If you’re unfamiliar with Anthony Green, today is your lucky day — there’s now days and days worth of his music to discover and enjoy. Over the past nearly three decades, Anthony has been a prolific musician, pushing the boundaries of post-hardcore and emo while cementing himself as a true innovator. A legend in the scene, he’s formerly been the frontman for Saosin and Circa Survive, and now leads L.S. Dunes, The Sound of Animals Fighting, Fucking Whatever, and maintains an extensive solo career.
2025 alone has been a monster year for him: three album releases across different projects, tours for each of those albums, and even his literary debut. Things don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Here’s a quick timeline of his year so far:
L.S. Dunes – Violet Release: 1/31
L.S. Dunes Tour: 4/8 – 5/11
Anthony Green – So Long Avalon Release: 6/20
High & Driving: The Origins of Avalon Book: 8/5
So Long Avalon Tour: 7/11 – 9/13
The Sound of Animals Fighting – The Maiden Release: 9/12
The Sound of Animals Fighting Tour: 9/25 – 10/12
Dude’s a beast, and that’s not even counting the stuff he has in the works that hasn’t been made public yet.
I caught up with Anthony before a recent show in Boise, ID at the Neurolux. He’s currently on tour for his reworked solo album So Long Avalon, a re-recorded and reimagined take on his 2008 album Avalon. Joining him on this tour are Geoff Rickly of Thursday and Kurt Travis of Royal Coda. We chatted about The Sound of Animals Fighting’s new album The Maiden; creativity; lyricism; dogs; Martenelli’s; and even fighting babies.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ricky Adams @ The Needle Drop: You’ve had a busy year! What have you released so far, and what’s still in the works: albums, tours, or other projects?
Anthony Green: There is a lot of stuff. This tour (for So Long Avalon), and then right after this tour, The Sound of Animals Fighting tour starts. It has a record coming out, The Maiden, which is out September 12th. I started the year putting that record out with L.S. Dunes, Violet. So this will be like a three-record year for me, which is really awesome. Three tours? Possibly more. Possibly some little things coming out. I've been making so much music that is just stuff I'm making that I don't really know what I'm going to do with it. Like experimenting with making atmospheric music and experimental noisy stuff and beats. Just weird things that there's no… They’re not headed to the processing plan. These are just things to build upon my creative muscle. After working in the studio all the time, writing stuff, you have to balance it. So I've spent more time this year, even though I'm putting out three records, I have all this stuff that I'm building that has no bullseye. It's just pure exploration, and it's been really fun.
I've been writing stories. Sometimes I think about putting them out. I just started recently talking to Geoff Rickly and his publisher, and the people at my label have been like, "You should write more." I wrote some stuff for the Avalon book, which was my first time ever writing, which is terrifying. I love writing. My brain works faster than my mouth. And I'm not a book-learned man. I can't really hang out with pseudo-intellectual people. I really like short poetry. When I was growing up reading Henry Rollins and stuff, that's the type of stuff I really liked. It was digestible. It worked with my dyslexia, and it kept my attention. I've always just loved letters from Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, stuff like that. There were normal people just talking.
So for a while, I think I was judging myself too much. I'm like, "Oh, if I write, everybody's going to know that I'm stupid." But I'm like, everybody knows I'm stupid anyway. And for better or worse, they've accepted it. I just had no fun with it. I started drawing. I'm drawing, painting like crazy. And the music has been more creatively satisfying than I've ever found it in my whole life. I think it's because I'm doing stuff that isn't necessarily going to come out. The thrill of it. It's weird. This tour is doing good, and it's doing better than I've ever done. The Dunes thing has helped me so much. That band has just saved my life and introduced my music to so many people who never would have listened to me. Having time to do all the projects and work on so much, it's like a blessing.
With the upcoming The Sound of Animals Fighting album, and a seventeen-year gap between records, how did this come about? Was it something that had been in the works for a while, or did it all come together pretty quickly?
It was like, we put out this EP a little while ago, APE SHIT, and it was pretty easy to record and make. Then, honestly, we were just missing it. I think all of us were just texting like, “Hey, should we do something? Remember how fun that was?” I was still struggling a little bit when we did the last shows. It was really just like an obsession meeting an opportunity.
