Dane recently had the opportunity to chat with Wade MacNeil - one of the guitarists, vocalists and founding members of the Canadian post-hardcore band Alexisonfire, who's on his way down to Oz next year to play Soundwave Festival - and a few sidewaves too!

Hi Wade, thanks for taking the time to speak with me here at theAUreview. You’re heading back out to Australia for the Soundwave festival, how do you feel about coming back to our shores again?

We’re really excited to be coming back, it’s getting too cold here and everyone’s really ready to get the hell out of here.

What can Australian fans expect from your shows? Do you have anything special planned?

It’s a festival show, so we always try and go out and play as many songs as quickly as possible and hit everyone over the head with it.

What are you most looking forward to doing while you’re here? Do you have a special place that you like to visit?

I love Melbourne a lot, it’s got this odd mix of England and Canada and I absolutely love it there and I can go record shopping!

You guys are frequent visitors to Australia, and each time you come back the fans can’t get enough. Ever thought about relocating to Australia?

I think every time we’re there we think about relocating to Australia, it’s great, it’s like a sunnier Canada and everyone’s in a lot better mood.

It’s now been more than five months since you released Old Crows/Young Cardinals, how have fans responded to the material live?

Good, people really know the songs and singing along, when we got back from Europe it was awesome people were definitely screaming the songs back at us. It was great.

This is the third record in which you have worked with Julius Butty, what made you continue to work with him?

He’s almost like the sixth member; he’s got a great little studio at his home just outside of Toronto. He’s a great producer and definitely a big part of the way our records sound, pretty sure we’re going to keep working with him.

After Crisis various members of Alexisonfire got involved with different projects; do you believe that the time away from the band was crucial in the conception of Old Crows/Young Cardinals?

Yeah absolutely, the time we focused on other bands has made Alexis that much stronger because we’re not trying push all these different sounds and different ideas into the band, and I think this has made us put out a stronger rock n roll record, as opposed to try and go off in weird tangents.

How is your side project Black Lungs going?

It’s good, we’ve got a whole bunch of new songs and I’m going to try and put some new stuff out in January

Any chance of a mini set at Soundwave?

Haha I don’t think so, Dallas did it last year and he was totally miserable.

It is difficult for bands to incorporate three different vocals into a song and make it flow, let alone sound good. However in OC/YC you guys have mastered the ability to do this almost flawlessly, was this a hard task to accomplish?

I think that's something we’ve always just worked with. Dallas and I both came from bands where we were both the lead singers, I don't think it’s something we’ve ever really worried about. George has changed his vocals on the new record that definitely opened up a lot more avenues for us to all sing together. I think that's something that really helped us, we were able to harmonize more, and we were able to sing with George, as opposed to Dallas’ chorus or my bridge.

I’m curious about your upcoming EP ‘Dog’s Blood’ can you tell me anything about it?

Yeah we’ve written four songs for it, one is a b side from Old Crows/Young Cardinals, a really long instrumental. We’ve written two really really heavy songs like real thrashy songs that are definitely I think some of the fastest stuff we’ve ever done. So basically it’s going to be one really thrashy song then an instrumental and on the other side of the record another trashy song and an instrumental.

What’s one thing you want to accomplish with Alexisonfire, which you haven’t done yet?

We really just want to keep playing, and go to places we haven’t been. We want to go to South America for the first time and take our new music to new places. We’ve got our records in China now and just to keep playing and playing.

That's all from me Wade, thanks for your time

No worries, cheers