Thousand Foot Krutch’s Trevor McNevan Talks ‘Oxygen: Inhale’ Album, Faith + More

Thousand Foot Krutch are back rocking the airwaves with a new album called 'Oxygen: Inhale.' The band turned to PledgeMusic and their fans to help fund the disc and they received some of their best response yet to the new music. Recently, frontman Trevor McNevan spoke with 'Loudwire Nights' host Full Metal Jackie about the disc. Check out the interview below.

What creative freedom comes with financing an album through a Pledge Music campaign like you did with 'Oxygen: Inhale,' rather than relying on a record label to fund it?

The sky is kind of the limit with that, you know. If you get inspired to kind of go left to right you can just move on it, you know. That's kind of the beauty of it. And it's been a blessing to this band. And I think it's not necessarily the right thing for every band, but it certainly is the right place for us to be.

What makes your music mesh so well with a sport like hockey, so much that the Ottawa Senators made 'Untraveled Road' their anthem this season?

Man, you know, we've always been big fans of kind of high octane, high adrenaline, rock type music, so that's sort of … I feel like it's always kind of in the veins of the music in a lot of our records. And we've been really blessed to have that kind of synergy with pro sports. It kind of has been a very natural process. You haven't hired a team to pitch it to sports or anything like that. It started a long time ago with a song we had called 'Rock This' in like 2003 and ESPN kind of started giving us some love and from there it's really grown into an amazing relationship between pro sports teams and theme songs in the arena and stuff like that to NASCAR and UFC and all that kind of stuff, so it's really been an organic process that we've been excited to be a part of and very blessed.

What led to scaling back production on 'Oxygen: Inhale' in order to really highlight more of the natural tone of the instruments and your voice?

It was one of those things where … we produce our own records and write all of our own songs. For these particular songs, it's just what they called for. I feel like from a producer point of view, you need to produce for the song, not just kind of look at as this is the way that I do things. These particular songs didn't really call for that kind of rock, more a natural feel. And really that's who we are as a band. Our live music, our live show is a big part of who we are as a band. And I just feel like, it just felt right for us just to have the vocal sound exactly how it sounds, you know, no studio trickery, and actually hear the fingers on the guitar, just sound like four guys playing instruments. So that was our goal, to just kind of capture it as is and capture the real feel of it without a ton of processing.

Trevor, being tagged as a Christian band might create a preconception that your music is purely a reflection of faith. What secular things tend to also inspire your music and lyrics -- specifically on the new album 'Oxygen: Inhale'?

When it comes to that, our faith is our life style, and it's not our genre of music. That's never the way we've looked at it. We've always made music for everyone and always will. Just like our new single 'Born This Way' is basically all about that, where it's just about just the fact that we're all wired differently, and just not being afraid to be yourself and stand up for what you believe in. And we'll always be unashamed of that just like anyone in what they believe. And I think, obviously your faith and who you are is going to bleed into everything that you do. That's certainly our hearts and we want to make positive music and be a small part of making change in our world, but we make music for everyone and always will.

Thanks to Thousand Foot Krutch's Trevor McNevan for the interview. You can pick up 'Oxygen: Inhale' at Amazon and iTunes. Look for the band playing the U.S. and Russia during the month of November at these locations. Tune in to Loudwire Nights With Full Metal Jackie and Tony LaBrie’ Monday through Friday 7PM through midnight online or on the radio. To see which stations and websites air ‘Loudwire Nights,’ click here.