So Jay, how’s the touring going? Yeah really good. The fans are getting down, the shows are all sold out, which is quite cool for us, and it’s quite cool to see the crowds all singing the words to the new songs that we play.
And you’re coming to Oz this year? Yeah towards the end of the year. We’re stoked to come over, we can’t wait.
Do you get see much while touring? Sometimes we have a day off here and there, but mainly when we’re on the road we don’t get that much time off. When we were over in Australia, I had a day off on Bondi Beach.
It’s got to be done… Yeah that was awesome.
Fever is your third record, does it get any easier to make an album? The process gets a lot easier yeah. You start getting used to the way things are done and it’s kind of like a machine, it just happens. We give ourselves time off now to write songs and not to rush anything. With Scream, Aim, Fire we were on the road, writing stuff at the back of a tour bus and it was just all a bit rushed, so this time we took as much time as we wanted. We went to the old studios we wrote Poison in because we wanted to try and rekindle some old feelings. That’s kind of what we were all about. We tried to cross both albums and make the best one yet. I think it kind of worked.
Is Fever your favourite? Yes. I know it’s the best so far. You’re only as good as your last album.
Which country has the best fans? The fans don’t differ in a sense that some fans are better than the other, but when we play the fans come to get down and get rowdy. Though they’re pretty passionate all over the world, I will say that when we first came to America we realised that they had different genres of mosh pit. Everywhere else in the world they just tear each other up! Probably the most insane and toughest crowd that we played to, as in the most violent crowd, would be Germany. We were there once and they did the “Wall of Death” with 50,000 people. Two guys with skin heads stood in the middle, took their belts off and hit each other on the face with them, waiting for the crowd to crush them. It was the most insane thing I’ve ever seen.
Did you keep playing? Well we had to because they were lovin’ it. They were just having the best time of their lives, that’s just the way they are.
It must be surreal seeing your fans sing the songs you’ve worked so hard on… It’s so cool. Sometimes I look out and maybe I might spin out because of the heat and I’m thinking, “Woah what’s the next lyric?” and someone’s shouting it at me and that’s awesome.
Who did you listen to growing up? When I was about 13 the first album I ever bought was Appetite For Destruction (Guns N Roses) off my friend for £5. It didn’t have a case with it. It was on tape. It completely blew me away.
Where did the band name come from? To be honest with you… beer. All down to beer! Everything is down to beer! We had interest off an agent and we needed to get a solid name and go one step further if we were going to be signed so we met up in a pub, got drinks and a piece of paper and a pen and just wrote all the best things down. Lyrics, what we’re about… Bullet For My Valentine came up after a few hours.
BFMV play Perth (5 Sept), Adelaide (7 Sept), Melbourne (9 Sept), Sydney (10 Sept) and Brisbane (11 Sept).
Their latest album, Fever, is out now.
