Speaking of tours, you’re on tour right now with Shadows Fall and Dying Fetus. I know you have a few spring festivals in the works, but any plans for the Summer?
Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of European festivals, going in and out of Europe for sure. Hopefully we can squeeze in some more things in the States here before the year is over. I know we’ve been talking very seriously about doing a second leg of this tour in April to follow up as well, to hit some more markets in the States. But if we don’t hit your town eventually this year, it will be next year for sure. We’re going to be touring the world for this record for the next couple years. That’s the beauty of it. We’re constantly on tour and we’re playing everywhere that we possibly can. So if you don’t catch us now, you’ll definitely catch us at some point. I’m seeing stuff on our schedule book as far as up to December, so there’s a lot going on as far as the touring’s concerned.
Since you’ll mostly be in Europe in the summer, I guess that means no Summer U.S. touring festival in the works?
I don’t think so. I mean, I’d have to relook to see if those days would conflict with something like that. Obviously we’re open to do a Mayhem Festival or even a Warped Tour, to go back and play that. We actually played that in ’97, we feel confident we could play to that crowd and be successful as well. As far as right now, we don’t have any word as far as playing the big U.S. festivals.
One of the spring festivals Hatebreed has been confirmed for is this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Fest. This is the third time Hatebreed will be performing at the festival. Do you have a personal connection to the festival itself?
Well, Scott [Lee, NEMHF organizer] does a great job, and it’s amazing to see how the festival’s grown over the years. I remember the days of it just being the New England Metal Festival and now it’s the New England Metal & Hardcore Festival. It’s great to see the diverse line ups and the two stages and everything that’s going on over there. Obviously it’s special for us because the band is based out of New England. We may not be in Massachusetts, but it does sort of have a home town feel to it when we do play, and the response there for us has been always great. It’s a fun time, it’s a great weekend, it’s a lot of bands playing together, a lot of friends and we’re looking forward to doing it again this year.
