Shane Parsons and his DZ Deathrays counterpart Simon Ridley are holed up in a Toronto hotel room ready to bring their thrashy party-hard brand of indie rock to yet another part of the world.

“I really don't know what people are going to think of it, because it's kind of a real live sounding record,” he says of their debut album Bloodstreams. “To me it sounds a lot like what we sound like live. I dunno if people will get bored of that or not.

“We always think it's easier to make the record sound live than have a highly produced record and then do that live. Our live shows have always been our strongest point as a band, so making the record sound like that is kind of a cool thing. Then when people come and see us live, it's also fucking brutally loud and pretty intense. We wanted to make it really raw but with room to breathe as well. We didn't want it like full on for your ears the whole time, we tried to make as much movement in there as possible.”

After releasing two successful EPs and touring harder than most, the band were understandably itching to get this record completed, though they are thankful they didn't rush it out too quickly.

“We wanted to put a record out last year, we were pushing and pushing and pushing but no one would let us do it,” Parsons exclaims. “We thought people would take us so much more seriously if we had an album; having two EPs – and one of the EPs was written in a garage and recorded in a bedroom and the other one, half of it was done at a house party – we needed a solid release. But we're kinda glad we wanted until now, because in that spare time that we weren't working on an album we were touring and out of that, a lot of opportunities have come up.”

But the band didn't exactly go all out when it came to making the record; they stayed on the outskirts of their home city, choosing Neil Coombe's White Room recording studio in Mt Nebo rather than a big-budget overseas recording lair.

“We get along really well with Neil and he did Gebbie St and Rad Solar; he's a good guy to work with,” Parsons says. “We like it out there, it's Brisbane… We didn't want to have to leave Brisbane for it, we just wanted to be close to home and make it sort of as if it was done in our bedroom anyway. Going out to White Room, he has a studio but it's still his house. You sleep on his lounge room floor and it's only one live room, so you kind of get that sort of live sound out of it anyway.”

For production duties, the band looked to Richard Pike of Sydney/London electro-math-rockers PVT.

“We wanted a producer and we were looking at people we could ask to produce. PVT's management had said that Richard was available for production duties and we really love what PVT have done over the past few years and think they're a great band, so we asked and Richard was really keen on it.

“[We had] the right amount of pull either way – we're going a rock way, he's sometimes going a more electronic way – but he would also say like, 'This is the tempo you should be doing it at' or 'You're not getting the tone right'. That was a really good thing for us because we're just two guys who've always slammed it out and whatever comes out comes out, but he really analysed everything and helped us try and tighten things up and lock things together.”

But things weren't peachy the whole way through the recording process – in fact, they didn't get off to the most promising of starts.

“When I got back from Europe I got really sick with whooping cough,” Parsons recounts. “I had a week where I was really sick and I couldn't sing at all. I just had to keep drinking tea and try to get better. I got back and I had a week at home, which was supposed to be our week to rehearse before we went in there. I was literally in bed the whole time, I was so sick. I couldn't move; I'd just cough myself to sleep the whole time. I went to the doctor and got some antibiotics and started getting better when we got into the studio, but there was no way I could sing, I had no voice at all. After about a week it started to come back and the whole time I'm just smashing water and tea just trying to make it limber up a little bit. It's a pretty unfortunate time to get it! But there's nothing else I could do, I just had to try and work through it.”

The film clip the band released for first single No Sleep became an instant internet hit, as American funnyman Arj Barker joined the lads in something of a recreation of Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al clip. But we've since learned after its release that Barker was the band's second choice, after Ian Smith; better known as Harold Bishop from Neighbours.

“Oh man, it would have been awesome,” Parsons beams. “We were like, 'We should get Harold from Neighbours and we should just go around smashing car windows. That would make the best film clip ever!'” Alas, it wasn't to be. “He wasn't keen on it; he's a bit standoffish on the youth.”

The band return from their UK and US tour and go head first into the Australian album launch dates, after which it's straight back overseas. Thankfully Parsons can't get enough. “I love it, it's so good,” he says. “Once you've done the first two shows of the tour and you're in that zone, you just keep going and the shows might even get a bit crazier every time. I like that feeling. It's totally different to when you first start out in a band and you're like, 'We've got a show in two weeks' and you're working up to it to try and make it really good.

“Now we're at the point where we've done ten shows over here and we've been in a few different countries. We're about to do five in Canada and come back and do 12 in Australia, then 25 in the UK and Europe and then 32 in the US and then back to Australia again. It's kind of like an endless thing now and you just take each day as it comes along.”