A conversation with Maroon 5 led Austin-formed rock band Culture Wars to rework their newly released debut album, “Don’t Speak,” which was originally conceptualized in 2019. Released via AWAL, “Don’t Speak” is not based on No Doubt’s ’90s hit of the same title, frontman Alex Dugan clarified.
“It took a while. I mean, 2019 I think is when we kind of started it. We’ve done a lot of things to it and changes on it. That’s when we started but I don’t think we had an album to record or ideas that we liked enough until 2023, 2024 or something like that. Well, I guess 2023, because then in 2024 we went on tour and we came over there,” Alex told The STAR via an exclusive Zoom interview.
After returning from a LANY tour, they scrapped half the album, chose to rewrite it and nearly started from scratch. The rock record is now out, featuring tracks such as Typical Ways, Lies, It Hurts and Bittersweet, among others.
“So it’s kind of all over the map but I think that’s just to the point of us taking this album very, very seriously and wanting to feel super proud of it and be like, all right, even though it was the old title of If Not Now When, just to be able to stand behind the album and be like, all right, that was our first album. Whether it works or not, we feel like we did it,” Alex went on.
“I’ll be impressed with myself still in 20 years for that album. Not the previous version of it, but this one. And so I think that’s where we wanted to be, especially after Maroon 5 told us that they were touring their first album for three years. And we were like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to tour this album for three years. We need to rewrite it.’ So that was the final nail in the coffin for those songs.”
Culture Wars is currently embarking on a worldwide tour and they aim to come back to the Philippines to perform.
“Yeah, that really stuck in our heads when they told us that,” bassist Dillon Randolph added.
“Because as openers, we play a shorter set. And when you start talking about, ‘OK, we’re going to go play our own shows and headline, we have to play the full album. We have to play more songs.’
“And we all looked around and were just like, ‘Do we really want to play the rest of these songs?’ If we don’t really, we should write some new music, which we did. And that’s where the song Don’t Speak comes from and half of the album comes from.”
Culture Wars has previously opened for bands such as Keane, Wallows, LANY and of course, Maroon 5. Alex, Dillon, guitarists Caleb Contreras and Josh Stirm, and drummer David Grayson have also visited the Philippines multiple times, performing during Maroon 5 and LANY shows in the country.
The theme of the entire album is “just the band,” Alex described. “It’s a record that’s just really about the band, the five guys playing. We’re just five guys from Texas playing rock music. It’s really about the band. I think there’s parts of it that are biographical and things like that. But beyond that, it’s really just about us and the record that we made together as a core group of people.”
“We wanted to make a record that was not necessarily stripped back but an instrumentation and feeling more like the music that we loved,” chimed in Dillon. “And we’ve always been working towards this, but we feel like we finally arrived there. So definitely a lot of good guitar parts and all of that stuff, but really good songs underneath that and making sure that those two things work together.”
The Austin-formed rock band has just dropped the debut album Don’t Speak, which reflects the five-member group’s journey.
Culture Wars is currently embarking on a worldwide tour and they aim to come back to the Philippines to perform.
“We’re going to continue to roll out even more of the world tour into 2026, into 2027. And that will include the Philippines 100 percent,” Alex assured the Filipino fans.
Dillon was equally thrilled, sharing that their Filipino fans have been sending messages, urging them to return to the Philippines. “I would say we think about our — or at least I think about our fans in the Philippines almost every day. I mean, I think about our shows playing with LANY at the Philippine Arena and in Cebu. I think about their shows a lot. And I think most of us in the band do.
“We sincerely, sincerely appreciate everyone in the Philippines. I think, you know, I still get messages. We still get messages on our personal Instagram. Like if people know we’re traveling for a show in like Mexico, even, I’ve had a lot of the fans in the Philippines be like, you know, ‘Have a safe flight. Come back to the Philippines soon. We love you.’ So people around the world don’t really do that. And they do in the Philippines. And it really means a lot to us.”
Dillon is looking forward to tasting local dried mangoes when they revisit the country, while Alex is eager to explore cafés and try different coffee beverages, aside from eating his favorite dish sisig.
