Billy Talent are finally returning to the music scene with their foxy new album Billy Talent III, released on July 13. As they prepare to take on the UK festival circuit and unleash their hot new single, I caught up with the guys to see how the past few years have been treating them.
Hello there pretties, what’s going on? It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you!
Yeah, we’ve been busy, busy busy, spending time with our families and writing our new record.
You’re planning to tour the US with Rise Against and Rancid this summer, how excited are you for that?
Yeah, that’s going to be all July, it’s going to be fun, we’ve done a lot of shows with Rise Against in the past so it’s just like going back and hanging with family. Im going to try and get Tim Armstrong to reunite Operation Ivy. It’ll never happen, but I’ll try.
You’re also coming to the UK for a couple of the festivals, which are you most looking forward to?
Both! Download main stage is going to be a great experience for us and doing Reading and Leeds with Alexisonfire and Anti Flag on before us, when we’ve toured extensively with them before, should be a lot of fun!
I’m excited to see you at Download, eeek! It’s my first time! But anyway, your new single Rusted From The Rain has just come out, to anyone who hasn’t heard it yet, how would you describe it?
It’s a rock song! It’s a mid-tempo song and it’s got one of the greatest guitar solos ever!
Better than one by someone like Slash?
Hum, it’s up there.
Even more exciting, you’ve got a new album, Billy Talent III, which is due for release in July, can you sum it up for us in just five words?
Very, very, very, very good.
I like it, that works! So was there any process you went through when writing the album?
Ian. I was really inspired by him. It all starts with a guitar riff, and he creates some riffs and then John and I sit together endlessly making it as good as it can be and then when that’s as good as it can be we start to get the lyrics and the melodies going and we start to play them live together and then we change them again. The amount of work that Ian did was very inspiring to me.
Would you say it takes Billy Talent in a new direction?
Definitely.
Do you think your old fans will love it and you’ll bag yourself loads of new fans and you’ll create a Billy Talent worship-land?
That’s the plan… how did you know? Haha, no, we really pushed the envelope on this and worked our asses off and tried some new stuff. Going into it we didn’t really know what we should do and during the mixing process we did some things to the songs that worked so well and it just makes it so much more beautiful.
If you were going to give us just one song of yours from your entire back catalogue to listen to so that you would become our new favourite band what would it be?
Diamond On A Landmine - it’s one from the new record! I think it’s one of the greatest song’s we’ve ever written.
You’re bound to say that because it’s your new album! So, if you could cover another band’s song, what would it be?
I’d like to cover a Rage Against The Machine song, I think we could pull that off pretty well. When we first started playing I think we have about 4 RATM songs in our set list because it was one of the few we could all agree on! So it would be fun to do one of those again!
So, as it’s the festival season now, what three bands would you have to headline your dream festival?
I think it would have to be Operation Ivy on first, Sublime up second, Rage Against The Machine as support and The Clash headling!
What has been your favourite musical memory to date?
There are way too many, I guess Rock AM ring would be amazing. The whole story behind what happened during that day was pretty immense. We were just starting a six week festival tour and we showed up in Germany and they told us there were 90,000 people going, which I thought would mean 45,000 one day and 45,000 the next!
We walked in and we had technical difficulties, we had a crew switch and one of the guys was just starting a new monitor job and we walked out in front of 90,000 people and all the problems we were having just went away because everyone was so into what we were doing and we were so blown away by it. That’s definitely a great memory.
If all of the bands equipment was on fire, what one piece would you save and why?
Ian’s guitar.
Who do you think is the greatest artist around at the moment?
Alanis Morrisette. Haha, I’m just kidding. I’d actually say London Calling by The Clash.
We ask everyone we interview to come up with a question for the next person we interview, and The Urgency want to know if they can go on tour with you?
Um, I would have to hear and see them live first [FF: They were good, they were like a rock Bob Marley!] well what they did was good because now I’m going to check out what The Urgency sound like, so maybe they can!
Also, The Blackout wants to know how Ian get’s his hair so perfect?
He sleeps upside down!
No he doesn’t! you can’t sleep upside down.
He’s a bat.
No, because all the blood would rush to his head and it will make him look funny. But can you come up with a question for the next person we interview please?
When was the last time you cried? Hopefully she’ll give you a honest answer.
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison