The future is now for Asleep

March 1, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

For the better part of the last decade, Youngstown’s Asleep has been a band filled with promise.

Through nothing less than hard work and persistence, the quartet — Todd Kaden (vocals/guitar), Jon Dean (guitar), Cory Snyder (bass/vocals), and Shawn Logan (drums/percussion) — has had its moments, opening for The Deftones, as well as sharing the stage with The Flaming Lips, Death Cab for Cutie, Sonic Youth and Kings of Leon.

Still, there’s a sense of now for the rock band with an experimental slant. The act decided to embrace the sense of urgency for its third studio effort, the recently released “Unpleasant Companion.”

“It’s more raw, for sure,” Dean said. “It was recorded on analog tape and as a live band. So it captures what we’d sound like if you came to a show more so than ever before. It’s a bit more spontaneous than some of the things that happened in the past. It was recorded in four days as opposed to a few weeks, which the other two records were done in. So it’s definitely a bit more on-the-fly-type of situation.”

In talking to Dean about the band’s past, it’s clear the foursome isn’t happy with the way its second effort, “Between, Above, and Below,” was recorded. The guitarist said the album ended up being a sterile affair that was overproduced.

Vowing not to make a mistake, Asleep, which in the past has garnered comparisons to early Soundgarden, Radiohead and Foo Fighters, made the trek last year May to Chicago to work with indie rock super producer-engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey, Page and Plant, Iggy Pop and the Stooges). The results are anthems in the waiting such as the moving “Deserted” and the darker, drone-y “Big Sister.”

What was it like working with a legend?

“Well, he doesn’t glow in the dark,” Dean laughed. “He’s just a dude making records. For me it was great because he has the ethics of somebody I look up to in that he’s incredibly successful but he’s also incredibly community-minded and still sticks to his own terms. It’s this situation where he could have become this big corporate cog so to speak and he never let that happen, which is amazing, especially after pumping out a Nirvana record. For me, that was incredibly inspiring for somebody to do things on their own terms and continue to work with bands and music for all the right reasons. Because it’s not always easy.”

Continuing on for as long as they can is the driving force behind Asleep. In fact, Dean said the band’s upcoming hometown show Friday at Cedars Lounge is a send-off party for the group’s third straight appearance at the influential South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference.

Armed with its new album, the band has a feeling that after nearly eight years it can make the jump from regional act to rising national band. That sentiment is confirmed in the group’s promotional material, which says with “Unpleasant Companion” the band “is ready to take the world by storm.”

Dean laughed, “We are ready to embrace the uncertainty that is the big world out there.”