Back in June, I had the good fortune of seeing Anthony Sanders (aka Empty Heaven) perform at the legendary Rusty Nail in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Now he’s out with Swear, his sixth (!) album of 2025. To find out how he does it (and how the rest of his tour went), I dropped him a line…

Last time we talked was the show-that-almost-wasn’t at the Nail in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, back in June. How was the remainder of your tour compared to that night, and what have you been up to since?

That show put my expectations through the ringer! I had to get spiritually-girded for a show cancellation, which is a pretty sad event for a working adult traveling on his own…and as soon as I made peace with the idea of there being no show, bam. The power came on. I did a full emotional rotation.

The rest of the tour went SHOCKINGLY well. There was even a show in the UP of Michigan that should NOT have gone smoothly, and yet, it did. It was a research failure on my part; I booked a show in a college town (I did not know it was a college town) in the summer, on the hottest day of the year…and it was right by the lake. Naturally, everyone was in the damn water, and didn’t want to be in a building watching people attempt to put on a show.

However, people began trickling in, and a few songs into my set, there was an undeniable crowd in there. Wonderful and enthusiastic people. I will 100% be going back there. I got the best sleep of my life in a sleepy, clean motel in the trees. I will never forget it.

One other interesting kink that got smoothed out: in the middle of the tour, I had to drive back to Chicago for work. I am a dueling pianist professionally, and Saturdays are very difficult to take off. I had already taken off too many this year, and in order to be allowed time off for touring, I promised to be there on that particular Saturday. Thank goodness there was no car trouble or anything. (I will make sure I never have to stop a tour for work ever again.)

For your live show, it was just you and a piano, but your recorded output is more fully arranged and orchestrated. Do you have any plans to release a piano-and-vocals album?

Great question. There are a few albums like this, mostly live or live-in-the-studio ones, that have inspired me a lot. Notably Prince and Randy Newman. Also, Mark Hollis from Talk Talk has some pretty beautiful solo piano work. However, while I don’t mind being FULL-ON-EXPRESSIVE live, I’ve often found it translates poorly in the studio for me…it comes off too musical theater (a comparison that’s been haunting me for years). And when I play piano and sing solo, I often can’t help but be FULL-ON-EXPRESSIVE. I guess I just never want to make an album I find to be gauche.

That said, I am working (very slowly) on a new record that is, at the very least, piano-centric. Sort of the polar opposite of Swear in its placidity. I want to see if I can still retain my artistic voice while exercising restraint. Everything on it was written on piano, and the mix will center around it for sure. It’ll include a few things I’ve been playing live. So, I suppose the short answer to your question is…kind of.

Your latest album is called Swear. Do I remember correctly that it’s your sixth album for 2025?

Regrettably, yes, it is. I count EGGSONG as four, seeing as each section is long enough, and was rolled out as such. And earlier in the year, WAY earlier, I released a collaborative album with my friend John Hernandez called Surface Contradictions. Another out-of-character detour that was a lot of fun.

Where do you find the time to write and record so much music?

I write slowly now, far more slowly than I used to, but I record VERY fast. I try not to go and record anything with anyone until I am completely ready, with the songs fully conceived and composed. I have never been one to “experiment” in the studio, although I’m jealous of those that do, and I often love the results of it. I suppose it’s just how I’m wired. So that takes care of the recording aspect.

I used to write TOO fast, never drafting anything. Now, I really don’t mind luxuriating in the process and poring over details. I want to make every line potent. Thankfully, I’m a bit of a media freak, and tend to write while inspired by something I read, watched, or listened to…and this happens a lot. So there’s always an impetus, a driver. I try to write in dialogue with other things, other people, other ideas, even if they’re unaware of it (and they’re definitely unaware of it).

The announcement you put out on Bandcamp mentions that your fans might either love or hate this one. Why do you think it might elicit such diametrically opposed responses?

I listen to a lot of heavy music, a lot of loud and fast music, but I very rarely organically write in that way. These songs came out of a very odd process: learning to speak the language of metal and hardcore through my playing. Like, learning all the tropes. D-beat drumming, breakdowns, drop tunings, tremolo picking, etc.

And in a strange backwards way, learning the techniques actually allowed me to tap into the angry emotions those sounds are trying to represent. Even the loudest and most chaotic songs from my previous album are about dejection and sadness; I hardly touch authentic anger, ever. That is not true on Swear.

