With a new album, The Tide And Its Takers, to promote 36 Crazyfists were back  recently back in the UK for short run of headline dates to warm up for a slot at this year's Download Festival. Catching up with frontman Brock Lindow prior to the Birmingham show there was a chance to talk about talk the festival as well as the album.

So you’re back in the UK and are doing Download again, do you feel like veterans of the festival now? 

Brock Lindow:  Nah, I mean no I’ll still be scared like the first time.  We’re honoured to be asked back for the third time, if you think about the big scheme of things and how many millions of bands there are, to get asked back three times is awesome, yeah we’re stoked. 

You know what to expect from it. 

BL:  Yeah, I expect the crowd is gonna be a lot further away from me than I want them to be and we’ll be humans on display, it’ll be cool. 

You also did Rock am Ring, did it go well? 

BL:  Yeah we did Rock am Ring, Rock im Park and it’s awesome, it’s not as big as Download but Rock am Ring is pretty close, it’s about 90,000 I think.  They were cool, we did the Club Stage which is like an indoor tent, about 10,000 people I think it holds, so it was a lot of fun. 

Do you enjoy the festivals or do you prefer the small intimate venues? 

BL: I mean I would prefer to play here (points to the venue) but like I said it is an honour to be asked to these festivals, you don’t get an opportunity to play in front of that many people on one show very often, so it’s awesome, we love it.  Those others aren’t as bad as Download in the sense that they keep the people so far away, the people are pretty close.  That’s always the thing that I always think about Download is how far the people are from the stage, and maybe when you’re in the front it doesn’t seem like you are that far away from the band, but when you’re the band it seems like they’re far, I can’t even give high fives. 

So the tour is going well so far? 

BL:  Yeah excellent, we are having a lot of fun.  We’re just getting started really, this is the first week I guess, it’s only three weeks so I’m sure it’ll go pretty fast. 

How much new material are you incorporating into the set? 

BL:  We’re not playing too much.  We’re playing like three new songs and then mostly older songs, we’ll probably work them in a little later, but we don’t like to play a bunch of stuff that people are unfamiliar with, we’d rather have everybody singing along.  But the songs we are playing, everybody seems to be singing with us.  It’s a hard way to gauge this stuff because we’ve got such an awesome connection with the people in the UK that I think we could come out and take a big crap on the stage and they’d still want to give us a high five. 

They’ve been so amazing to us over the years so it’s hard to judge because these people are our people, they go out and get the records right away so they know the songs.  The real test will be when we go back to the States and see who’s really picked up the record, although it seems to be good so far. 

The new album reached around 150 on the Billboard, that’s the highest any of your albums have been? 

BL:  155 yeah.  We’ve never hit the charts before.  It was the biggest selling week for us also, so I think all the work is starting to pay off a little bit, as far as touring the States we concentrated a little bit more on that in the last record cycle. 

You were supposed to have been touring the UK with Bullet For My Valentine earlier in the year but pulled out, difficult decision? 

BL:  Yeah absolutely those are some of our best friends and we didn’t want to miss out on that opportunity but at the same time we knew we could do it again down the road.  Yeah it was difficult we really knew that was going to be an awesome tour for us, but the bottom line is that we weren’t done with the record, that was the most important thing at the time.   

The problem was that a lot of people that were calling the shots weren’t checking in with the band to really see where we were.  Andy Sneap, who mixes the record, was doing Testament and they were wanting us to go on tour in two weeks when nobody was ready.  So that was the bummer of it, and everyone learned the lesson to check in on each other from time to time, and not set up these awesome tours and then not be ready to be able to do it.  We just hung out with Bullet at the Germany festival and I think we are going to do some special guest stuff with them in February, they’re going to do headline shows and we’ll go out with them again. 

Going onto the new album, what is the meaning behind the title The Tide And It’s Takers? 

BL:  It’s just a collection of things.  I think really ultimately it’s about how we’re gonna go through obstacles in our lives and face challenges, for the most part I think on a real low level, the worst thing in your life at times is rent is due Friday and you don’t have the money.  I remember those feelings being like this is horrible and you’re all stressed out, but somehow you get through it and you get through that next week, that’s the small level of it.  But I think it is just how all good and bad things come in our lives and we will enjoy them, we’ll fight them and hopefully we will lead successful lives on some level, finding love then going through a struggle and having victories in your life and having despair in your life, it’s all a big collection of cycles so The Tide And It’s Takers, that’s my little theory on it. 

