We recently connected with Allies Always Lie and have shared our conversation below.

Allies Always Lie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Ihan: So I think our biggest risk musically we have ever taken was our metal cover of the 80’s song “Never Ending Story” by Limahl. It really didn’t seem like a risk when we first started hashing out the ideas of how the song was gonna sound in our style until we went into the studio to record the song. Before we decided to even attempt that song, we were always joking about doing a cover song, as a lot of other artists had done previously. I remember around that time Stranger Things Season 3 just dropped and me and Justin were both on a binge party for it and they played the song “Never Ending Story” with some of the main characters singing it. That scene to me was so funny and I remember turning to Justin and said, “Dude, how funny would it be if we covered this song?”

Justin: At that point I just laughed it off to be honest. I really didn’t give it much thought because it was an older song and I couldn’t imagine how we would even turn it into a metal song without ruining it. It wasn’t until a day or so later that we were just writing some demos for other songs and he pulled up “Never Ending Story” and started talking to me about if we did cover this song this is how we should approach it. He started spouting out all these ideas on where we should take it, and I was just like, “Well why aren’t you recording this right now?”

Ihan: What I kept saying at that moment was that I really didn’t want it to sound too much like the original song. I wanted to keep the melody in certain places vocally, but also in the parts where would go heavier I still wanted the melody represented through the lead guitar. From there, like with most of our songwriting process, we just kept bouncing ideas back and forth. It only took us a couple of days realistically to demo out the idea and then it was time to get into the studio and finalize it.

Justin: When we brought the demo to our producer, he was at first a little hesitant to go forward with it. When he stressed those concerns he let us know that the reason why he was hesitant was because he didn’t know if adding screams and heavy guitars would butcher the song or not. We played the demo for him and his whole perspective changed. He let us know that it was solid but needed some work and we needed to nail it or it wasn’t gonna hit right.

Ihan: When he stressed those concerns to us, that was the moment that I kinda started having second thoughts on this cover. I started to get into my own head and think that maybe it was too risky. I started to think about all the backlash that we might receive for “ruining” the song. Justin was kind of the guy that pulled me back and told me that we should do it and that we had fun creating this and that that was a win in his book.

Justin: And of course, we did get some backlash from some people on the internet, but it was still a success in my eyes. It’s actually funny, because it’s our most popular song we have out there now. So I’d say it was a big risk, but we stuck it through and it paid off. I feel like we are trying now to this day to keep that same thought process with taking risks. If we are happy with how things turn out in our art, then we should go for it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Allies Always Lie is a metal/hard rock band from Salt Lake City, Utah. We got into the performing arts world out of pure passion for sharing our stories and music to the world. One thing that we pride ourselves in is not being afraid to change how our music sounds to what we are feeling in that moment. We try our best to always grow, improve and perfect not only our song writing, but also our live performances. We are firm believers that our fans don’t come to our shows just to listen to music, but to have an experience and see a show. So we pull that mentality into all of our production and try to enhance our performances in different ways. With that being said, we do love the music we put out, but what we really love about getting into this field is the feeling of happiness and fun we bring to our fans. We love nothing more than to see and hear the happiness that our music and live performances bring to our fans.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Ihan: I’m pretty sure all artists definitely can share this same feeling, but a big thing we fairly recently had to deal with was the pandemic. It definitely put a huge wrench into all of our plans. Right before all the shutdowns occurred, we were coming off of some of our highest points in our career. We had just got off of starting to play out of our local scene and traveling out of state. We had also just been reached out to by LiveNation to perform with Issues, Polyphia and Sleep Token. As well as coming out of our first ever sold out headliner show in Salt Lake City. We were even in talks with some record labels to sign deals.

Justin: After all those great things had happened, we were gearing up to go on tour and then we were going to revisit the record deal situation. We started mapping out a game plan to acquire transportation, got a list of venues/promoters and even dates to head out. Then the pandemic happened and all of our plans went right out the door. The hardest part about all of this was trying to continue recording/writing with all the limitations on groups gathering in a small space. We honestly started worrying about if we could ever bounce back from this. We all decided that we couldn’t go out like this and that we would still try to get things back on track.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Ihan: I think, for me, the most rewarding aspect about being in a band is just having the ability to sit in a room with some of my best friends and create music that pushes me and just sounds like something that I am proud of that we created together.

Justin: I really get excited to see fans’ reactions to all our new material. I just love to see how they interpret the meanings behind our songs. That’s something that seems so small to many, but I can’t get enough of it.    

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beacons.ai/alliesalwayslie
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alliesalwayslie/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alliesalwayslie
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmslfx-JitHK8rLU7M82uEg