What numerous lineup changes? This is the all original lineup! (laughs)

We want to try and keep the energy up, that was always the game plan. When you’re a brand new guy to the band this is a lot of music to take in like our singer for Prog Power. He had two and a half weeks to learn the songs and Adam, he only had a month to learn all the drum stuff. It’s a lot of pressure on them but now that everyone is familiar with the material and we’ve done all these tours, a month in Europe and then the Amorphis tour, then a tour of Canada and now we’ve been on the road for seven weeks with this tour, they have all come a long way.

Stu was no problem at all as our lead singer. In his previous band there were no vocal harmonies so I was real surprised that he jumped in so quick and he also said that he learned a lot from working with the harmonies. Troy we’re still working on because there are a lot more aspects of the vocal harmonies that we want to do but it still takes time because he’s still learning the vocal process. He’s got a good voice too. We want to keep the three vocal part intact because it is a trademark of ours.

Pure stupidity really. (laughs) We grew up with Iron Maiden and stuff and Judas Priest and I thought it would be really cool to have the actual vocal harmonies. When you go see a band like Dream Theater and they can’t really cover all the vocal parts from the albums but for our band I wanted to cover whatever we have on an album live. We didn’t know any better I think and so we combined the death vocals and the clean vocals, it was just something we wanted to hear in our music.

That’s a tough call. I don’t know because we don’t really fit anywhere. We don’t fit anywhere but we do fit everywhere. We have elements of Power Metal and Death Metal, that’s why we can get away with each tour. I think if you’re into Death Metal you’re gonna hopefully appreciate what we are doing because we have the solos and the Death Metal vocals but there are some purists out there that aren’t gonna like us. We just play our songs and try to win people over, it’s all we can do and we can’t really worry about it too much. The Hammerfall tour could be tough too the fans might be hard on us as well. This tour however, we’ve been pretty lucky. About eighty five percent of the shows we go over really well.

Its politics. Unfortunately you have to sell a certain amount of albums before the label will invest more money into your band. Basically we started selling thousands of albums without any tours, this was all through word of mouth. The label saw these numbers and thought, “What would happen if we got these guys out on the road?” so now we have a booking agent to book us all these shows. You have to have people that believe in you and we believe in the album, but talk is cheap you have to have the numbers to back it up and luckily that’s where we are at now, we’re getting these tours because we’re selling.

Tim: That’s the goal but its all up to the public. You could put out the best album ever, try and write a hit song and then its not or you can just simply write a song that turns out to be a hit you never know. Of course if a label decides to push a particular band or song that helps a lot too, it helps to have the album in the store and have people able to buy your music. It really is up to the buying public and they can be really fickle on what they pick.

Adam: It's tough that way, you have to be really careful. You have to think about what you want to accomplish and what you would be really happy playing and make sure that you don’t sacrifice the joy you get from writing the music and playing it and not sell yourself short creatively just for the possibility of having a hit or a good single.

Tim: It’s a crapshoot, you never know. You have to write music you like and then if it goes over, great.

Adam: And if not, at least you’re happy with what you’re writing.

Tim: Right. Because you have to play those songs for the next two years and if you write a bullshit song keep in mind, you have to keep playing it over and over and that would drive me fucking nuts.

Adam: We’re gonna hate all these songs by the time we’re done touring. (laughs)

We’re gonna wait a couple of years, play this out as long as we can (laughs). Our A&R rep wants us to go in January. We’re touring through August, September, October and have November and December off and people probably have to get back to their jobs and whatnot eventually. So hopefully we will have the album by summer of 2006 because we have to keep rehearsing the new songs. We have three decent new ones now but still have to work on the other seven.

Definitely. Everyone is going to play different form the last session, everyone has different ideas and different fills. Stu is going to have way different vocal stylings than Chris did. Me and Rob are still writing a lot of the riffs so we are still the same songwriting team as on the last album so we will have the same Into Eternity sound as well.