How would you describe the band’s lore currently? The new album definitely has a mythical feel to it. I remember back when the original album came out, in the early 2000s, there was so little information about who all was actually involved in the band.
Rich Balling is the true leader of the band. I am a hired gun, honestly. He came to me in the parking lot of the Chain Reaction with this idea. I had only just heard of RX Bandits and loved them. I was just like, “Fuck yeah, all right.” It was just a musical exhibition.
I remember at the time I was in Saosin. I was like, “Hey, this guy wants me to do this shit. Can I do it?” And they were like, “Nope.” I had to sneak out and do it. I had so much fun because I wanted to write. I could just go in and start singing, you know what I mean? It’s my trick. I love that. I love it so much, and I want to do it all the time. I was out there as a young kid wanting to show people that I could do it.
There were some narcotics involved in the first two records. But as Rich started putting the band together, it just got chewed into shape. We tried things out, and they either didn’t work or they did. I think we’re at a place now where the singers are me, Matt Embree, Rich, Keith Goodwin, and Matt Kelly.
Rich is just a visionary. He told me what he was thinking, and I was like, “All right, what do you want this to be about?” He just told me the album title, and I riffed on ideas of what to make it about. He named the songs. He picked the artwork. It was just like, “Oh, here’s the record cover.” And I’m like, “Sick, it’s my drawing.” I was like, “Okay.”
Oh, really? That's your drawing on the cover?
Yeah. I would have done a way better job at it if I’d known it was going to be on the album cover. But it’s just one of those things the project gives to me in my life, it comes up once in a while. I don’t really know what the lore is like on the other side of the curtain.
This new record is also my favorite thing I think we’ve ever done. A lot of the stuff is sprawling and weird. I got home from the Dunes tour in Europe, then had a Dunes tour in the US, and only had three weeks to do this. I had written some stuff while I was in Europe with Dunes. It was so hard. The songs were nine minutes long, eight minutes long. There were all these parts, and I had all this pressure. I had just finished the Dunes record, and I really wanted this to be good. I didn’t want to be too tired or show a lack of creativity.
I spent every day writing, recording, and coming up with ideas, then went to his house and tracked the vocals. There were so many times where I was like, “Okay, I don’t know what to do here. Here’s one idea where I start singing here, and here’s another idea where I start singing there.” Totally different melodies, different lyrics. I did that for a lot of the record where I didn’t really know what the best thing was because I liked all the parts, so I just sent them all.
Then Matt Embree, who produced it, put a lot of them on top of each other, all happening at the same time. I was like, “That’s cool.” He moved things around and really did a great job making something fun to listen to.
For the upcoming Sound of Animals Fighting tour, are there certain songs you’re excited to perform live?
All of the first acts, all of the first record, is so fun for me to play. I like hearing Keith and Matt Kelly sing “Wolf” because it’s so different live than it is on the record. It’s slower. You can hear it on the Live in Philadelphia album. It’s so good.
Getting to just hang with these guys — there’s a part in one of the songs on the first record where I just say, “What? Everybody else can be free now.” And every time I sing that part, it’s during this buildup, and it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever been a part of writing. Every time I sing it, I feel like the Lizard King. You know what I’m saying? I can sing anything. It’s crazy. And literally, there are nights where I’m like, “That moment alone is worth everything.” Every time it hits.
“Skullflower” is another one. Just singing those lyrics makes me feel happy to not want to die every day. It’s a thing I wrote when I had a death wish, and that’s been a theme. It’s cool to sing those things now with that wanting—for every day, for all the good shit and bad shit all together, the whole fucking burrito of it all.
Really just feeling it.
Like radical acceptance. Maybe not seeing things as good or bad. There’s this old parable about a farmer who has all these horses. His neighbor comes over and says, “Oh, you got all these horses. This is great.” And the guy’s like, “Is it?” Then all the horses break free and run away. The neighbor’s like, “Oh my God, all your horses left. This sucks.” And the guy’s like, “I don’t know, does it?” Then his son brings back three dozen more horses than the ones that ran off. The neighbor says, “Oh my God, you got all these new horses. This is so good.” And the guy’s like, “I don’t know.” Then the son breaks his leg on one of the horses. The neighbor says, “Fuck, your son broke his leg. This is terrible.” And the guy’s like, “Is it?” The next day the army recruiter comes, but he can’t take the son to war because of the broken leg.
