Heavens: Biography

• Overview
• Discography
• Biography
• Related Artists

• The Static Age
• The Dear & Departed
• Interpol
• Editors
• The Aeffect
• The Killers

• Wire
• The Sisters of Mercy
• Brian Eno
• Depeche Mode
• Television

• Thieves Like Us
• F-Minus
• Matt Skiba
• Alkaline Trio
• Ben Lovett
• Blunt
• The Traitors

Genres:

Rock Music, Alternative Rock Music

Decades Active:

2000's

Heavens is the musical collaboration between friends Alkaline Trio guitarist Matt Skiba and FMinus bassist Joe Steinbrick. Relocating from Chicago to Los Angeles in the early 2000s, Skiba became a housemate with East Coast native Steinbrick. Spending downtime together hanging out and listening to records, Steinbrick one day played Skiba some instrumental tracks he'd previously recorded. Instantly falling in love with the songs, the two soon began writing together over multiple bottles of wine. Steinbrick initially coming up with the music, the two would lay down the tracks together at home and Skiba would later add lyrics. The resulting songs, which heard Skiba taking vocals and Steinbrick handling the instruments, allowed both guys to tap into influences like the Sisters of Mercy, Wire, Brian Eno, and Television not normally heard in their primary punkoriented bands. In the span of a week in August 2004, the frame of their debut album, Patent Pending, was finished. At that point, both went their separate ways, Skiba to record Crimson with the Trio and Steinbrick to continue writing for Thieves Like Us. Coming back together in the spring of 2005, they entered the studio with producer Ben Lovett to flesh out the record, though additional schedule interruptions would occur before the finishing touches were complete. In February 2006, Patent Pending was finally done and issued on Epitaph that September.

- Corey Apar, All Music Guide