James caught up with The Defiled in Wolverhampton before they took to the stage to support Dragonforce.

What have you been up to since we last spoke to you?
AvD: We became Golden Gods!
Stitch D: Yeah we won that Metal Hammer award, we’ve been making headway with a new album too.

AvD: Yeah we’ve done some stuff with Pledge Music to start raising money to make our new album, we’ve got a video coming out as well for “Blood Sells” live at the Brixton Academy, just generally being The Defiled haha.

About that new album of yours, you have any details you could tell us about it yet?
Stitch D: We do actually have a name; we can’t tell you what it is yet though. We had 2 names for a while but we settled on one a while ago now.

AvD: Of course many of the songs don’t have names yet.

Stitch D: No because how we work is we write the songs and then settle on names that fit them the best afterward, sometimes we can sit there for ages thinking “what the fuck are we going to call this?” haha. Until we settle we name them like “Ass” and “Cock”.

AvD: We use working titles until the end then we put ourselves through that annoying task.

What prompted the Pledge Music option?
Stitch D: Well what we wanted to do was raise the money to record the album ourselves, this way we don’t have any pressure from a label, nobody can really dictate to us what we can and cant do.

AvD: what we were going for was basically record the album, get it finished then see who wants to release it, that way we get to release the album we want to make and not what we’re told to make.

You are currently on tour with Dragonforce, how have the shows been so far and are you looking forward to any shows more than others?
Stitch D: It’s been great! Really really good tour.

AvD: They’re really nice guys, really accommodating and there are no ego’s involved here.

Stitch D: Possibly the nicest band we’ve ever toured with, crazy nice guys.

AvD: Normally there is a hierarchy involved on tour with the main band usually trying to be... Well the main band haha. But there none of that involved here.

Plans After?
AvD: Releasing the album, playing our Grave Times album in its entirety, and anything else? No?

[Both Laugh]

Stitch D: Nah it’s going to be a lot of business related stuff after this tour finishes to be honest, there may be a couple of tours in the works but we have nothing solid planned yet. We also need to set up a headline set for next year as well.

AvD: Worldwide release for the album most importantly, we’re still getting Grave Times into other countries as well.

Stitch D: Yeah because there are still a lot of places that it hasn’t been released in and the people have still not heard it.

If you could be a part of a dream lineup of your choice who would be on the bill?
Stitch D: Slipknot. A Slipknot tour would be the greatest thing ever. Those mostly. There are a load of other bands I’d love to play with but I don’t think we’d fit in, for example I’d love to play with Foo Fighters but I don’t think we’d go down well somehow haha.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Stitch D: Zebra because they’re prettier. Giraffes are only good for getting up in peoples windows and stuff.

AvD: Zebra’s are just confused Identity wise

[Both Laugh]

Thanks for your time, is there a message for your fans reading the interview?
AvD: Grab the album when it comes out and let us know what you think!

Interview by James Webb