Well we’ve got five shows in France, then back to the US. For a week! Then we’re touring the Pacific rim, so Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, then we do the Soundwave shows in Australia and then one in New Zealand. We’re also playing in Japan and then we go home for two weeks, then we go back out for another month in the States.

Yeah, this is a lot of shows for such a small country. It’s one of those things; it’s a necessity to do a tour of this scale at some point. Normally when you do a tour of the UK you’ll do four or five shows, but on a tour like this where you’ll play a lot more smaller shows in places you’ve never played or hardly ever play builds the fan base. So next time we come over and play four or five shows they will be bigger and hopefully have some newer fans. We like to play every crevasse, play places were bands don’t go often and people really appreciate it. The strange thing is when you are in a city centre every day in the UK you feel like you’re in the same city centre every day. It feels like I’ve seen the same things everyday for the past two weeks.

So the US tour you mentioned sees you out with one hell of a touring line-up; you guys, Skeletonwitch, Nile and Hour of Penance. Have you given any thought to the tour yet?

Of yeah, we’re really looking forward to the shows. I personally try not to think to far ahead as I’ll get this feeling of being overwhelmed, and there just being too much to do. It should be really good though, we think the package is really strong and it is Hour of Penance’s first time over in the States so that is going to be cool. There are a lot of people who want to see them. It is a very metal tour which makes me really excited. We did Summer Slaughter and that is a very diverse tour, with lots of bands we wouldn’t normally tour with. These bands attract a much younger crowd than we’d normally see at our shows; the kids come out for the Whitechapel’s of the world. The guys who are a little older and into the older school metal tend to come out to see us.

On the topic of touring, since the release of “Ritual” all you guys seem to have done is tour, tour and tour again. Is touring something you still get a kick out of or is it a means to an end in promoting the band?

From time to time you have days where you’d rather be home, then you’ll have days where you’ll come off stage and it’s like “wow that was a lot of fun”! It does become like work for sure, as you spend so much time away from home you get into a mind set that you think “I only need to survive couple more weeks”, but it certainly changes as you get older. When I was twenty one it was like why would I want to go home I’ve been home for twenty one years, let’s just go. Eight / nine years later, I’m ready to go home. It’s a necessity for sure but it is a truly amazing job. Where else could I look the way I look? It is the ultimate freedom, and when you’re at work you are at work for a month at a time, but it really isn’t that bad. The only real down side is the down time you have.

So how do you deal with that? How do you stop boredom kicking in?

We have about fifteen minutes of work earlier in the day when we load in, then we’ll help set up gear which kills some more time. Then you have to hang out and wait while the tech guys does his thing like change strings and all that stuff , then the sound guy will do his business; so an hour to an hour and a half later we’ll do our real sound check which will take about another hour. Then we are done but that gives us hours until we play, so then you just have to find things to do, be it you have friends coming out to hang or read; I play a lot of video games. A lot of video games! But you’ll explore, go and get food or find internet to talk to your loved ones at home. My day more so revolves around finding Wi-Fi and talking to my wife. I have a phone I use for messaging and then a phone I use for Wi-fi when I’m over here, like most people we all have our I-phone. There is a lot of down time, but the best term to describe it is “hurry up and wait”, and that is pretty much it. You’re always trying to be somewhere almost early just to do something and then wait.

But no complaints?

No complaints at all! The band supports us all and we make a living out of playing music so it’s a dream. I mean we do it smart, the trick with this, particularly if you are going to play metal is be smart with your money. To many bands insist on going out on a huge tour bus every single tour they do and a million tech's along for the ride. Unless you are making huge money it is just to much because it is all coming out of your pocket. I mean over here (UK) we can't drive so we'll share a bus with some of the other guys  to make it cheaper but in the States we still do van tours, and we'll only take two guys out with us. We set up our own gear and we load all our own stuff; being thrifty with your money that way can really save you cash in the long run. We've been fortunate to have reached the level we have, I mean for extreme metal all our minds have been blown that it has gotten to this point.

What is the writing process in the band? I mean how does a TBDM song take shape? Given the change to the elements on this album was the writing process harder, easier and/or different than on previous records?

