doug Robinson, vocalist, said, “Our influences are really, really all over the place. We listen to everything from Nine Inch Nails to The Police to The Mars Volta, somehow we were able to take four diverse musical opinions and craft them into one interconnected album.” From breakdowns to bongos, Questions And Answers forges its own path and has a lot of depth that is often neglected by many fledgling bands.

Lyrically, Questions And Answers touches on some very heavy-handed issues such as dealing with the untimely death of a friend, failed relationships, and lost love. Doug said, “This record released a lot of demons in all of us, but at the same time, it definitely fueled some sort of a fire within us. It’s hard to be satisfied when things get taken away from people so unexpectedly.” Questions And Answers is an undeniably moody record and was titled as such to remind the listeners to question themselves and their surrounding environment.

The Sleeping will premiere several new songs from their Victory Records debut on May 6th at Bamboozle Festival in E. Rutherford, NJ, joining the small group of elite Artists playing on the main stage like Hawthorne Heights, Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy, and AFI. Then, on May 30, 2006, The Sleeping will unleash Questions And Answers, a sincere and epic album, resonating with a booming rhythm section, start-stop guitars, and dramatic vocals.