PopHorror Let's Get Scared
In many ways, the boys of thrash metal band Chained Saint are just your typical teenagers. They’re stressed about high school graduation and college, spend their downtime immersed in Pokémon and Legos, and have a deep affinity for Dr Pepper. But at the same time, they’re far from average.
Following the 2024 release of the debut LP Blindside, which was produced by Alice in Chains legend William Duvall, Chained Saint — comprised of vocalist Sean Sterling, 18, guitarist Ethan Kahn, 17, bassist Sebastian De Avila, 18, and drummer Cameron Cottrell, 18 — is taking the metal scene by storm with a unique blending of ’80s thrash metal and modern riffs. Fan demographics are wide-ranging, from kids and teens to Gen Xers, the latter of whom witnessed the dawn of Metallica and are grateful to Chained Saint for making them feel 20 years old again.
With angst-fueled songs like “Animosity” and “Corrupt to the Core,” Chained Saint is quickly making a reputable name for itself. After playing Welcome to Rockville in Daytona Beach last month alongside the likes of Green Day and Linkin Park, Chained Saint is gearing up for its very first headline tour, which kicks off June 19 in Orlando and runs through July 19 in San Antonio. The band returns to Orlando in November to play Vans Warped Tour.
Before hitting the road, Sterling, Kahn and De Avila spoke with PopHorror about their whirlwind career thus far…and how this is only the beginning.
PopHorror: You guys have so much going on right now! You played Rockville recently, you have your very first headline tour coming up. How is everything feeling? Do you ever stop and think, “We’re just teenagers from Florida. How did we get here?”
Ethan Kahn: I think about it, especially because I graduate on Sunday. We’re doing all of this and I haven’t even graduated high school yet. At the same time, it’s pretty cool.
PopHorror: Something that I love about you guys, your fanbase is really wide-ranging. There’s teenagers and then there’s people who are 50-plus-years-old who probably saw Metallica in their heyday. Did you expect to have such an expansive following? How does it feel to have all of these generations uniting over your music?
Sean Sterling: I never necessarily expected to have this. We never expected to have a large following at all. It was never an expectation. I just go into it every day being appreciative for the fans that we have. But it’s very awe-inspiring to be able to look at the demographic of people watching and see that it’s not really a demographic. It’s just people. It’s just people who love to listen to it.
Ethan Kahn: Especially the older fans, I feel like they’re a lot more protective over certain bands and certain sounds because they grew up with it. But to see that they enjoy it and accept us into that is pretty cool. They must really like it.
PopHorror: Can you talk about some of your influences? Were you inspired by those ’80s thrash metal bands like Metallica?
Sebastian De Avila: It’s really a mix. It used to be the ’80s stuff and now it’s a lot of modern stuff too.
Ethan Kahn: For me, I definitely love the older stuff. Some of the newer stuff coming out, especially in the hardcore scene, I really love it and I’ve really been liking what these bands have been putting out. It’s definitely showing in our recent writing, which is also pretty cool. I think people will get to hear that soon.
PopHorror: You have your first headline tour starting in a few weeks. How’s the prep been going for that?
Ethan Kahn: We’re really ready. Three weeks, I think, from yesterday is our first date. So we’re talking about the setlist and all that stuff, and just trying to be ready and make sure we’re all locked in together.
Sebastian De Avila: We want to put on a good show for the fans.
PopHorror: What would you say a typical Chained Saint show is like?
Ethan Kahn: Fun! We’re just up there trying to have fun and we hope you’re having fun as well. That’s what it’s all about to us.
PopHorror: Do you have a favorite song to play live?
Ethan Kahn: Definitely for me, it’s the new one [“1,000 Tons”] that we’re putting out very soon in June. We’ve been playing it recently live and I just love playing it. It’s so much fun. And seeing people hearing it for the first time at recent shows and they enjoy it, it’s like, “Okay, it’s pretty cool that they like the new sound.” For me, it’s that new one.
Sebastian De Avila: If we had to pick one from the record, it would be “Stronger Than Stone.”
PopHorror: A lot of bands have a certain pre-show ritual or something that they have to bring on tour, either for good luck or just to stay grounded. Do you have anything like that?
Ethan Kahn: We drink a lot of Dr. Pepper! That’s like the one specific that we need, but that’s about it. But we all just talk before.
