“There are loads of kids down at the shows in old Killswitch shirts,” exclaims Mike, KsE bassist, happily earlier when we grabbed 10 minutes on the phone with him. “Anyway,” says Mike, where are you?! We’re in Bristol, and you’re not…” moving on.. “The shows are going great, really excellent. Everyone seems really appreciative, and Poison The Well are going down great too – we couldn’t ask for better guys to tour with. We had originally thought of bringing our friends 36 Crazyfists, but they are working on a new record right now, and we came over here with them last year on Roadrage, and Poison The Well are awesome too! It’s cool to be back, even without that ‘first-time magic’ of playing a new country. It’s nice not to be in the plain ol’ boring US, although we ARE looking forward to doing the US Ozzfest… it’s been so long since we toured there now, like a year or something! The only problem with the UK, is that everything closes so early!! Like 6 or 7pm and everywhere’s shut. I wanna go shopping and I can’t. Anyway, the tour is going cool. I’m trying to think what I can tell you that you can actually repeat on the website.. haha, no I’m being all good. The first night, in Leeds, some kid threw a bottle at our bus driver, and Howard was standing right there. Howard just went straight over and got this guy in a headlock and was all ‘dude, that’s not nice, that’s our bus driver’… I think that kids friends were all scared Howard was gonna beat him up or something, they were all ‘man don’t hurt him!’ Hehehe. All the shows kinda bleed into one another in the end ya know? But everyone should come down, we’ve been having fun throwing out loads of free stuff during the show. We’re sponsored by Jagermeister, so we’ve been giving out everything from free t-shirts, hats, reflectors, shots, to lanyards and stuff.” So, the tour is going great, and sounds like everyone is having fun, as it should be. What’s the latest word on the new album? “We have 3 songs done without vocals, and 2 more which are inches from being done. In fact, Adam said the other day he’d kinda finished another, so it’s coming. We’ve been practising some of the new stuff at soundcheck, playing it really helps work it out and fit it all together, you know, the intricacies of a song. We have a ton of riffs, it’s all about joining them up correctly… that’s the secret of a song. Joel said he wrote a little acoustic 2 to 2-and-a-half minute interlude thing the other day, so maybe that’ll be new song #6. We were actually thinking of locking ourselves in a house somewhere for 2 weeks or so, take an 8-track and a 4-track in with us, and just see what we come up with. Then it’s into the studio to demo or record stuff straight up!” Killswitch Engage play London tomorrow night, and the Kerrang! Weekender on Friday night.