Frame and Mantle are a rock band from Pittsburgh that are sonically pushing the boundaries within the scene in such a refreshing way that simultaneously feels nostalgic yet brand new. Just a week before the release of their fantastic sophomore album, Well of Light, Brian Thompson and Connor Freer were gracious enough to take the time to talk to me about their new album, their musical inspirations, the band’s history, and how video games have lyrically inspired them over the years.

Bekah Eiswald: Before we get started, I just wanted to say thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with us. We really appreciate it. For those that may be unfamiliar with Frame and Mantle, would you guys mind giving us a little bit of an introduction?

Brian Thompson: Sure. We’re based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We’re, like, emo alternative, post hardcore, post rock. We blend a lot of different styles and sub-genres together. 

BE: Awesome, awesome. Your brand new album, Well of Light, comes out at the end of this month on June 27th, which is just short of a week (from the date of interview). First of all, congrats on the release. That is huge and amazing. It has been six years since your debut album, Lost Under the Nighttime Sky, was released. How do you guys feel like you have grown as a band within the past six years? 

Connor Freer: We’ve changed members a lot, so that’s like the first really obvious way, mainly bassists. We’ve gotten a little bit grittier and heavier, I would say, since then. Especially skipping through our EP from a couple years ago was like a stepping stone towards that, I would say.

BT: Definitely more riffs, definitely more hooks. Just sharpened songwriting.

BE: Yeah, I went and listened to your first album, then to the EP that you guys released in 2023, then to the new release in order. That EP was a really great stepping stone. It kind of bridged it so well and so cohesively. It was awesome. Thank you. It was very, very good.

BT: That’s great to hear that, I mean, not that we planned it that way, but I think it’s just a natural progression.

BE: You’ve said in the past that Lost Under the Nighttime Sky had lyrics that were inspired by The Legend Of Zelda, and that your new album has lyrics that are inspired by Dark Souls. Both of these video games may seem very, very different when it just meets the eye, but when you sit down and look at both of them, there are a decent amount of parallels. Even though sonically your first and second album are a little bit different, do you think that there’s any parallels between the two?

BT: That first Legend of Zelda inspired song was Link’s Awakening specifically, right?

CF: I don’t know. It’s hard to say, just because the songwriting process was different for the two albums. When I joined the band, a lot of those songs on the first album were already composed at least, and I just added my lyrical part to it. I was a lot more involved with the development and fleshing out of the new songs.

BE: When you joined the band, was that in 2019 after most of the musical component for your first record was already composed at that point?

CF: 2018, but yeah. 

BT: We had been working on it with a different vocalist and then that vocalist left and we enlisted Connor for the record.

BE: I’m sure that the songwriting process was vastly different from your first record to this new one.

BT: Yeah, it was a lot more collaborative on this one. I handled most of the duties on the first one. Everyone wrote their own parts, but I was definitely putting things together and then presenting them to the rest of the band. Whereas this one, it was a lot more collaborative. We were coming together in like jam sessions and writing sessions. We rented an Airbnb out in the woods for a weekend and got all the equipment there. We had a friend come and record some demos and do that final writing to wrap everything up. That was kind of like the culmination of the writing process for this one. That was the most fun I’ve had writing for the band for sure.

CF: A few of the guitar lines or hooks on this one were written by the drummer Mark too, which is fun. 

BT: He has had ideas before, and they just never really fit with what we were doing, so this is his first time writing like that. This one was already such a realized song. We knew it was gonna be a really good fit, because it compliments the rest of the album, but it’s a little bit different. It’s a puzzle piece within the album for sure. That one’s called “Chokehold” – it’s a little heavier, a little more post hardcore. It’s definitely a very different song than most of what we’ve written.

BE: Yes, when I heard that song, I thought it was awesome. I was not expecting it, but it scratched my brain in all the right places. It makes so much sense within the tracklist. 

BT: I like to think about album sequencing in terms of LPs. As I grew up, my dad was a big record collector, and I have always loved vinyls. I’m always thinking about side A and side B. We don’t have plans to press this right now, we would love to sometime down the line, like we did with the first one. For this one, I still wanted to approach it in that same way.

BE: That’s so cool that like this album, it sounds like everybody had a pretty big part in creating what it ended up being as far as the songwriting goes. It’s a really good, cohesive blend. A lot of this album was also inspired by a video game. What song on Well of Light lyrically reminds you the most of Dark Souls? Is there like a specific song that you were intentional about or did it just kind of happen? 

CF: It’s “Well of Light,” the title track. It’s telling the story of the main character of Dark Souls, trudging through all that crazy stuff. The riffs reminded me of a faceless knight, trudging through dirty snow or something like that. 

BE: There is that cohesiveness between your first album and this new album that it’s clear that there was some intentionality from like video games and drawing inspiration from different things, and I think that’s really unique. 

BT: Video games have always been a part of my life, and I know it’s the same for Connor and Mark, our drummer and my brother. That’s why, when it came to naming the second song on the album, we thought that “Green Grove Zone” was perfect. The metaphor is all about a tree growing. We were thinking about the Sonic 3D Blast level, “Green Grove Zone,” and we thought, “Why don’t we just call it that?” Sonic has always been one of my favorite platforming games. I was obsessed with it as a kid, so it seemed fitting to name a song after Sonic. We’ve never done that before.