(laughs) No definitely not, he takes things one step further! Even on some of the high falsetto parts that Chris wouldn’t do live at times Stu will do them but a lot of times he will go even higher because he’s got to strut his stuff. He also has a lot to prove as “the new guy” so there’s obviously a lot of pressure on him so he really pushes it. He does a fantastic job, he’s got great pitch and is just simply a great singer.

Tim: We’re not exactly a Judas Priest type band but we could have elements. I grew up on Priest, they were my first couple of albums so we could definitely have styles of it. I know that one of Stu’s favorite singers is Rob Halford as well.

Adam: I think those elements are creeping up here and there. In at least one of the new songs we have already we make sure you can hear the Halfordesque notes.

Tim: But the music will be much more different than Priest ever would be, much more technical.

(laughs) It’s funny you mention Kick Axe because they have actually contacted us now because they’ve heard what we are doing. When we went to Europe with Judas Priest they’ve been like brothers with us now, they come out to the shows and when they come into Regina they email us and whatnot. It’s cool that bands that were doing it long before we were ever thinking of it treats us with that type of respect, I think it’s amazing. They’re great guys, Kick Axe, they just reunited and are doing shows again, really old school.

Its easier to break into Europe than it is to break into the States. Our first couple of albums were released in Europe long before we had a US deal or even a Canadian deal as a matter of fact. Europe was the first continent to embrace us and that built the buzz enough for the US to sign us and then bring us over for touring. Canada is hard, our home country is hard to get our name out, a lot of people don’t even know that we exist in Canada. Of course everyone wants to break into the US market because there’s like three hundred million people or however many and if you can sell albums in the US then you’re doing really good. That’s why we keep coming back and touring because people have no idea who we are.

You would have to ask them. Jim got a government job in town and has a new girlfriend so he’s doing that scene, working, doing something stable which is probably really smart in retrospect. We’re out here sleeping in a bunk, not showering, although I smell great. Those guys haven’t done too much though unfortunately which is why they aren’t in the band anymore. We need people who are willing to sacrifice everything, this isn’t an easy life that we are living. Hopefully they will get something going though.

How much time do you have? You sacrifice everything, any type of life that you ever want to have back home. My girlfriend is hanging out there alone and she’s not happy about it. I can’t even own a dog because who is going to look after that and work and just everything. But then I think about how when I was thirteen and I would see all the metal videos and practice my guitar it is all I’ve ever wanted to do. Before all that other stuff came it was always guitar and music and I can’t ever turn my back on that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did. You sacrifice everything to do this. Most bands though don’t realize this, “Oh its cool you’re in a band,” and all that but I don’t think they understand what really has to go into it, it definitely isn’t easy, but this is all I know how to do. It’s too late to become a garbage man I think… maybe not do you have any trash I can take out? (laughs)

Maybe that if you get signed that everything is ok. It’s all about money. If you have enough money your band can be huge, if a record label can put enough into any band’s promotion you will be huge. If you sign a contract it really doesn’t mean shit unless you’re going to go out there and do it and build up your fan base. I didn’t know any of that stuff either when I first started out, I thought I would start a band, someone would find us and everything would be all great. But then we never got signed, it took us close to ten years to get it going from when we were doing shows in 93, 96, to when we got signed in 2002. We could have been signed a lot earlier but every record label wanted us to be either simply Power Metal or Death Metal and we didn’t want to compromise, we kept our hybrid and record labels didn’t get it until now.

What we would do if we did play Ozzfest is what every other band does and still do club dates on the off days. Ozzfest unfortunately now is the biggest tour in the US, I’ve heard on Sirius that all but like three shows have been sold out, Most concerts are doing three thousand, five thousand people like Sounds of the Underground, but Ozzfest is more like thirty thousand people it is a huge opportunity for any band, On the other hand you’re playing that extremely small stage and you have to pay a hundred thousand dollars from your record label, it’s pay to play unless you are headlining the side stage. For us at the moment I would much rather play the clubs for our hardcore fans and go out and meet them after the show which maybe we couldn’t on a big festival like that. Both things are equal, its good to play festivals and its also good to play clubs in front of the people. At big festivals the crowd could be off finger painting or whatever it is that they do on Ozzfest but in a club the only entertainment is that one stage.