Back at the start of November, DEVILDRIVER and 36 CRAZYFISTS hit the road together here in the UK and put on some blistering shows. Whilst the bands were in Wolverhampton, Altsounds caught up with the guys to chat about touring together and their latest releases.

“Oh man, it’s awesome!” 36 Crazyfists guitarist Steve Holt commented when asked about being on the road with his labelmates, “We’ve done a couple of tours with them in the past so we knew it was gonna go well. When you’re on one of these kind of tours where you know everybody, all the crew guys and the band and everything, it really makes a difference, so we’re definitely looking forward to the rest of this one. These guys are just amazing live too, so it’s a really awesome setup.”

Moving on to the bands recently released 4th studio album Collisions And Castaways, Holt confesses the record isn’t exactly what the band had planned, “Y’know, I think it’s been a very natural progression for us – we set out to make a much less ‘metal’ and much more ‘rock’ kind of record – and for whatever reason, it didn’t really turn into that. It’s more of a bit mishmash of everything, it’s got some very cool rocky songs, and some real great metal too…We tried to focus much more on the songs, so that they’re much more identifiable. Sometimes you hear records nowadays where the tracks just run into each other, and you end up like “I don’t know what song this is any more”. We didn’t want that, we focused on making each song stand out on its own and making them shine individually. We wanna make sure people know each song by their name.”

Turning their attention to DevilDriver’s Jeff Kendrick, Altsounds take the opportunity to grill the guitarist about their forthcoming album Beast. “Well I think the songwriting is the best we’ve ever done,” he states, “I think the musicianship is the best. I think it’s the best vocally, it has the best production too. I think it’s got simply the best everything…In terms of it being straight up heavy? It’s the heaviest and most brutal record by far. It’s fucking heavy man! It’s not contrived, it’s not fake, it’s not created for any other reason than it’s what comes from our hearts. I think people identify with that.”

Read the full interviews with Steve and Jeff over at Altsounds now. Click here for Jeff’s interview and head to this location for Steve’s.

36 Crazyfists’ ‘Collisions And Castaways’ is in stores now. Grab it at Play.com and iTunes.

DevilDriver’s new offering ‘Beast’ hits UK stores on February 21st. Pre-order details coming very soon.