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Australia's Alarum are one of the few bands that have blown me away with their originality and technical skill upon hearing them for the first time in the last couple of years. They are a band that should appeal to fans of bands as wide-ranging as Death, Atheist, Extol, Joe Satriani and The Dillinger Escape Plan.
Phil: First of all, how's the U.S. tour been so far? It's not very often that you see Australian bands in the States.
Mark: It's been awesome, man.
Matt: We're really enjoying the country.
Mark: Better than expected.
Phil: So I take it that you haven't been to exposed to much of our TV or radio ads, then?
Matt: We're loving that… what is it called? "Girls Gone Wild." (laughter)
Mark: We haven't seen too much.
Matt: We've seen those ads; we're loving that.
Phil: You haven't seen the Outback Steakhouse ads then, I take it?
Matt: No, we've heard about it, but we haven't seen them.
Mark: It's nice to eat it for once without having to wrestle it to the ground first. (laughter)
Phil: Okay, how was the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival for you guys?
Mark: Well, we were on quite early and sort of unprepared as far as knowing what kind of equipment we were going to be using, but it was good fun, man. It was a good warmup for the tour.
Matt: We had a great response from the people that were there.
Phil: About how long of a set did you get?
Mark: It was about twenty minutes. On the tour we're doing half an hour.
Phil: Alright, now tell us a little bit about the jazz influences in the music. Like what specific artists have influenced you?
Matt: We grew up listening to a lot of metal and jazz fusion, as well. All of us like every different style, so we listen to a lot of speed, thrash, death, black… Just being a drummer, Dave Weckal, a lot of people might know he's one of the world's best drummers.
Mark: Virgil Donati.
Matt: Virgil Donati is an Australian drummer, one of the best double kick drummers in the world; he's awesome.
Mark: Stuff like Chick Corea and Holzworth, Satriani, all those sorts; we're big fans and they've been a big influence on all of us.
Matt: We're massive fans of the band Death; Chuck Schuldner - we were all pretty upset when he passed away.
Mark: A lot of bands that sort of bridged the gap between metal and jazz and fusion sort of would be influences on us and sort of inspired us to go down the path of sort of expanding what we can do ourselves.
Phil: Alright, now I understand you guys have received a lot of critical praise in Australia, the Kerrang Awards and such. How come it's taken so long for us to find out about you in the States?
Matt: It would have a lot to do with our album getting released here thanks to Willowtip Records.
Mark: Our first album that we did ("Fluid Motion"), that was eight years ago, but by the time we'd actually recorded it and released it, it was kind of outdated to who we were as a live band, so we weren't going out on a limb to promote ourselves worldwide. It's only been in the last couple years since we've released our latest album ("Eventuality") that we started to get ourselves out to the world.
Matt: And now it's available all over the States and all over Europe thanks to Willowtip setting up a deal for us with Earache in Europe, so it's been really good to get it out there, you know.
Mark: We may have been, the four of us, together for ten years, but it's only been in the last two or three years that we've actually had a product that we wanted to put out worldwide.
Phil: Alright, just one last question - what can we expect from the next album?
Mark: More of the same and more.
Matt: We don't really have any sort of band meetings; we just get together and write. I imagine it will still be very heavy, it will have technical and melodic elements…
Mark: Jazzy… just putting the four of us together and seeing what we come up with.
Matt: More original Alarum stuff.
Phil: Okay, thank you very much!
Mark: Cheers, man.
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