Rob caught up with Tim from As I Lay Dying back stage in Wolverhampton to talk about their latest album 'The Powerless Rise' as well as many other things.

You have been going for ten years now what would you say your main highs and lows as a band have been so far?
Tim Lambesis (vocals) The Highs I guess, making a living from doing this, not just having fun from doing this but making it our career, it wasnt one magical day, it happened over time, we got home from a tour and we realised we could pay our bills, ever since then its been a high, not say I wouldn't have appreciated it, if we did like thousands of bands out there that are struggling along, I feel blessed making an income from doing this. The lows I think would be times when were on tour away from our family's, the hardships of the road I guess, but its also a fun place too.

Have you gotten up to any crazy stuff on this tour?
Its been pretty mellow, we've had a couple of birthdays, my own, Alex from suicide silence, who were sharing a bus with, everyone's being doing a little more celebrating than usual, the craziness had been confined to the bus, everyone hanging out being friends, no ones being doing anything too embarrassing

Who would you say your main musical influences are?
Its a broad question, but for me, my lyrical influences are my life experiences, things that I face personally, and want to grow through. I grew up on thrash music, it influences our music but we try to be more melodic than thrash music.

You released your fifth studio album ‘The Powerless Rise’ back in May how has it gone down with your fans and the press?
So far its gone down great, every time we release a new album, everyone says its our best yet, and our older fans say I wish it would sound like our older stuff, itll happen with any band, When Metallica released Master of Puppets, which I consider there best album, I'm sure there were people who said it wasn't as good as Ride the Lightening. The majority of people say this is our strongest release yet. Whenever a new album comes out, we try to introduce our new songs slowly, for instance in the first month we don't want half our set to be all new songs as people are still getting familiar with them, were at the point now where we can play more new songs.

You worked with Killswitch Engages Adam Dutkiewicz on once again on the album what was that like?
To us he's an old friend ,as we've toured with them about 5 times now, he's enough of a friend to be comfortable but enough of an outside perspective that he can shake things up when we reach a disagreement.

What themes and stories did you cover within the songs on the album?
Well its hard to sum up the songs, but the one common idea that we need to take some of the powerless things in society and bring attention to them, certain songs about the poor an oppressed of the world that have been left out, but there's also about the outcasts of richer society's, ones that are willing to stand up in what they believe in, there's songs that try to bring out the powerless parts of society, powerless rise obviously, but then attack the prominent parts of society like religious institutions, they are in need of being attacked like in the plague, it talks about how main stream religions give the rest of people a bad name, like someone like my self, I have a lot of beliefs that have been attacked for, that aren't mainstream Christianity.

What would you say your favourite song from the album is and why?
To just listen to its tough to say, I think one of the things about this new album that you have to listen to all of it and not listen to a song out of context, the whole album is good, I like condemned, its got catchier element to it, but still dark as well.

How do you go about writing songs?
We split this album up, we did 8 songs then a few months later did another 3, for us we normally take two months and write as many songs as we can, and then go record the, this time we wrote 8 songs in two months, and said this is not enough for a full album, so after recording those, took another month and wrote and record the last 3 songs.

Did you have any songs that were left over that didn't fit into the aesthetic of the album?
We had some ideas that were left over that weren't fully completed into songs, and well probably complete net year. Next year is our tenth year as a band and hopefully we'll put something out to commemorate that.

The artwork for your albums have always been pretty cool, who does the art for you?
Jake bannon is the guy we use, hes done all our art work since joining metal blade, it gives our band a theme in the way we look, the image is drastically different from album to album but it has different textures to it.

You are currently touring the UK how would you say the tour has been so far?
Its been going great, its been some of the best shows as a headliner in Europe, some days are great others you wish could be better, its the nature of a 30 day tour.

Now you have a lot of material behind you how do you go about choosing set lists?
We try to listen to the fans, but its impossible to please everyone so we play what we feel like, I wouldn't call them hits in the traditional sense but we try to play the fan favourites.

What do you get up to on the road in-between shows to keep you busy?
We have time to hang out, we don't all have the same time table, the day is whatever people choose to make of it really.

Once your UK tour finishes at the end of the month what do you have planned as a band?
We gonna go home for the holidays, then go back on tour in February hopefully.

MySpace seems to be a big tool in the music industry these days with artists communicating with their fans over it and some even ditching their own website and having just a MySpace site, what are your opinions on MySpace as a tool in the music industry?
Its still good for getting our music out there, its still the standard for music hosting, but for communicating with our fans, not so much, facebook or twitter is more it, im not the best at keeping up with that stuff, I wish there was an official forum that wasn't tied to a big corporation site where we could talk to our fans, that would be ideal.

Where would you like to see yourself this time next year?
Hopefully somewhere without such cold weather! Besides that, probably writing a new album, but lots of touring before that.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a Zebra and a Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Which ever one has the biggest brain, id choose to be the smarter of the two, so I could experience life more fully.

Thanks for your time, do you have an message for your fans reading this?
We try to cover everyone's requests at our live shows, we do listen to our fans, and we appreciate the diversity of our fans, if you have an opinion let it be known.

Interview By Robert Lawrence