It’s just like that: our perceptions fuck with everything. My judgment of things being good or bad, or what they’re supposed to be, needs to be audited constantly. So I’m cool being in this place in my life. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. It’s exactly what needs to be happening. All I know is whatever’s happening is exactly what needs to be happening so I can learn how to be a better artist, a better dad, better at helping people. That’s it. Fuck everything else.
We go our whole lives being like, “Oh my God, this anxiety, this depression, this whatever.” And then you realize: just allow it. Just let it be. And then it goes away, or it alchemizes into something else. Writing is a really beautiful thing. People talk a lot of shit on music critics, but I think a lot of that comes from people getting hurt because they need things to be a certain way to feel secure in their relationship with their craft. But I love people talking about music. Everybody should be talking about music. Everybody should say what they think about music. You’ve got to check your relationship with your craft, because not everybody is going to like your shit, just like you don’t like everybody’s shit.
I’m lucky. It’s helped me build a good relationship with what I love so much, which is just being in that flow state and sharing it with people who like it. There’s not much more to it. I think there are a lot of people from my generation of artists who thought they were going to be big stars, or influencers, or popular. They thought there would be some kind of external validation. But even if you get it, it doesn’t last. It’s not sustainable. And then you get stuck doing this job, but you don’t have the heart for it anymore, because you need your fucking paycheck or else it’s not fun for you.
But if you can’t have fun when shit’s down and out, you’re never going to have fun.
That internal validation.
It’s weird. When nobody was showing up to my shows, I was like, “Man, what am I doing wrong?” Now that I’m having this little tiny thing where people are coming to the shows and it’s going well, I’m like, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try to enjoy this. Don’t you dare hold on to one little bit of it, because it doesn’t mean anything.”
It didn’t mean anything when nobody was there, and it shouldn’t mean anything now. Just do your best. Do your best. And that’s it. You can hold on to nothing.
Between your solo work, L.S. Dunes, The Sound of Animals Fighting, Fucking Whatever, and Let’s Start a Band — am I missing any active projects?
I’m also in a little band called True Fine Mama, a Little Richard cover band from Doylestown. It’s with some buddies of mine who used to work at the local skate park. I play drums, and we just do local shows. It’s pretty awesome.
How do you approach the lyrics for each one? Do they come from separate mindsets, or do they bleed into each other?
I've recently been trying to figure out the modes. When I'm with Dunes, there's a group conscience. They give me the freedom, like, “Hey, you can make this about whatever is going to give you the biggest charge.” I can bring that to the table. But I also find that I want to express stuff that's going to be relatable for the group conscience. I’ll think about them. I wrote a song about Frank hurting his arm and not being able to play guitar and needing surgery.
With Fucking Whatever, I've been trying to figure out the modes because I usually just approach everything like, I'm writing. More recently, I started doing more thematic stuff where I'll be like, “Hey, what do you want this to be about?” I wrote a bunch of songs about my mom and dad, just inspired by their life, thinking about what stuff could be like for them. I never really did that before. In the early days of my writing, it was just word salad — throwing stuff in. Maybe the chorus was about something, maybe the verse was about something else. Back then, I was just trying to sound as much like Cedric from At the Drive-In as I possibly could.
How do you keep organized in terms of scheduling out all these projects with writing, touring, recording, and promo stuff like this?
I have a good team. My team is impeccable, and they know me well. They know what a flake I am. They know I’ll say things. A great example is I wanted to make a video for The Sound of Animals tour. I wanted to sing “Skullflower”. One night I was like, we should make a little video for “Skullflower”, me and Keith and everybody just singing it somewhere cool. My partner Chris, who runs Born Losers Records, was on tour with me. He was like, “Hey, you want to do that today? Hey, you want to…” There was a day where I was like, not today. Then it was, all right, we’ll do it.
When I was like, “Hey, let’s do a book,” he was the one who kept following up on it, like, “Hey, can you get this done? Can you get this in to me by the end of the week?” Between him and my manager, my day-to-day person Kristen who is in Nashville, I have a great team. If it wasn’t for them, nothing would get done. I’d just be chasing butterflies — you know what I mean? Chasing waterfalls. My time management is all organized by them. I’m getting better at it, but it really is by the mercy of my teachers.
What inspired you to revisit your first solo album, Avalon?
