The Word Alive’s new drummer is an Arizona resident named Luke Holland, AP can exclusively reveal. You can check out a video in which Holland introduces himself—and his mad skills—to Word Alive fans below. However, as frontman Telle Smith notes below in this exclusive statement, someone else actually played on their forthcoming album, Life Cycles:

When we ended our year of touring in 2011 we didn't realize those were the last shows TWA would play as a 6-piece. Shortly into the New Year we discussed the album and plans for 2012 with Dusty our keyboard player, which led to him deciding to part ways as touring wasn't his main goal any longer. About a month later Justin informed us that his heart wasn't in touring and progressing at his instrument (drums) any longer. We were completely understanding of both situations and as always, decided to move forward and find the best person to join the TWA family. Due to how close it was to us recording our sophomore album, Life Cycles, we enlisted our good friend and Arizona native Matt Horn to drum on our record.

Matt learned 17 songs in about a week and absolutely killed it on the record. However, Matt is in a great band out of Arizona called Sleepwalker. So while in the studio we sought out to find our actual replacement for Justin. One day I stumbled across a YouTube profile of an awesome young drummer out of Arizona, Luke Holland. I hit him up and asked if he'd have any interest in trying out for TWA. He was stoked and after going over a lot of material as well as him making a drum video, we felt we had our guy. Luke is a great dude with a strong commitment, and passion for drums. We're taking Luke out for the foreseeable future and we'll see how it goes! Hopefully you guys will catch a show soon and continue to have your support as we create the most exciting chapter for our band yet.