CF: Not like the song itself has much to do at all to do with that. It’s just like a fun name reference.

BE: Speaking of trees too, the album cover. When I first saw it, it gave this really eerie, dark vibe. When I listened to the album, it really added an extra layer, especially listening to your previous work and then listening to this album, this one is much darker sonically. Why did you guys pick an abandoned manor in Ireland to utilize for the album cover? 

BT: It reminds me of Pittsburgh a little bit, or just Western Pennsylvania. It’s where we’re all from, the general region. There’s a lot of abandoned buildings out in the woods. I grew up in oil country, exploring the woods and all the old, abandoned buildings where there might have workers or equipment. You’d just come across that stuff. It reminded me of growing up, but also adding that extra layer of, “Oh, this was someone’s home.” Thinking about, you know, 200 years ago, this house was there with people living in it, and one day, they either died or decided that they  didn’t want to live there anymore. Nature came back and just overtook it, and I always loved that idea that nature is always gonna take over no matter what humans do.

The first record looked more outwardly, generally, so like the album cover for that one reflects looking up and seeing a more panoramic vista, thinking more about the world. This one feels more personal, smaller. Framing that as a house instead of the entire landscape, you’re bringing that perspective down to the one on one level versus the one to many level. The art for the singles is cool too, because they’re all different views of that same house. We wanted to get a little creative with it, because the artists we work with are so talented. We wanted to utilize their talents in different ways.

BE: Yeah, I was actually gonna ask about that because like I was looking at the single artwork and thought it felt very intentional. You guys were very intentional about it. It’s very well thought through. It’s really hard to not pick up on because of how consistent it is. There were four single releases leading up to the album release. What can your fans expect to see in the rest of the track list versus what we’ve already seen with these singles? 

CF: I think a lot of the remaining songs are along that post hardcore vibe. They’re a lot more chaotic and screamier, but there are also some quiet moments, too.

BT: You still have those catchy hooks throughout, but there are some more quiet, reflective moments as well. Like you said, definitely starting from the beginning and going through, it’s taking you through how the ideas flow from beginning to end. It’s a journey to get from “Well of Light” to the last track, “In the Absence of Sound” and the final outro moments of that song. It feels like the end of a journey in that way. I pull a lot of inspiration from instrumental post rock stuff like Explosions in the Sky. I feel like that’s how those bands always think about their albums. They’re cinematic in that way. We have vocals, so I guess it’s different, but I still think about how to build like some sort of sonic journey in that way. 

BE: Oh yeah. They’re very, very good at executing that. I think a lot of times, bands and artists will try to be so focused on the lyrical content or the vocal content, and while obviously you should be focused on that, the other part of it is the storytelling, the musicality and how things are building. Throughout the album you guys executed that really well. I know that you guys have mentioned a few times that you’re from Pennsylvania, from the Pittsburgh area. The band formed in 2014, in the Northwestern part of Pennsylvania, is that right? 

BT: The original lineup is from Bradford, which is about three hours from Pittsburgh, actually closer to Buffalo. My brother was going to school in Erie, and I was living in Erie, so the rest of the lineup moved to Erie and we got our start. We cut our teeth there in that scene. Eventually , all of us made our way to Pittsburgh between 2016 and 2017. As we started to work on the record, like I said before, our vocalist at the time left to pursue a different band. Connor’s from the Pittsburgh area. 

CF: It was Interesting because I had started getting involved in the local music scene here in 2013 or 2014 and unknowingly was rubbing elbows with Frame and Mantle. I had friends in a band from Erie called Mallory Run, and I remember when I first came to their house when you guys were living in Mount Washington for practicing or just to learn the parts and try out, I guess. I saw this poster on the wall and I was like, “Wait a second, you guys played this show?” I wasn’t at the show, but I knew about it. 

BT: That was before you joined that band? It was that Mallory Run was doing an EP release and we played it, and then the band that Connor eventually joined was also on that. 

BE: Oh my gosh. It’s so cool that you guys found each other through a sense of community, almost, within the scene.

CF: Yeah, definitely. One of the first bands that I joined was with this guy Liam, and I followed him from band to band a couple times. He reached out and was like, “Hey, this band Frame and Mantle needs a singer. I know you can hang, you can handle it.” That’s how that happened.

BE: That kind of perfectly goes into what I wanna ask you: how do you guys feel like the community of Pittsburgh has supported you over the years? 

CF: There’s a lot of bands that we have become good friends with and, you know, they’re always gassing us up. We did a little Midwest run with I Swallow Ghosts last spring. They’re another local Pittsburgh band, but a few of their members are from near Bradford, a town called Warren, which is probably 40 minutes from Bradford. There was always that connection there. Pittsburgh kind of seems to funnel a lot of these small town people from outlying areas, because there’s nowhere in those towns to play a show, so they come out here.

