Arise and Ruin – Ben Alexis, Bass
-You have a new album coming out on October 30th called The Final Dawn. Are you happy with how it turned out?
Hell yeah! We’ve been waiting a long time to finally get a full length album out, I’m pretty sure girls are going to think we are cooler too!
-What was it like working with Ken Susi?
Imagine the best meatball you have ever had in your entire life, now multiply that by 10 and smash some beer bottles!
-What made you decide to sign with Victory Records?
Victory was the first label to come around that we felt believed in our band as much as we did, it’s rare for an American based label to go out and take a chance on a Canadian band with minimal exposure south of the boarder, basically the whole thing just felt really good and we think that bulldog logo is badass!
-How do you feel about people “illegally” downloading the new album?
Every album downloaded just makes my dreams of trading in my BMX for BMW that much further away, but you know that’s cool right; I get more street cred with the bike!
-The Canadian metal scene is filled with a ton of amazing bands, what do you think makes you guys stand out?
That we are the only metal band in Canada that speaks English as a first language. Seriously, I don’t know what it is about the French, but those dudes can fucking shred!
-Have you ever ran into Lord Worm while he was grocery shopping?
No, but onetime Cryptopsy were playing Guelph and I told their singer at the time that they were “badass,” he looked like I really hurt his feelings as if I was saying is band was a bunch of asses and they were bad, so I explained the whole badass thing to it and he said badass like 4 times and gave me a thumbs up. I ran into Deicide in a McDonalds outside of Montreal one time, I was wasted, I just yelled DEICIDE at them from the other end of building for the rest of my burger.
-Is your health care system really better than ours?
Depends how you look at it, I mean its free right, so if say you punch some coked out dude in the face for trying to jack your pumas and bust your hand open slugging them in the face, you can get that fixed up for free, where as in the states it’s going to cost you, so you might be more inclined to just throw a bench at them?
-Have you managed to pick up any scene chicks yet thanks to being in the band?
We are a bunch of old hairy dudes, girls don’t like us, I can’t stress this enough, I’ve been hit on like 3 times in my entire musical career and it’s never gone past checking to see how old they are on MySpace, which is usually a bust.
-Are there any upcoming tour plans in the works?
Yeah we are finally getting our asses down to the states in January and don’t really plan on coming back to Canada before the snow starts melting sometime around mid June!
-Did Cephalic Carnage try to corrupt you by making you smoke marijuana?
Naw man, I pass out if weed even looks at me the wrong way, but I can’t say the same for the rest of my band, Cephalic on the other hand basically invented the stuff!
-How do you respond to people who might write you off as “just another metalcore band”?
We are just a metal band, so the same thing I’ll tell them when they break edge “told ya so.”
-The music industry seems to be putting a lot of emphasis on a band’s MySpace status, with bands getting signed based on how many “friends” they have, or how many plays they get per day. Do you see this as having a negative impact on the scene’s integrity or as a way for band’s to easily get attention?
We didn’t have many friends or plays at all when we got signed, at least in comparison to bands like Job For A Cowboy who absolutely destroy on MySpace, but even then, those dudes have been touring like crazy, so at the end of the day I think that’s all it really comes down to, for whatever reasons certain bands clean up on MySpace and some don’t, I’d like to think that a bands success isn’t gauged on their MySpace plays, but I’d also like to think I’ll be king of the world and drive the bat mobile someday.
-Have you ever looked at the Victory Records lineup and secretly felt a little ashamed?
Because hatebreed aren’t there anymore? Naw man I’m stoked on it, it’s cool to be on a label with such a diverse line up.
-What are you listening to lately, or are there any bands you think people need to know about?
Down 3 is kicking my ass right now, but otherwise The Crown, Depeche Mode and August Burns Red are all getting plays on my I tunes, oh I really like The Reasons latest disc, that band is from around here and should be huge, but Canada is stupid like that, unfortunately people think all we offer the world is Nickleback and beavers.
-What does the band have lined up for 2008?
We are going to tour until we trash at least 5 more vans, seriously; hopefully spend as much time as humanly possible in the United States supporting the record and hopefully find an hour or two to play that Scarface game I bought 2 months ago for ps2!
-If you could be any character from The Lord of the Rings, which would it be and why?
I’m going to have to go with Aragorn, we kind of have the same long hair and beard deal going on, plus that dude probably cleaned up with all the elves and dwarves or whatever the hell other kind of girls they had on middle earth, plus how badass would it be to ride around on a horse with a bigass sward on a quest to kick the crap out of some giant flaming eyeball!
-Any final words for our readers?
Get stoked on Rambo 4!
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