Madina Lake is a genre defying band made up of brothers Nathan (vocals) and Matthew (backing vocals and bass)Leone along with Mateo Camargo (guitarist) and Dan Torelli (drums). Chicago's Madina Lake had the privilege and honor of working with esteemed producer David Bendeth on the eagerly-anticipated Attics to Eden, the experimental follow-up to their 2007 Roadrunner Records debut From Them, Through Us, to You. He had worked with the likes of The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Breaking Benjamin. The two months that the band spent with Bendeth was a humbling experience for them.

"David broke us down -- he was like a drill sergeant," Matthew said, of the first time Madina Lake played some of the new material for Bendeth. "I was totally frazzled by the end of the first day. We thought it would be easy, because we knew the songs were there. We just thought we'd come in, and record them. But when we played them for him that first time, he just ripped us apart. He completely deconstructed us, and it hurt bad. But the pain was well worth it."

"It was challenging making this record," echoed Nathan, of the band's hard-nosed producer. "But at the end of the day, we are super proud of how it came out. I think we blew the first album out of the water. I guess artists are artists, and in our experience, you bump into people who...let's just say some have a level of talent that qualify their attitude, and some don't. Bendeth is clearly a guy who does."

At the end of the process Madina Lake had a huge collection of genre-defying, impassioned and infectious tunes which often meld the ethereal, hypnotic elements of Muse with the riff-rife potency of Linkin Park. The band had found its true sound. Matthew describes the album's sound as a sonic, rock and roll assault on the senses, and that's just what the band was aiming for.

Madina Lake's first LP bore the modern rock radio hit "House of Cards," and the follow-up single "Here I Stand" garnered heavy rotation on MTV and Fuse. The Leone brothers, whose mother tragically passed when they were teens, pour their life experiences into their songs, and that helped them quickly rise from basement gigs to one of 2007's biggest festivals.

Ever since their start, the band set out to release three albums which would congruently tell the story of Madina Lake, a small town of their own creation, which would serve as the canvass for a much larger message. The first chapter focused on the town socialite, who goes missing, and the reaction the town's inhabitants have. They plan to tell the story over three records.

It is not necessary to know the story in order to appreciate Madina Lake's poetics.

"I think people have the same basic sets of emotions," Matthew said. "The spectrum of emotions is not that big, so whatever you're talking about, I think people can file it under their own experience."

"If you do something that's not true to your heart, its going to be contrived and its not going to connect. As much as we try to follow this story line, we make sure they're based on real events and real things that we've gone through, things we've experienced, and feel passionately about."

PCM's Rebekah caught up with bassist and backing vocalist Matthew Leone at Warped Tour in Camden, NJ.

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