How are you?

I’m good man, we are currently getting ready to go back out on the road, and spread the word about THE WAR WITHIN.

You’re about to release your new album THE WAR WITHIN. After the success of THE ART OF BALANCE (your last record) and indeed your debut FEAR WILL DRAG YOU DOWN how did you go about writing your new record? What kind of progression where you looking to make and also what kind of things did you want to keep?

It’s really hard to say. We just went the way we always do, we just don’t care (laughs). You know, we don’t think to hard about things like that, we don’t think “oh we need to make ART OF BALANCE part two because it did so well.” We try to clear our heads and just write the best songs we can without worrying what types of songs were more successful than others, or anything like that. So as far as the new record goes we where just trying to represent where we are at, just basically trying to be interesting without ending up writing a carbon copy of the previous record. So yeah, it’s a pretty simple process…

Who are you about to go of on the road with?

Candiria, Full Blown Chaos and All That Remain.

I first heard of you guys a couple of years ago when I saw you supporting Kittie in the UK and I picked up your FEAR WILL DRAG YOU DOWN record. You’ve made a lot of progress as a band since then and you’ve also gathered a lot more recognition. What’s it like for you guys now you’re able to tour the world and just being a signed, renowned act?

It’s great you know, I mean its surpassed any expectation I think anyone in the band ever had. Years ago we didn’t even expect to get a record deal let alone tour the world. This is what we want to do so all that’s left is to hopefully get paid for it!

I know it’s been a while, but how did you guy form?

From playing together in different local bands, John and I hooked up after a death metal band I was in split up, and we started doing some stuff. We wanted to write metal that didn’t have any limitations, we didn’t want it to be classed as hardcore or thrash or death or whatever we just wanted it to be different. We just wanted to do all of it and not worry about it, stylistically anyway. So we all got together in about 96’ and we just took it from there. Our first record was out 98’ so it didn’t take us to long.

You play guitar in the band, what type of gear do you use?

I’m a Marshall man, but guitar wise I had a couple of custom Ibanez guitars. I stick ‘em straight through a Marshall. I’m not into effects, I just use straight up valve distortion, the sound of rock n roll!

Got any guitar idols?

Oh God yeah, Zakk Wylde, James Murphy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, they are all over the map as far as styles go. Steve Vai and players like him, yeah they are amazing but I couldn’t sit down and listen to a whole album of it. I’ve always been a rhythm guy, that stuff is too flashy for me, like when I listen to Metallica I hear Hetfield not Hammet… I love the guitar solo, but if I was gonna play it, it would to be in the front. That’s why Vai and Satriani is just noodling to me, it looses my attention after a while. It’s not a case of I wouldn’t love to play like them, I would but it’s depressing cos you know your just never going to be that good…

You’re an extremely heavy metal rock band, and obviously musically talented, but in today’s climate of commercial music, and all this pop metal (Linkin Park, Rasmus, Evanescence), where do you see metal going? Do you think perhaps it may end up fading into insignificance in the face of the huge popularity of this almost manufactured metal. Or do you think eventually real metal will begin to break into the more commercial market? Where do you see metal going?

I think real metal is gaining more publicity. I don’t think it will ever disappear, it never did disappear, it just got pushed into the underground by the grunge stuff and all that stuff that came out in the early 90’s. But its not like real metal ever went anywhere, and I think a lot of people are beginning to sort of re-discover it in a way, and I think the same thing will happen. The industry gets excited when something new comes along and almost take it away, but it won’t destroy it’ll just push it into the underground again, it’ll never go away. I mean all those bands you mentioned, Chimaira, Killswitch, we grew up on the scene with them doing local shows and little independent tours and we’ve been doing that for eight years. So hey, if we are to stubborn to not give up by now, I doubt we ever will. But it’s the same old story man, the music business is 90 percent business and 10 percent music…

You guys are a hardworking band, doing a lot of touring and stuff, but what do you do chill out in your spare time?

We don’t have a lot of spare time to tell you the truth. I mean, most of my spare time is spent on band stuff, like prepping for the next tour or sorting something out, like a merch order for the next tour, or answering e-mails , or any of that sort of thing. So it does take up a lot of time, and doesn’t leave much time for anything else. If there is time we sometimes go out and check out the cities we visit, but in most cases we don’t even have the cash for a guitar tech, so we have to get to the club, set the gear up and sort everything out, load in, load out that sort of things. We don’t really get that much time to ourselves

Earlier this year you guys played the main stage at Britain’s home of rock, Donington Castle, what was that like for you?

Oh, it was amazing, looking up and seeing all the Iron Maiden backdrops above me, it was pretty killer, and quite a trip. I mean all the shows we do are good for different reasons, like having fun or causing trouble. Cradle of Filth are always good for that, whenever we go on tour with them something always happens. Children of Bodom is another one. But playing festivals are always amazing situations to be me and just generally an amazing experience to do. Tokyo was another good one, and we just played with Judas Priest a couple of weeks ago in a casino, so that was another good one.

You guys have been around for a while and I can hazard a guess you’ll be around for a long time yet to come. So what are your plans for the future?

I’d like to keep being able to do this, and not have to worry about going to work in a mall or something, like after it’s over you know, or like when we get too old to do it. It’s just I think we are all lucky to be able to have this as a career. I think we have been above and beyond any personal expectations; we worked for what we have and think we are lucky to have what we do.