In a barn in Texas, Vince Slatton and his neighbour Chris Nelson built a vocal booth. It was purely practical. Vince needed somewhere to record vocals for a few old A Common Thread songs while guitarist Keith O’Neal worked from Alabama.
There was no release plan. It was supposed to be two old friends passing files back and forth for fun.
Vince and Keith had played together in A Common Thread, a hardcore band active during the 1990s.
Music stopped when Vince moved to Texas, began a teaching career and raised a family. Keith stayed in Alabama. They remained close through the distance, their jobs and the usual pile-up of adult responsibilities, but they did not play together for more than twenty years.
By 2023, Vince’s two daughters were grown. He travelled back to Alabama for Birmingham’s Furnace Fest, mainly to see long-time favourites Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today and Judge. The weekend put him back among old friends and surrounded him with the music that had started all of this in the first place.
“Keith and I began talking about reworking some of the old songs from our band for fun with no intention of releasing anything,” Vince said.
He returned to Texas ready to try it. Chris had a background in audio engineering, and together they built the booth in his barn. Vince could record there, send the tracks to Keith in Alabama and see where the old songs went.
They did not stay old for long.
Keith asked whether Vince wanted to work on new stuff. Vince agreed immediately, and the project began growing into Following Seas.
Keith brought in Nick Brunson, a long-time friend and guitarist from Haste. Vince describes Nick as one of the nicest and most sincere people he knows, with an energy that tends to pull everyone else along with him.
“The guy is an incredible guitar player,” he said.
Nick had previously played with bassist Tommy Whitley in Long Day Coming. Tommy joined Following Seas next, writing bass parts that give the faster songs some movement underneath the guitars. Keith then asked Carter Wilson to record drums.
Carter plays in Null and Coliseum, and spent years alongside Keith in Fake Tyrants. Equal Vision Records’ Coliseum history lists him as the drummer in the band’s final line-up with Ryan Patterson and Kayhan Vaziri. He also helped arrange Vince’s vocals during the Following Seas demo sessions.
“Carter is my favourite drummer in Birmingham, and I was beyond excited when he agreed to play with us,” Vince said. “He is super kind and helped arrange the vocals as well for the demo. He is an incredibly talented musician.”
The completed line-up has Keith O’Neal and Nick Brunson on guitars, Vince Slatton on vocals, Tommy Whitley on bass and Carter Wilson on drums.
The connections between them run through A Common Thread, Haste, Long Day Coming, Fake Tyrants, Null and Coliseum, but Following Seas are not being treated as a heritage project. The point is to write new songs and find a way to keep the band active around the lives everyone already has.
The self-titled EP arrived on July 17, 2026. It runs for just over 22 minutes and contains eight tracks. Most of it moves quickly. “By The Numbers” and “Redemption” are each over in one minute and 42 seconds. Six of the eight songs finish before the three-minute mark. This is fast, direct punk with enough melodic pull to keep it from turning into a single long sprint. The songs get to the point without being reduced to one riff and a shouted chorus.
From the first few seconds, you can tell there’s some real maturity behind this and an interesting story to go with it. I get the sense that this kind of quality usually comes from seasoned, experienced players who know how to take something as seemingly simple as punk rock and turn it into an experience that actually takes you somewhere, rather than just giving your ears a workout.
The closing track, “Speed”, was originally written by Samiam. It makes sense at the end of a record made by people whose histories sit across hardcore, punk and the less rigid corners around both.
The EP was recorded and mixed by Brad Timko at Portside Sound in Sheffield, Alabama, then mastered by James Sego. Brad is another life-long friend who attended the same high school as some of the band members. Vince says he has both a soft spot and a good ear for punk and hardcore, which made the studio choice easy.
Portside occupies Studio B at the former second location of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, a facility built in the late 1970s along the Tennessee River. Brad describes himself as a recording engineer, mixer and producer working from the historic room. Bob Dylan and Dire Straits both recorded at the Alabama Avenue complex decades earlier.
For Following Seas, the appeal was not about borrowing prestige from those names. They liked the room.
The walls still have their 1970s wood panelling, and Vince remembers the recording space having a warm, natural sound. Brad combined a modern recording board with a reel-to-reel machine during the demo sessions, connecting the band’s fast punk songs to a room built for a very different period of recording.
One track gives the EP its clearest tie to Birmingham itself.
“For Iron’s Sake” comes from the city’s past as a steel and industrial centre. Vince grew up around family members and friends whose lives were connected to steel yards, railways, mining and long-haul trucking. His father hauled flatbed loads, and Vince spent time as a child helping him secure them.
For several summers, he joined his father in an 18-wheel truck as they delivered steel north to Detroit, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The work sites changed, but the conditions were familiar. People worked long hours in dangerous jobs for pay that rarely gave them much chance to get ahead.
“For Iron’s Sake is an ode for the people who get up every day for years and work exhausting, and underpaid jobs,” Vince said.
He later became a public-school educator, but those childhood summers stayed with him. The song is not a general working-class slogan pasted onto a hardcore track. It comes from yards, trucks and family history he saw close up.
“Those experiences really gave me a deep appreciation for hard working people.”
The EP title is much simpler. Since this is Following Seas’ first release, the band left it self-titled.
“It probably needs clarification, so it doesn’t look like we just named it after Elvis Presley’s initials,” Vince joked.
The record belongs to a Birmingham scene that has rarely kept punk, hardcore and metal in separate rooms. Vince remembers gutter punks, straight edge kids and metalheads turning up for the same bills and supporting whichever local band happened to be playing.
“We all supported each other regardless of the genre of the band or who was on the bill that evening.”
That cross-pollination remains visible across the city’s venues. Firehouse, Saturn, Trim Tab, Workplay and Woodlawn Theater regularly host local and touring punk and hardcore bands. Following Seas point towards Null, Droves, My Reply, Commodity, Crush the Serpent, Hexxus, Hocky, Coward God, Black Sheep, Bulging and Refuse To Thrive as current local favourites.
Furnace Fest has become the largest public version of that culture, bringing established heavy bands to Birmingham while keeping local artists involved. Beyond the Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today and Judge sets that helped push Following Seas into motion, Vince singles out performances by Praise, Be Well, Texas is the Reason and Stretch Armstrong among his festival favourites.
The band recently discussed this history on The Breakdown, a local podcast hosted by Birmingham photographer and scene veteran Alan Starns through Bamacore. Its second episode featured Vince and Nick talking about their roots, the writing process and the difficulty of keeping a new band moving when everyone already has a full life outside it.
That last problem has shaped what Following Seas can realistically do next. Most members have children, jobs and other bands. Disappearing for months is not an option, and nobody is pretending otherwise.
“Most of us have children and jobs that make touring an extended period challenging.”
Instead, Following Seas plan to support the EP with a local release show and shorter runs through the south-eastern United States during the rest of 2026 and into 2027. Early conversations have also started with Spark of Life about putting together a run of shows.
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There is already another release taking shape. The band are working on new songs and plan to return to Brad Timko’s studio later in 2026. The next session should produce at least five tracks.
Following Seas started with two old friends revisiting songs from a band they had left behind. They ended up with a functioning five-piece, eight new recordings and a practical way to keep writing without acting as though work, distance and family have somehow disappeared.
“We are already working on new songs and are stoked to share what we have created.”
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