Sebastian De Avila: Make sure everyone’s head is in the right place. Sometimes people get nervous. It always happens, but we at least want to keep it positive.
Sean Sterling: For me, it’s the vocal warmup. That’s the only thing that stays consistent.
PopHorror: Are there any cities on the tour that you haven’t been to that you’re really amped to play?
Ethan Kahn: A majority of them.
Sebastian De Avila: We’ve never been to most of them.
Ethan Kahn: They’re all equally for me just really cool. We’re gonna take pictures in front of each state sign that we go in, so that’s gonna be pretty cool.
Sebastian De Avila: New York will be fun. And Texas. I’ve never been to Texas.
PopHorror: I’d love to hear how Rockville went. You guys were there with so many legends, so many of my personal favorite bands. What was it like just walking onto that stage in front of such a big crowd?
Sean Sterling: The only thing I can say is that it was really awe-inspiring. It was a realization. It was like, “Oh, my God. We’re really on this festival stage at Rockville in front of a huge crowd, and everybody’s here to see us.” Everybody was just lined up and ready. There were definitely some nerves, and then we hit “Corrupt to the Core” and we were like, “It’s fine. We’ve got this.”
Ethan Kahn: It was really cool especially to see people in Chained Saint shirts around the fest. Personally, when I’m going to a festival, I’m very particular about what day I’m going to wear what shirt to make the most sense with the music. And I feel like a lot of people are definitely that way as well. Some people came that day wearing their Chained Saint shirt and they were going to rep that the whole day. It was pretty cool. Even people that I had never met, just seeing that they got merch, that was my favorite part.
PopHorror: Was this the biggest show you’ve played so far?
Ethan Kahn: Yeah, absolutely.
PopHorror: Did you get to meet any of your idols backstage?
Ethan Kahn: We talked to Bill [Kelliher] from Mastodon, which was great. But before the set, we were the first ones on and then we were kind of just watching these bands that went on after us as fans.
Sebastian De Avila: We were more watching from the back and stuff like that.
Ethan Kahn: I went into the crowd for Municipal Waste because I’m just a fan for that.
Sebastian De Avila: We were just being fans and kind of taking everything in. We weren’t trying to bother anyone either. We don’t know how they are.
PopHorror: What’s it been like balancing being a normal teenager while living this blossoming rockstar life? Is it a weird dynamic?
Ethan Kahn: It was, to be completely honest, more difficult last year than it was this year because as a senior, the workload was definitely less than being a junior. But I still have to go to school for those eight hours, then I’ve got to do my work and all that stuff, then I’ve got to have practice and try to make that work. But I think we’ve done it well. I’ve tried to make it work as best as possible because I want to make time for this no matter what. So I’ll just do what I have to do to make sure it works.
PopHorror: Can you talk about how your debut LP Blindside came together? I understand that William Duvall from Alice in Chains produced it. How did that partnership come to be? What was the creative process like, especially not using any sort of computers or AI?
Ethan Kahn: That album was just really a lot of learning. Working with William, he’s so professional and it really rubs off on you. He had a vibe around him that made us want to work as hard as possible on the record. It was about four weeks of just going at it, making sure everything was perfect, capturing our sound the best way that we wanted to. And working with him, he taught us so much. He taught me so much about creating a wall of sounds instead of just heavy guitars. The whole recording process, I learned so much. Total masterclass.
PopHorror: What topics inspire your songs? Do you draw from your personal lives, the craziness of the world or a bit of both?
Ethan Kahn: A mix of both current feelings and also responses to current situations is how it goes.
Sebastian De Avila: It’s whatever we’re feeling at the moment.
PopHorror: Since you guys are a newer band, is there anything that would surprise people to learn about you?
Ethan Kahn: I box, so I don’t know if people would think that [from looking at me].
Sean Sterling: I do martial arts.
Sebastian De Avila: I like building Legos.
Sean Sterling: They’re really big into Pokémon.
Ethan Kahn: We’ll be opening Pokémon packs all the time just for fun.
PopHorror: How did the band start? How did you guys all come together?