So is it linked to changing record labels, when you talk about obstacles? 

BL:  Yeah absolutely it is.  All the ups and the downs the band has been through in the last couple of years, and it’s no different from any other band or any person that’s working a regular job, it’s something that we can all relate to.  Absolutely, the first single, We Gave It Hell is exactly about the ups and downs of our band’s success and non-success.   

You’re comfortable now on your new label, Ferret? 

BL:  Oh absolutely comfortable, they have been wonderful to us.  The big problem was the Stateside of things for us with Roadrunner.  We love Roadrunner UK, they’ve been so amazing to us since the beginning, it was extremely difficult to leave them, we didn’t want to actually, we actually tried to just do a Ferret US deal and stay with Roadrunner over here.  At the time all the Ferret bands were on Roadrunner over here, and then Ferret was getting bigger so they got their own thing, which is great for them, but I was at first fighting that because I didn’t want to lose what we had over here with Roadrunner.  But in the end it was what we had to do to get things going for us in the States, anyway I love everybody at Ferret, they have been amazing to us so far, I mean, hands down, it has only been for a few months, and it’s been more than I had in years with Roadrunner US.  The lines of communication, I talk to them almost every other day, they’re excited, they generally like the band’s music, which I know personally people at the Roadrunner office US didn’t, many people there, there was a couple that did.  So when you’re dealing with a business situation like that it is difficult because you are up against a brick wall, so we feel very thankful to be at Ferret. 

How involved do you get with the business side of thingsl, is it a side of the business you enjoy? 

BL:  I have to be involved otherwise I can’t sleep at night.  I think at the beginning you realise that there’s all these things that can get swept under the rug and as a band you are just trying to focus on one thing, and you’ll find out that some people will take advantage of the band not knowing.  I think that between me and the guitar player (Steve Holt) and the drummer (Thomas Noonan) we’re all pretty hands on and we all help each other.  It’s important to be aware of what’s going on.

Going back to the new album, you have said yourselves that it is that bit heavier.  Was this a natural thing, are you that bit more angry? 

BL:  I wasn’t really any more angry I don’t think, I just think that the music called for it, the music they were writing and stuff.  I wanted it to be a heavier album but before going into it I didn’t know that they were going to write the music that they did.  But I think that the cool thing about the record is it displays what the capabilities of the band are, we kind of tip-toe on a few different genres, we’re not really a metal band, not really just a rock band, not really a metalcore/screamo band, but I think we’re all of them in some sense.  So the cool thing about the album is that we did all that, we had like melodic moody rock songs and we had straight up metal songs and somewhere in between too.  So I think it’s a good representation of where the band is today and what we can do I guess. 

And lyrically there are a lot of subjects you cover? 

BL:  I think so yeah.  I mean I usually try to just do things that pertain to my life for the most part and then people gather their own thoughts on it and relate it to their own, which is the way I always want it.  That’s why I write fairly big for the most part and that’s always the way I’ve liked it.  But on this record I did do a little bit different stuff, we’re all growing up in war times and when I was younger we were never in a war, in my lifetime, the US wasn’t, so now things are definitely changing and it’s difficult to stay mentally free from the scare tactics that the news will present in the States.  You turn on the news at night, at dinner time, and it’s war ridden, doom ridden, and it’s a lot to take as people you know, to stay hopeful and things like that.  So I talk about those things as well and for me personally I tend to not watch TV that much for those reasons, because I try to enjoy my life, I could walk outside and be hit by a bus and it would be all over, I don’t need anything added.   

I went down to Australia and spent some time there and they never talk about war.  I don’t think it’s smart to never talk about it, it’s good to be aware, but I enjoyed their news.  It was about sports and it was about zoos and nature and it just seemed different and I was wondering if because they are so far down they don’t care.  But it was a little bit refreshing and I took that back with me and I was like you know our (US) things are all agenda driven, people are making money off numerous things in the States and over here as well.  So anyway I think it’s a lot to take as people and I wanted to touch on that, try and still to bring a hopeful sense to it. 

