Karnivool

Drew Goddard, guitarist with Perth's heaviest prog rockers, Karnivool, talks about the road to Sound Awake.

Was there any pressure following up [2005 debut album] Themata? Yeah, there was pressure; it wasn't so much the pressure from any sort of critical or commercial success though. The pressure would have just been from ourselves, more than anything. We really set the bar pretty high from an early stage and it was also the first attempt at writing a record as a whole band. Yeah, so it was a pretty interesting experience, and a challenging one.

Well, not only was Themata terrifically successful, but four years is a long time for people to wait for a follow-up... Yeah, it just kind of dragged on; everything seems to drags on in the world of Karnivool. A lot of the time we were like "what are we doing, we're shooting ourselves in the foot here and we're losing momentum, and where the hell are we going with this?" but I've got a little bit of perspective now it's done and I think it all kind of worked out. I mean, we changed personally a lot of over the last couple of years as a unit so it kind of all fell into place. It definitely wasn't intended that we take that long; but I do know for sure, though, that if we write an album like that again - in that manner, with that time span – I don't think we would be a band [laughs].

Well, it's called Second Album Syndrome for a reason: it's meant to be the hardest one. Yeah, that's right. But in a way it did still feel like our first album because this is the first time we'd written as a band, like our drummer Steve [Judd] just came on board after we'd finished the last album and our second guitarist Hos [Mark Hoskin] came on board near the end of the process of the last one. So it still feels like a stepping-stone to the next record.

So you're already thinking of the next record? Yeah, we're just looking forward already. I thought I'd never want to touch my guitar again after that process, but we're all really excited about writing music.

There are some heavy emotions on the album, and it sounds like the process of making it was pretty volatile: is that going to make touring it difficult, or can you disconnect from the emotions when you're playing? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're not that serious. You get us in a van and it's absolute stupidity; we have fun on the road and at the end of the day playing music for us is about having fun and enjoying ourselves. We get up there on stage and get in that zone and it's fun. It's an outlet.