BE: I know Pennsylvania’s not considered the Midwest, but that’s the most Midwest thing that you could have also said. I’m also from the Midwest, so it’s like we’re speaking the same language right now. While we’re talking about community and talking about inspiration, what do you guys think your biggest musical influences were when you guys started? Now I know Connor, you weren’t like in the band when things were starting up, but you can take that question as when you started to be in bands.

BT: I guess for this band specifically, when we started, a few of us were in a different band and it was more of an easycore, pop punk thing, and we wanted to try to do something a little more. We wanted to do something a little more mature. We were looking at bands like Title Fight, Deafheaven, again, Explosions in the Sky. We wanted to make something that was a little more artistically focused. Those were our big touch points with that first EP called While Our Fields Live Fallow.

BE: What about you, Connor? 

CF: I definitely got a lot of inspiration from our friend Liam, whose band I joined in 2013. He showed me a lot of bands that I’d never heard of. Like, I didn’t really know Title Fight, and it was his favorite band. Bands like Basement and Superheaven were really cool, and it was inspiring to see all this stuff that I’d never heard of and hear how familiar it was at the same time. I remember a lot of the time when I was starting out in Frame and Mantle specifically, I was in a very big Pianos Become Teeth era, I guess. I definitely aspire to do stuff like Kyle Durfey does in that one. 

BE: Where you guys are now as a band, what are the musical influences like now that you’ve been together for several years?

BT: It’s varied. There’s a Japanese math rock band called Toe, they come up a lot, and especially my brother and I, we’re just obsessed with them. We went to see them in DC in 2018 or 2019. Still to this day, they’re a huge touch point when we’re writing. Weirdly, Deftones was coming up in our writing sessions, but I don’t think we really sound anything like them. Fiddlehead, vocally specifically. We were looking at doing a little more like intense vocal styles, so we looked at Fiddlehead because they balanced like the aggressive with like the singing. 

CF: They’re no longer a band right now, but Sinai Vessel was definitely an inspiration for my singing style. I say sometimes,  when I think of lyrics, I can hear it in another singer’s voice and try to capture that. He’s got a really unique voice. 

BE: What were some of your favorite bands growing up? Does that look different to where you guys are at now with your musical inspiration? 

BT: Definitely stuff like 90s grunge was big for me when I was growing up, even though that style wasn’t big at the time. I mean, you had post grunge stuff on the radio, like Creed, but I was gravitating towards Nirvana and Soundgarden. Especially nowadays, I’m learning to embrace that stuff more because it feels passé to be like, “Oh, I love Nirvana.” Like, yeah, everyone loves Nirvana. I’m learning to embrace that more, because those bands had such great writing chops. Of course you should look at that and find a lot of great inspiration from stuff you grew up listening to.

CF: The more you grow up and learn about stuff, the more you can pick out about it and see it from different angles. I was definitely an odd music fan as a kid. One of my first albums was Maroon by the Barenaked Ladies. Oh, Hanson, Middle of Nowhere. I think those were like two of my first CDs. I always have this urge in the back of my head to be really cheeky and witty with lyrics. It doesn’t always work, it’s not always what’s called for, but it’s what my brain wants to try to do. And then, you know, like Fall Out Boy and Armor for Sleep were two earlier ones that I really started getting into that type of music.

BE: I feel like if Nirvana wouldn’t have done what Nirvana did, a lot of bands wouldn’t exist the way they do right now.

BT: Oh yeah. Nirvana paved the way for a lot of alternative subgenres. Even the Fall Out Boy guys, they were in like hardcore bands.

BE: Yeah. And even as cliche as it is to be like, “Oh, but Nirvana’s really rad and really awesome,” it’s a cliche for a reason.

BT: A hundred percent. It was that butterfly effect, like if it wasn’t for that, you probably wouldn’t have, like, Turnstile.

BE: Beyond your new album, Well of Light, and having your album release show on July 3rd in Pittsburgh, what else can we expect from you guys in the future? 

BT: We’re definitely looking at getting on the road, probably in the fall. I’m looking forward to getting back to writing more. It’s been a hectic few months and I haven’t really had a chance to just sit down and write.

BE: How long has it been since you guys have been on tour?

CF: Our little weekender was like last April, and then before that I think it was 2020.

BT: Yeah. It was literally when lockdown started. We got through our first day and that was the day that Tom Hanks said he had COVID, and we were just like, “Well, I think tour’s not happening.”

CF: We had at least five dates booked. Only the Sunday one we didn’t go to. We just went straight home. 

BE: Gosh, it feels like that was yesterday, but like 20 years ago at the same time, and I feel like so many bands were either in the middle of a tour or they were gonna leave for a tour, like within a month.

BT: South by Southwest was happening, and my friend’s band was playing that, and then the festival was canceled. I just felt so bad and I was like, “Well, I hope that doesn’t happen to us.” And it did. Our drummer lives in the Youngstown area, so we try to play there sometimes too, but outside of that, yeah, I haven’t been on the road since last spring. So excited for that. Hopefully doing at least a week between like the Midwest and the Northeast with some more dates next year.

BE:That would be awesome! I hope you guys can get on the road later this year to celebrate Well of Light being released. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today!

You can find Frame and Mantle on Instagram