Ethan Kahn: We all became friends and had known each other through this music program that we went to. I had known him [Sean] for a long time because we had been jamming and then I met Sebastian at that program. We just became friends and started jamming. Then we had Cam come along, who couldn’t be here. We just kept jamming and just found the perfect people. We played a cover setlist of a ton of songs that we thought were cool and eventually started writing songs. We were like, “Well this is actually pretty cool. This is the stuff we were playing as covers, but our own original stuff.” We kept writing and eventually got to the record.
PopHorror: Do you have any advice for other young, up-and-coming bands who want to do this type of thing?
Ethan Kahn: Keep doing it. Keep going at it.
Sean Sterling: Be patient. It’s not gonna happen overnight. And I think what we have to remind ourselves too is, it’s definitely a process and there’s so much that goes into it. You can’t base your entire professional image on what you see online. Instagram shows you the highs, the highlights. They don’t want you to see what happens behind closed doors. They don’t want you to see the business meetings. They don’t want you to see the countless hours you put in practicing that riff or the countless hours you put in to make sure you can play it perfectly before you go in the studio. You just have to really take your time, practice, focus, lock in. If you’re passionate enough about it, it will happen.
Sebastian De Avila: And make sure you do it with people you like. You have to have fun with it. If it’s not fun, there’s not much point in doing it, to be honest with you. There’s much easier things to do in this world.
Ethan Kahn: Make sure you do it with people who are equally as passionate.
PopHorror: Going off of your comment about social media, I feel like it’s a double-edged sword nowadays. On the one hand, it may be easier to get your music heard via TikTok and other platforms. But at the same time, there’s so many bands trying to do it. Can you speak to that?
Sean Sterling: I did a summer program at NYU and we talked about this exact topic and just the way the internet pushes music from buying actual vinyl records to Spotify. But one thing that I think is important to know is that there’s over 100,000 songs uploaded to Spotify every day. So not even thinking about Instagram yet, that’s already a certain wave of noise that you have to try to break through. You think, “Oh, Instagram!,” but then you think about the amount of people trying to do exactly what we’re doing. There’s an aspect of luck, there’s an aspect of skill. Finding and trying to build a team of the right people, a team of people who know what they’re doing and know how to use the algorithm to your advantage, it’s importantly crucial. And again, it takes time. You have to be discovered. When people discover you, that’s when you can put more fuel in the fire, per say, but it’s all about that discovery.
PopHorror: Well, you guys are definitely putting fuel in the fire! Looking ahead, is there one main goal that you hope to accomplish at some point, whether it be playing a specific venue or touring with a certain band?
Ethan Kahn: The one thing that would be really cool is to play the Metro in Chicago. I saw the Metallica video from them live at the Metro. That was one of the first videos I saw of a live metal show and I was like, “Oh, this is so cool.” So if we could just get on the same camera angle if we ever play there, just to see it side by side, that would be so cool.
Sebastian De Avila: I just hope one day, even if it’s just a small club, to pack it up completely. That’s a goal.
Sean Sterling: I already hit one of my goals: to inspire and touch people with the music I make. I feel like that’s the end goal always. Music, in my opinion, is always something that should be touching somebody. It’s a communicator, it’s a way to share a message. I think that as long as we can impact somebody, that’s really what matters.
PopHorror: To wrap up, since we’re PopHorror, if your music could be featured in any horror movie, what would it be?
Sebastian De Avila: That’s a good question! I actually don’t know.
Ethan Kahn: Well let’s figure out the song first. What song would we put in a horror movie?
Sean Sterling: I think “Corrupt to the Core” because the intro does have a little bit of horror.
Ethan Kahn: I could see “Locked Away” though.
Sean Sterling: Oh, “Locked Away!” It would have to be something with a vampire movie because of the concept of being locked into something.
Ethan Kahn: What’s a classic? Give me a classic! I don’t watch horror movies.
Sebastian De Avila: My favorite movie’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We’ll do that!
PopHorror: That works! Do you have any final words, why should people come out to the tour?
Ethan Kahn: You’re gonna have a lot of fun. We’d love to see you guys and play for as many people as possible. Come out and have fun, it’s going to be a good time.
Sean Sterling: And check out “1,000 Tons,” dropping in June. We like it a lot and we hope you like it too.
Thanks for speaking with us, Ethan, Sean and Sebastian! Keep up with Chained Saint at chainedsaint.com, on social media and all music streaming platforms.
