Sam: Why are you guys putting out 2 different albums in such a short time?
Peter: "We find it more interesting than just doing an ordinary album, we've become a bit bored with the whole idea of recording a roll after 'Blackwater Park' want to do something different. Besides have...you know my original plan was to make a really heavy album. I had alot of mellow parts I wanted to use as well, so a friend gave me the idea to do two albums, so that's why we did it."
Sam: Was it a consious decision to put out the heavier one first?
Peter: "Yeah, I think the company wanted the heavier one first because the other one 'Damnation' is a bit of an expiriment, so they wanted a 'proper' so to speak, album. For us both albums are equally important."
Sam: Do we get any sneak peaks of anything off of "Damnation" on this tour?
Peter: "No, no we're going to do a separate tour for that album. We're going to have a keyboard player with us and we're going to do 'Damnation' songs and remakes of older mellow songs so to speak."
Sam: Yeah, because your older material was alot more in the death metal vein.
Peter: "Yeah, you know, but we had a few mellow songs on each previous album, so we're going to do some remakes of those songs together with the new 'Damnation' songs once we get out and tour for 'Damnation'."
Sam: Are you going to come over here for that tour?
Peter: "I hope so."
Sam: Your older albums seem to focus more on traditional death metal, when did you decide to add in the mellow parts?
Peter: "Ah, it's just...we've all been growing up with heavy metal kind of music, back in the 80's those bands that we listened to Scorpions, and Iron Maiden, and Priest, they had some mellow songs on there. So that was like...I love those kind of mellow, metal songs so to speak as well. So it wasn't like a decision that we've going to incorporate this into our music, it was very natural because we like both heavy and mellow kind of music."
Sam: I noticed especially on "Blackwater Park" some more 70's-style influences creeping in.
Peter: "Yeah, you know I'm listening to loads of 60's and 70's music so...well, 'Damnation' is very much 70's, it's sounds like a 70's album."
Sam: You guys ever think of touring with Porcupine Tree?
Peter: "Yeah, we've been asked a couple of times, Steven Wilson will be calling me up and saying 'do you want to tour?, you know we have this tour' but we haven't had the opportunity yet to do it yet. But I'd very much like to, because, you know they're my favorite band, good friends of ours, and I think it would be a good package, so I hope so."
Sam: Has your popularity over in Europe been growing as much as it has here in the U.S.?
Peter: "Yeah, it's kind of sky rocketed with 'Blackwater Park' because before that we were, you know, not many people knew about us. But after 'Blackwater Park' we got a new record label, we got a proper label here in the states and all of a sudden we sold much more records, and you know we're a headline act so to speak, which is fine."
Sam: Are you guys planning to go over into other countries like Mexico and Japan?
Peter: "Yeah, for 'Deliverance' and 'Damnation' we more or less plan to tour everywhere, play some gigs eveywhere that we can. We just got proper distribution in Japan so we're going over to do a couple of gigs I guess, Australia, South America, Mexico we want to go there as well, pretty much we want to go everywhere... that has a scene."
Sam: Have you been offered any of the big festivals that are happening over in Europe over the summer with Metallica and Iron Maiden?
Peter: "I don't know, we don't know about the gigs that we're gonna do, we have an agency that's booking all the gigs and we told them we want to do everything, so I guess we're going to do a few festivals, yeah."
Sam: Anything else that's going on?
Peter: "We're going to be busy the next couple months touring, we just did the first date on this tour last date on this tour yesterday in Montreal. It's a 2 week tour with Paradise Lost, then we have 2 days off back home, then it's a 6 week tour of Europe."
Sam: So you're only going in the U.S., up and down the east coast and then the west coast?
Peter: "We're just going east to west, we're not going down south which is a shame. But we plan to come back in May and do more gigs like in TX, and Oregon etc."
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