The writing process is always the same. When we write a record the funny thing is we don't get together in a room and practice. I don't think I practiced with any of the guys other than once before we went into track drums. Everybody writes on their own at home. Brian and Ryan who write all the guitar stuff and record in pro-tools with a drum machine which creates the dynamics and rollercoaster of the song, when they have something solid then they send it out to everyone else. If we then have any ideas as to how to change anything or if we can't play something we'll talk about it. Then I just learn it! I get the skeleton of the song and make it me and real. I mean I have to make it sound like a real drummer rather than a drum machine. I think for "Ritual" the difference was we're older and have put out enough records to be able to step back and see what people liked verses what maybe they didn't react well to. We always need to evolve and do something new while not straying to far away from what people expect. If bands stray to far away from their sound you risk alienating your core fans, it's really tricky. You have to change and try new things just a little bit of the time. We knew there was a whole new world of things we should try and given how successful these tracks have been live it just means there are even more possibilities for the next record. With the theme of the record it needed to be more, each song needed it's own identity. The lyrics and guitar work so well together on this record, so we know what we need to do more of and that was it. Everyone is totally on the same page. Brian and Ryan both know what they should do, they split this album 50/50 and what they came up with was amazing. They totally impress me.

The success of "Ritual" has been phenomenal, you couldn't have imagined that the record would sell 13,000 copies in the US in the first week of release and hit position 31  on the Billboard 200 chart. But with all this success does their come a weight of expectation?

I think that happens with every record, every record you do you worry about the next one. You never want people to think that your new record isn't as good as your last, but the fear for bands is that you'll never put out a record that was better than the last and the next one be better than that, and the next be better than that. Each record is a product of it's time that means some people will be drawn to it more than other people dependant on what is going on in their lives at that time. "Nocturnal" was like that for a while, that was the record that people latched onto and to some "Deflorate" wasn't a par to it but to others it was the best thing we'd done.  I mean "Nocturnal" was almost a come back record for the band, they had gone through member changes after "Miasma" and it was a dark time for the band. People were like "are this band going to get their shit together or what"? The band was off the road for a long time, well a long time for this band anyway. So when the record did finally came out it just felt like the right time and as a band we felt we knocked it out of the park. However we had to follow the record up and we felt we did that but not everyone does.

We are just really comfortable with Mark. Jason Suecof and Mark are partners, and Jason mixed "Noctural", "Deflorate" and "Ritual" and after "Nocturnal" we went with Mark record everything and have Jason mixed it. They know what sound we're going after for sure, they know the guitar sound we want and they know their metal which makes them good at what they do. It matters for sure. We're very close to them, and I'm so comfortable in tracking drums with Mark Lewis that I just don't want to track with anyone else. It is such a good friendly vibe that takes all the stress away in the studio, we just work well with each other.

So stress in the studio. Is the studio an enjoyable place for you and the rest of the band? Is it creative or just a means to an end?

It is stressful and rewarding at the same time. You are looking at all these songs and all this material that honestly you aren't perfect at playing. You can sort of play it as you're at that point where you are still changing things while not changing so much and you know at some point you're going to have to play it perfect. Some bands clock in and clock but on the last couple of records we've been adamant about doing things a little more organically. We want to be all natural unlike some bands that align everything to a bridge so it is just perfect, which just isn't real life. We try to play it perfect but still be human and sound like us.

It's getting tougher. Well you have to play anything that you've done a video for because that is going to be popular....hahaha. If you do a video people tend to like it so you've got to pick those songs because if you don't people will be mad. Then are certain songs that have become crowd favourites over the years and people just demand them, so you have to pick those, but you have to leave yourself enough time to play the new songs. I mean we want to play the newer stuff, we play almost half the new record live on this tour. Our set is getting progressively longer and longer, which for me as the drummer makes me want to cry. For playing this kind of music playing anything over an hour is killer.

Stylistically the band have always quoted numerous bands as direct influences from traditional metal through to your more extreme Death metal. How do you pull all this together to create your sound, is it like a bun fight?

No not at all. Everyone comes from a different school of music. I mean before Brian started the band I don't think he even listened to Death metal. So the obvious thing to do was start a Death metal band! Everyone has an appreciation for Death Metal, there are a few of us that have a big collection of underground brutal Death metal while Brian is really into his shred stuff....which shows. People change also as they get older as you calm down. Trevor is like a metal encyclopedia, his hobby is to collect metal records, he has the biggest collection of music ever. If there is ever anything I want to know about metal I just ask him. Everyone has a punk rock background, we've talked about doing a NOFX cover record forever. I kind of grew up on Country music but then I found Slayer and for a while it was only Slayer!!!  It progressed to Death Metal and Grind and now I'm back to listening to Country music. I'm not really into anything that has come out in the past ten years. Music has changed and we figured it out recently why we're not so much into these new Metal bands, and it's because the younger kids who are into this stuff they didn't grow up on the Big 4 like we did. Their Big 4 would have been Slipknot and/or Korn, so for them tuned down guitars and real slow chunky stuff is what they are used to. We know what Black Dahlia should sound like and we all want it to sound the best it can.