Unusually you also included a more or less spoken word song, Only A Year Or So…  

BL:  Yeah that’s a story about a man that I befriended on the Internet that was a US soldier, he was in Iraq for two and a half years.  I just became friends with him online, he liked the band and I had this piece of music and I had this idea that maybe he could share with me some letters between him and his wife.  At first I was like maybe that’s a little bit too much prying into his personal life, and then he was gracious enough to send me like seven letters.  It was the craziest letters I have ever read in my life, I mean some of them were like, one of them was from him to his wife saying that he thought he maybe killed 12 people today, and I was just reading this stuff going ‘holy shit, this is so heavy’.  So I took what I could for the verse and I read his letter back to her and a friend of mine read her letter to him and then I wrote the choruses.  I came up with the title Only A Year Or So… by watching the news one night and there was a woman holding her baby with her husband who was being deployed again, and at the end of it she said ‘well hopefully it’s only for a year or so’.  I was like this is crazy, I go away on tour, and I’m married and it’s difficult, but they go away for a long time, they don’t get to call, they’re in a life or death situation, totally different but I can relate to it a little bit.   

At the time I didn’t think it was all that great of an idea, although I was into it.  But when I finished it I realised it was a lot cooler than it was for me and the band, and the record label loved it.   

I finally met him, we played this place Fort Bragg which is this big marine base in Virginia and I met him, he’d just come home.  So he came with his friends and I was drinking beer with him and just getting to know him a little bit.  ‘Do you want to hear the song’, and he was like ‘man I would love to’.  So we all go out there and we’re on the rig, we’re listening to it, and I look over at him and he’s crying, fuck then I start crying and it was something you couldn’t write up, I couldn’t have dreamt up this thing and it was very overwhelming and I’ll never forget it.  We’re life long friends now and now he’s stationed in Italy with his family but it was just crazy, it was a very surreal moment that I didn’t expect. 

You also had some guest musicians on the record, Candace Kucsulain, from Walls Of Jericho and Adam Jackson from Twelve Tribes, how did they come about? 

BL:  They are good friends of ours, we’ve toured with Walls and Twelve Tribes numerous times and I just like having guest vocals, it’s a fun part of it.  I think it will be something that I will always want to do as it’s fun to collaborate with your friends.  Candace and Adam are just good friends of ours so we just made the call and they were there for us, so it was fun. 

You are doing the Rockstar Mayhem tour in America, which Walls Of Jericho are also on, will you do Vast And Vague live? 

BL:  You know the weird thing about the song that’s she’s on is, we haven’t played it live and we’ve practiced it a couple of times, and it’s kind of a strange song.  It has it’s heavy moments and stuff but I’m not sure how it would really go over live, I would love to do it with her, we haven’t talked about it but we’ll see I guess.  It’s going to be busy, she’s on a different stage, it’s not like we are in the same room all day, but we’re going to be doing all the off shows with them.  Walls Of Jericho, us, Suicide Silence, The Red Chord, so maybe during those off shows but I’m not sure at the festival we would get to do it that much, you get 25 minutes and you’re out of there.

Are you looking forward to the tour, being the first festival you have done in America it should give you a lot of exposure? 

BL:  It’s the best opportunity for the band ever in the States, we’re going to be playing to like 40,000 everyday.  We’re on this Hot Topic stage which I’m really glad about because we love Underoath, and they’re the headliners, and I think all the bands that are on our stage, for the most part, are fairly similar, well not similar but the crowd would be into all the bands.  So yeah really excited about it, we have like five days off getting off this to starting a new loop. 

You’re busy then? 

BL:  Yeah I was talking to the manager this morning and we’re pretty much on tour, we’ve got like a week off for Christmas and New Year, and then we’re on tour almost to the end of next Summer, so we try not to think about it too much, I’ll need a new throat by then. 

With your heavier vocals does it affect you more live now? 

BL:  Yeah, I mean it has it’s good days and bad days.  I think for the most part it seems to be used to it, but I have to watch it I guess, try not to drink a whole shit load at night, every night like I used to.  Especially with Download this week I’m kind of taking it easy because I’ve had two bad experiences at Download already, well not two, the last one especially I was totally shot, we played in Sheffield the night before and I blew my voice out then, so mentally that messes me up.  I can get up for everything and overcome a lot but if my voice is not working it’s hard to get out of that bad mood, so I’m trying to avoid that. 

Can’t really hide away at Download either. 

BL:  Yeah it’s hard to hide.  Have somebody behind the curtain helping me out. 

Lastly is there anything else you would like to add.

BL:  Just to all your readers, thank you for all the support, we are eternally grateful for all of it and good luck to everybody.

Darren Brushneen