I’m sure hearing somebody like me, somebody who’s usually been earnest-to-a-fault in his music, dealing in Actual Anger might be an unattractive prospect. Also, if one has been a fan of what I do for a while, it just might be abjectly bad-sounding to them. It’s lo-fi and blown-out, and it features a lot more screaming than usual. I can understand that it might be an aesthetic turn-off.

But also, there might be people who have heard me tease out similar sounds before, but have felt shafted out of The Real Thing. So, they may enjoy this more intense iteration of what I do, and that would be great. It’s just aesthetically and emotionally coming from a divisive place, I guess.

You also mentioned that this album is pretty heavy compared to your previous offerings. What inspired that turn?

So like I mentioned above, I wanted to speak the musical language of the heavy bands I was listening to. Which means, my answer to this is kind of funny: annoyance. I was annoyed that I didn’t have these techniques at all. It made me feel like I was lacking something musically.

I’ve always liked punk and the fringier parts of the metal universe (notorious black metal albums, drone/doom things that siphon in non-metal listeners, etc.). But I moved to San Antonio in 2018, a town FILLED with that kind of music, and it forced me to fill in the gaps. It was hilarious to do my homework and come to basic conclusions…in Chicago, I loved weird metal bands like Xasthur and Liturgy…and then when I moved to San Antonio, I had thoughts like, “Damn, Slayer is a very good band!”.

So, I wanted to be able to play like everybody from Harm’s Way to OFF! to Emperor to Toxic Holocaust. However, obviously, all of these techniques and methods got filtered through my preexisting songwriting voice.

Despite its overall volume, the album also has plenty of quiet moments. That said, it also doesn’t fit the loud-soft-loud grunge dynamic of the 90s. How would you describe the relationship between loud and quiet moments in Swear? 

If you’re familiar with boxing at all, you’ve probably heard of the Rope-a-Dope technique. A guy just punches and punches and punches, and then gets exhausted, running on fumes. This is when the other boxer pounces and wins.

Anger, when not funneled into anything useful, just puts you in this position of deflation. You flail and flail, praying your connecting but never quite sure, and then like a popped zit, you just sort of shrink back into your skin, deflated, raw, and unsatisfied. Songs like “Scraped,” the final moments of “The Center of My Universe,” the silences in “Cop Car”…all of those instances are flashes of undifferentiated anger’s uselessness.

Before the Nail show, when we were all waiting for the power to come on, you mentioned that you used to compete in spelling bees as a child. Does that experience haunt you in any way or inform anything you do as a singer-songwriter? 

While it does not haunt me (although it apparently haunted me enough to bring it up to several strangers that day), it DEFINITELY informs how I write. I am interested in uncommon words, words that one will hunt for when trying to express themselves. I think they lay in waiting for discovery when someone is feeling a complex emotion. On a surface level, I also just think it’s fun to find underutilized words and put them in a song. It feels like taking somebody off the bench. Or, if the word is good enough, it’s like I got enough mana to play a big card in Magic: the Gathering. 

The real challenge is using them in a way that feels natural. A clunky diction move in a song will raise eyebrows in the worst way. It’ll make you sound like a goofy tryhard. Lord knows I do not want that. I’m already trying to beat the Theater Kid Allegations.

Any plans for 2026?

Yes: do not release six albums. That is a bad idea. I’m grateful anyone cares about Swear so far! 

I absolutely plan on doing the solo piano tour again. It went better than any touring I’ve ever done. I have a band put together that will definitely play locally in Chicago. Will we hit the road? I do not know. It is a mystery to me in the year 2025 whether I can successfully book a tour for a full band that everyone feels good about. Worst case scenario, everyone just takes a short vacation together where we lose money and meet nice people.

I will continue recording that piano-centric album I was talking about. No title yet. I am also in the band Kind of Like Spitting, a project based out of Portland that I started out as a FAN of, and I am sure we’ll be doing things.

So yes, recording and playing shows, trying to keep my impatience at bay regarding releasing new stuff. It’s so tempting to do dumb things like teasing songs on my IG stories. For what? The errant DM telling me, “sounds good!”? It makes me seem desperate. (I am prone to this kind of shit.)