Lots of things. The first thing I would say is that over the years, we recorded those songs before we were really a band. I was playing with Keith and Tim, and they just filled in and we jammed. Then throughout the years, those songs just changed so much live all the time. I would love these versions of them that we would play live. Then when I would listen to the OG, I’d be like, “This is cool, but I know it can be better.” After doing Boom. Done. with Keith, I was like, “This could be fun to do as a project. Maybe we’ll do a song, maybe we’ll try one thing.”
I also saw some time for myself where I was like, “Oh, I could tour when Dunes is done. I could do some shows.” If I did that, then I would have the versions of the songs out for people. I could play them and be like, “Yo, check these out,” and not have to be like, 'Oh, there’s a pressure of having to do all new stuff.' I just focused on making them really pretty and lush.
It was like another obsession and opportunity thing where they just met up. Keith really made this. If you’re going to redo something, you gotta do it like that — where it makes sense. It makes it sound like the first one was demos. There’s a charm to it, but I think there’s more charm in the new one.
It was really just that the songs feel so different to me now, too. Sometimes I’m singing about things, and I’m thinking about different things, and I just wanted to put a new little thing on it.
And you wrote a book about it as well. How was that process for you?
It was weird. How is it for you when you write? Do you draft?
Yeah, I do.
How many drafts do you go through? Just until you got it with the piece?
Several. I’ll think I’m done, but then I’ll keep going back and tweaking it.
That's why it was so weird, because with a song, it's like you got this internal thermometer. You're like, it will ping, you're up, you're good, it's at the right temperature. With a story or with a poem, with the word without the melody there, it's like, how do you ever stop? How do you ever stop adding or subtracting? That's where I'm struggling with right now.
I like having the kind of voice and the kind of style that doesn't resonate with everybody. I'm not interested in that. I feel like the modern-day music industry, the way it all is, the ocean of it and the streamings of it and the lakes of it, it's just washed everything down where it's like, oh, if you're going to be super huge and really successful, it's almost like you can't be really great. And it's almost hard to find stuff that's really great out there. You got like Turnstile and Doechii and stuff like that that can break through because of the internet.
Then it's just like, as soon as they get out there, it's like ants to a chip. Everybody just starts trying to exploit it, and everybody starts trying to copy it, and everybody starts trying to trend it. You water one flower and the whole garden grows. I'm a small enough artist that it doesn't really matter. But it's very rare that you see an artist like Turnstile make it mainstream, get their weird individual, unique style of music out there for everybody to enjoy. It's rare.
It's not really a goal of mine to try to be a big artist. I think there was a time in my life where I was like, I wanted it, but I ate my own shit. I was like, okay, with labels saying stuff and people saying stuff. Then you have enough failure in that realm where you realize, oh, their failure is someone else's success. It all really goes back to just like, do I like what I'm doing? If I'm enjoying what I'm doing, then it's like, yeah, I'll be all right. You always win.
I have enough people that I can make something cool. I don't have to do crazy shit. There's enough people out there that really love my shit for one reason or another. They let me do what I want. And as long as I'm happy with it, they're down to support it. And I'm not trying to fuck with that. You know what I mean? Grow that? No, dude! That's how you hurt that. I'm trying to keep that right where it is. They like my drawings. They like my weird songs about cats. They like my songs about wanting to kill myself. I'm good. I just want to keep that forever.
I think artists really hurt that by trying to grow it all the time. I'm done growing. I'm 43, dude. I'm done growing. I'm getting shorter now. I'm like my grandma. You know what I mean? I'm getting shorter. I'm getting smaller. Downsized.
There's such a draw to people who are vulnerable and honest. When people are vulnerable and honest, that resonates with people. But when you're just trying to grow it for the sake of growing it, you can feel that.
Here's the thing. If you find that your vulnerability and honesty is becoming a thing that you're using as a trend, then what the fuck is it? It's not vulnerability, it's not honesty. For a little while, I was doing all these interviews that were just all about being bipolar. And I really want to break the idea that people who are bipolar should feel weird or not want to talk about it. I'm also not trying to exploit that. There's enough of that. It's a fine line. I want to help people. But I don't want the fact that I was a drug addict to be the focal point of absolutely everything. That's silly.
