Longtime Christian hardrock band Disciple is at it again with a new record, a new lineup, and a new focus. The band has taken to Kickstarter to help gain support from fans in creating their new record and have received incredible results. BreatheCast had the opportunity to chat with the band's frontman of 20 years, Kevin Young, and he shared his thoughts on being a humble artist, Christian labels, and even gives a hint to the next project.

BreatheCast: Lets start with the new record. It is over 150% funded. How does that make you feel knowing the fans care enough to keep going, and how will you guys use some of the extra funds?

Kevin Young: First and foremost what the money goes to is the making of the album - recording, the mixing, and the mastering, and then from that point on there's a few other things we'd like to do. If we have enough money left over we'd like to do a music video, and depending on how much, put it into marketing and promotion for the album. After that the Kickstarter really serves as a presale where people are going to buy the album on iTunes or Amazon anyway. At least if they go through us and they are a big fan of the band, then it is good for them to know that it is much more beneficial for them to order through us rather than buy it off of iTunes. Even if that number gets very big, it's not about having a bunch of money on the Kickstarter, it's about selling the CD, especially to the people who are going to buy it anyway.

BC: Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, GoFundMe - do these sites give new life to artists and is this the ultimate shift toward indie DIY?

KY: I can't speak for other bands, I don't know their situation, but I really think it may be different for every single situation. I know for us, we've been a band for 20 years, and we've been on three record labels, and record labels have been very good for us and have spread our names very well at least in the Christian rock world. For us to do an album independently, I don't want to say there isn't much a record label could do for me, because that's not true, but most of those things we can do ourselves now. So it is very helpful to be in the situation we are in because obviously record labels are a business, their primary function is to make money. Take that out of the equation, and anyone who belongs in a band knows all of us are poor. We have a large running debt that runs over our heads and most band's heads and we are hoping and praying that this helps us get ahead of that.

BC: You guys have been rocking since 92. What are the major differences between DIY back then and now, and do you feel artists that know how to hustle from back in the day would ultimately sell themselves better now?

KY: This will be our third album that we've done independently. Our very first album we did independently, and 10 years ago our album Back Again, we did independently as well. So we've had experience in hustling. The Back Again album was a great lesson for us because we learned how to hire radio promoters to help get our songs with radio, and work with magazines to do promotion and advertisements in the appropriate magazines. We learned that there are ways to waste your money and we learned there are ways to spend it. Mistakes are as valuable as successes because they teach you how handle yourself going forward. The biggest difference is the availability of the Internet. You know ten years ago we did our album independently and we completely paid for it ourselves. Now with awesome platforms like Kickstarter, if you have a strong fan base you can appeal to them. 'Hey we are making this album, go ahead and preorder it, and it'll help us pay for the cost of getting to record it.' We've always tried our best to be that way with our fans. Hang around, shake hands, sign autographs, and even pray with people if they want. That's the kind of band we want to be. We want them to feel like they've had a hand.

BC: For this album you guys are getting back to basics. Why are you going back to what's familiar, and does it have anything to do with the current state of music?

KY: For me it's really not about where we are going back to, it's about pressing forward and on musically. We've got all new band members except for me. This is the third version of Disciple. My guys like to call it Disciple 3.0. These guys are twice the musicians than I'll ever be. They are all smarter than me musically, more creative musically. This is going to be the best album we've ever done. It's a testament to just how good of song writers there are in the band, and how good of musicians they are.

You'd think being a Christian band on a Christian label will allow you to be as bold as you want, and that be the case, and I wish that were true because honestly it's not. They are just doing their job and putting out the best product they possibly could because their main concern is to make money and sell records. So they want to refine people's lyrics, and put the best thing they can put out. This time I just wanted to say the things I wanted to say and not have to ask anyone's permission about. I wanted to write a song about being bold in Jesus and not have to care what anyone thinks about it and not really asking anyone's permission and having to go through the opinion of men who don't listen to hardrock anyway. Honestly, I don't care what they think, I don't want to care anymore. Our message and our music is not for the people who don't like hardrock music, it is for the people who like hardrock music and those are the people we are appealing to. All we are going back to is a bolder and louder and clearer message. We are just going to say it a little bit louder than we have in a long time.

BC: Tell us a little about what we can expect, and how it will differ from your previous release.

KY: These new songs are better songs, and again it's a testament to the band members I have now. We literally have two lead singers in the band right now and he was primarily a songwriter. With so many people writing the songs, we were able to weed out the songs that were just ok and really stick with the songs that were great. Every song we believe in. We are really excited about the message of these songs.

BC: What's next for Disciple, and do you have anything else to add?

KY: We are taking it one step at a time. The focus is on finishing up the album. As soon as that's done, now that we are the record label, as soon as we finish those other things well, we'll move on to the next thing. I don't want to do a bunch of things average, I'd rather do a few things great, and move on one step at a time.

The name of the new album is Attack and it will be available to pre-order a little over the next week or so. I want to encourage fan for $10 to pre-order the album early. We are shooting for an August or September for release date.

Support the band's Kickstarter here.

For part 2 of this interview click here.