Dallas Green is answered the questions.So, how did it all start?

Alexisonfire started in 2001 in Sepetember, by a bunch of guys who were in different bands in St Catharines, Southern Onario in Canada. All the bands broke up at around the same time and we all wanted to keep playing music so we started a band and called it Alexisonfire. Then we just started playing shows as much as possible. That was the goal, and then we made a record, and then a couple more records and toured a lot. And here we are.

Tell me about the new album and the title…

I think it’s a contrast of dark and light, and all the new, the good, the evil. There’s a lot of underlying themes running through the record We had written the song ‘Young Cardinals’ and We were going to call the record YOUNG CARDINALS but when we wrote the song ‘Old Crows’ and it seemed to fit in so we called it OLD CROWS YOUNG CARDINALS. It just kinda made sense.

Julius Butty has produced this and previous albums…

We’ve worked with Julius on three records now and it just seemed to be more comfortable. He’s almost like a member of the band it would seem. It’s something like a comfort level that is perfect when we’re with him.

Influences?

As far as influences go I don”t think what we listen to overtly influences the band. We listen to so much different music that I think we’re able to drawer from them a little bit but mostly we’re influenced by bands we don’t like. You know when you shear a song or see a video that you just don’t like and you just know that we have nothing in common with them, and that’s not what you want to do. Those things I find are really good, the music I really love, most of it makes me upset in that I feel it’s too good. Like ‘why am I playing music when I can just listen to this?’ So that’s kind of how I feel, I listen to things that are really great.

Tell me about the title track of the new album…

‘The Young Cardinals’ is about the innocence of nature and how nature seems to know what to do with their lives. Like a cardinal knows how to hunt for food and wake up and feed its young, teach its young how to feed, and that’s it, they know what to do, whereas humans go through life struggling to find what they’re meant for. It’s like the innocence of nature and the lack of the complicated human, and so it’s about the balance of those two things.

And the video?

I came with the idea for the ‘Young Cardinals’ video about three years ago. We live right by Niagara Falls so I thought it would be fun to do a video of us being soaked by one of the wonders of the world. I thought vusually it would look good. So we never ended up doing it for CRISIS but ended up doing it for the first single off the new record. It turned out exactly the way I hoped it would. It looks amazing just having this big falls and kids jumping around. It’s great.

Looking forward to Reading and Leeds?

We’re playing two shows today. We’re playing the main stage and tent as well so that’s going to be fun. The main stage is great for exposure and being able to say you’ve played the main stage at Reading and Leeds. I think most of our kids will come and see us in the tent because it will be more like an Alexisonfire show as opposed to Alexisonfire playing Reading and Leeds… do you know what I mean? Like we played the main stage last year and it was amazing but I think we all really loved the times we played the tent a little bit more. It just seemed more intimate for us.

UK tour?

We’ve toured with Anti-Flag three times now and they’ve become good friends with us and so it will great fun to come back to the UK and Europe with them. It’ll just be lots of fun as we’ve not done a full UK tour in quite some time, and it’s also one of my favourite places to tour.