Alex from Chelsea Grin chats with Jen about their Upcoming Aussie Tour.

Hi Alex, great to have you head down to us in August. Prior to that you have a pretty hectic touring schedule covering many countries. Your quote on your website about Dog years are like touring years made sense to me, even though the line is really bad, you really love touring?
Yes we do, it is really amazing that we can do our job, something that we obviously love and we dreamed about this when we were younger to be on the level that we can a on the road like we are it is pretty mindblowing.
You guys are your typical band that met at high school and I really like the way that you put it “ it was like jumping from high school to college in a van. I am a big believer that learning can occur outside 4 walls of a school. What are some of the things that your learnt in that van?
well I mean like obviously school is like a book kind of thing and getting out there and being on the road you learn street smarts and you learn lots of hard knocks that you don’t really learn in a classroom. It might not make us smarter but it certainly makes us wiser. “You’ve mentioned before you had an interest in your style of music back in school, what bands and artists did you draw inspiration from back then.
Back then and we were first starting it was(?? bad phone line) and Whitechapel were like in the same era. Your album Ashes to Ashes has received great reviews, from critics and fans you must be stoked with that. How does you writing process go? Is it a whole band approach?
The way we write music we write our own thing at first then once we get a group of ideas together we come together and mould the songs together with everyone’s ideas and that is when the song becomes a complete song. So we start doing our own individual things and then come together to make the song you here on the record. Is there one song that you connect to the most off that album?
One of the different things off this album is that I’ve never written all the songs lyrically before, I wrote each song as if it was a real-life experience, I think every song has a deeper meaning for me at least on this record.

Is there one you like to perform live the most?
I like playing Clockwork live but we have not played Waste Away live yet but I hope we do in the upcoming tour. I think there will be one of my favorites to play live because it has a real passion and dark side to it.
Will you be playing that on your Australia tour?
I personally really want to but I’m not sure but it is looking pretty good.
Sweet!
Did you really do a run of 100 tees with Taylor Swift on them? I think that is hilarious.
Oh yeah we did absolutely! ( both laughing)
The fact is that it is not common knowledge but we are very keen to the Taylor Swift latest album. How quickly where those T-shirts sold?
They were some really quickly we had to do an extra run on them. The first to run went so quick that we have to do another run. Taylor Swift is actually really popular!
I loved that t-shirt!
How did Boris the Blade get chosen to tour with you?
With Boris the blade we had heard the name quite a lot and we had heard their music and really good things about them and we actually end up meeting them at a festival in Dallas and after that we thought yep we want to tour with them. You have to been to Australia before yeah?
Yes this would be our third time. Is there anything that you hope to do this time around?
A lot of the members of the band actually want to go scuba-diving. Even swim with the sharks although I’m personally terrified of sharks. I think I would rather jump off the cliffs that then go to swimming with sharks!
Yeah that would be much better than swimming with sharks!
year are not a fan of that at all. Yeah I can imagine me to why would you want to go swimming with sharks????
What is your favorite city in Australia?
I have a funny story about that actually, I actually got lost in Sydney one time for hours and I walked around the whole city before I found my hotel and realised that Melbourne was the best city in Australia!( haha I just added that in,music journalists privileges and all)
Any place in the world that you have never toured but you are keen to? Actually…. New Zealand would be a country that I would like to go.
Well actually most bands go there after Australia and in some cases people thing that we are the same country!
(both laughing)
thanks heaps for the interview Alex it was great to talk to you and I hope I meet you when you come down here, perhaps you could have a holiday in New Zealand? Ha ha! Yeah well we are really excited to come back and play some songs of our new album and I hope your ready to bring a lot of energy to our shows and we should have a lot of fun.
yeah well you should sell out all your shows look forward to seeing you down under!
Thanks Jen!
I appreciate you taking the time to have a chat to Alex.
Thank you for your time, see you soon!
You sure will!