5 Seconds of Summer Say Tour Life Made Them ‘Depressed’

5 Seconds of Summer may greatly appreciate their fans, but the grueling grind of tour life? Not so much.

As the foursome preps for the arrival of their second studio album, Sounds Good Feels Good, they recently told Australia's Daily Telegraph that living your dream as a rock star is not without pitfalls that can take an emotional toll.

"I told Luke ‘I’m f--- ing depressed, I f---ing hate this, we’ve been on tour for five months, I’m living out of this piece of s--- suitcase with only three wheels on it,” drummer Ashton Irwin told the paper. The boys opened for a leg of One Direction's Take Me Home Tour back in 2013, picked up some dates at the end of 2014 and spent seven months of 2015 on the road with their own Rock Out with Your Socks Out tour, which ended in September. That's a lot of time away from family, friends and the creature comforts of home.

Though bassist Calum Hood joked, "He was way more sad about his suitcase only having three wheels," the band also struggled with roller-coaster feelings of rock star live versus returning to real life. Ashton continued, "This friend of mine said when you are a musician and you are touring all the time and get to the level we are, you’re an astronaut. You go up and then you come back down to earth and you can’t really explain what is like up in space. Only your fellow astronauts get it."

Ashton, Calum, Michael and Luke rely on each other as they deal with the side effects of success. "We try to talk to each other and try to pull each other through," the drummer said. "You realize there are huge ups and huge downs. And it gets tiring, you know."

And, as countless stars who've experienced breakups can tell you, the hectic travel schedule of an entertainer tends to fray the ties to the people that stay behind. "With relationships, it’s hard. People forget about you at home because you have been away for so long and it becomes this thing where you have just to keep going and not fall off the rails." The band says Sounds Good's closing track, "Carry On," was inspired by that need to just push through the rough stuff.

The band wanted to dig a little deeper on their sophomore effort than they did on their self-titled debut, due in part to their connection to fans. "We can create a bigger voice than any media outlet, and to people our age, I think we can speak the truth better than anyone else can. That’s where we want to go with this band," said Ashton.

But Luke Hemmings says that being part of the New Broken Scene they sing of on "She's Kinda Hot" isn't about being a serial moper. “The New Broken Scene isn’t this big sad thing where everyone is sad. It is a positive thing to me, that’s why we called the album Sounds Good Feels Good.”

By the look of the teaser for the "Hey Everybody!" video — which drops tomorrow, and appears to parody the opulent Hype Williams-directed rap videos of the '90s — they're managing to have plenty of fun, too.

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