You see artists capitalizing on an overdose? Come on. I'm not trying to do that. And I felt like that was happening a lot of the time, where it was like, 'Oh, you're capitalizing on this stuff.' Everybody wants this story. Extremes go back around, the pendulum swings. I want it small now. The idea of constant growth is built into this capitalistic thing about it, and it's like, nah! I want to make something nobody likes. I want to make something that only the freaks are going to like. I'm going to make something just for the freaks. I want to put out an instrumental album with no lyrics, just oohs and aahs and weird shit, and put it on a Dropbox link. I just want to have fun making music.
My kids are old enough to see everything. I'm going to give them a good example. They can have fun in this world. You don't have to get a big job. You don't have to get a big house. You don't have to get a big car. You just have to have a good community around you.
I'm looking forward to the Anthony Green dub album.
I might. I might. Yesterday, we played three songs in Reno at sound check that were all dub style.
I’ve noticed you post a lot of dog pics while on tour. Is that something where people know you love dogs and bring them by, or are they just chance encounters?
I walk around all day long in the city that I'm at, I just meet dogs. I love animals so much. I like cats too. It's one of the benefits being on the road. Being away from your family. You don't see your kids for a while. You're working, and then you don't have a lot of intimate touch. You get this dog kissing you and loving on you. For a second, it charges your battery. I had a website years ago. I had a Tumblr called Dogs I Dig. It was just pictures of me and dogs. I tried to make stats about the dogs. Now, it's an excuse for me to kiss dogs.
You’ve also been posting a lot of pics of your drink of choice lately, Martinelli’s Apple Juice. Are you pursuing Martinelli’s sponsorship?
I don't know if they would hook up an artist of my size, but I would do so much shit for Martinelli’s. I would write a song for them. I would be their spokesperson. I'm not sure they want a guy like me repping their product, but I would do whatever. Not a lot of sponsors I would chase like Martinelli’s. I think it would be really cool. It's my favorite juice. The whole show last night was about Martinelli’s. It was crazy. I was holding up a bottle of Martinelli’s Apple Juice. People were cheering for it. We could wrap the bus. We could travel in a big apple. The Needle Drop is going to be the start of all this. In a year from now, we're going to have some tour based just all about Martinelli’s Apple Juice. I'll be playing in an apple suit.
I feel like I owe you an apology. I wrote that article [on TND] about you asking a mom not to bring her six-month-old to the show. I definitely wasn’t trying to shame anyone — I just thought it was good fatherly wisdom you were sharing. Also, I loved your response about fighting babies.
Oh, you wrote the baby article?! You didn’t say anything bad. It was so funny, dude. I don’t have Twitter, so I got blown up about it. People were like, “Dude!” No, it was great. I think I either wrote that Instagram story about fighting babies in the middle of the night or the next morning, and then the next day I was like, “Oh my God,” because people were taking it too seriously. Sometimes people take things too seriously, and you can’t really joke about stuff. I mean, I deserve the right to joke about fighting babies.
I also noticed a lot of people who weren’t young parents were coming down on them and judging them. I spoke with this person privately, and I was like, ‘”Yo, I’m so sorry.” And she was like, “It’s all good. It was cool.’ But that’s how you learn. I think the mentality in the whole scene needs to change — from giving each other grace to helping each other learn. There are boundaries to that, too, but being kind goes so far. Just treating people with kindness first. That’s not going to happen on the internet, and I’m not looking for that, but just in general.
That whole thing broke my heart. But! It was funny. I see kids at shows all the time, and I think there’s a learning curve to all that stuff. I was going to see Lana Del Rey at Coachella with my little kids. I brought them all the way to the front, and then she was about to start, and we got stampeded. These two ravers basically parted the seas and saved my life with my children. I’ll never forget them. They were in full rave gear, had pacifiers, and they saw that I was about to drown in Lana Del Rey fans. With these two kids, they just cleared the seas and helped us get all the way to the front of the main stage. It saved my life.
Well, ravers, if you’re reading this, thank you for saving Anthony Green and his children’s lives.
Thank you. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here.
Do you have any plans for 2026 that you’d like to share?
Nope! Let it be a mystery. But I will say, next year is going to be cool!
I feel like it’s going to be tough to top this year, but I’m excited to see what you’ve got in the works.
It's going to be good!
The Maiden by The Sound of Animals Fighting is out now.
What do you think?
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