Taking Full Control

"I think for this record especially, we wanted to step out of our comfort zone and not write such a 'safe' record,” muses Bullet For My Valentine's guitarist Michael Paget in his almost indecipherably heavy Welsh accent. “We wanted to try something a little bit different and fresh and new. But I think how we achieved that newness was to do something that in a lot of ways was an extension of what we did on Fever. This is where the last one picked off, but the songs have gotten a lot more direct and leaner… It's just a better-sculpted beast than anything we have sculpted as a band before.”

After the metallic blast of 2008's Scream Aim Fire and the stadium-y, hard rock sheen of 2010's Fever, Padge and his boys – vocalist Matt Tuck, bassist Jason James and drummer Michael 'Moose' Thomas – had well and truly established what a Bullet For My Valentine record was supposed to sound like. When it came time to write Temper Temper they wanted to shake things up for themselves without losing sight of that. The idea of stepping outside their comfort zone led them to try and approach things a bit differently. Firstly, there was a very unusual recording session.

“Two of the guys shot off to Thailand initially to start recording, to do drums and guitars and a bit of writing, and they spent five weeks out there and managed to come back with a base for the record. Then when they got back we went around to four or five studios in the UK to finish everything off.

“I have no idea how it ended up that we were working in all these different studios. We got a great deal on the studio in Thailand, so that was the rationale behind having some of the guys go there. And then the rest was just where we all were at the various times when we were doing this record. It just became a lot easier to split the sessions up over a few studios around the place.”

In these various sessions, Bullet For My Valentine wanted to focus their efforts on making Temper Temper the most succinct, powerful record the band had ever produced. Which meant that, for all of their fourth album's obvious metallic overtones, the guys and returning Fever producer Don Gilmore, approached the tracks with a very punk point of view.

“We wanted to trim off the parts of songs that weren't really needed. Like, Riot, for instance, that's two minutes forty-seven seconds, and up until now we've been in this bad habit of writing four-minute, five-minute songs. And we knew that we had the chops to write music that was a lot snappier, rather than having to do things like cutting bits away for radio releases or whatever. This way the songs are what they are and what they're supposed to be… And rather than cut bits out so the songs can get played on the radio, we wanted to sit down in the studio and cut bits out that would make the songs sound better on the record. And that was the mentality going into this record; we wanted to make everything as neat a package as possible.”

Touring as much as Bullet For My Valentine are wont to do – Padge goes as far as to describe the process as “put out the album, tour for two years non-stop”, the question is posed whether the band's desire to write that punchy, condensed record was a direct reaction to what the band wanted to do with their live show going forward?

“With a sharper record, it definitely translates to the live set. The set becomes punchier, and I think that's going to make the new stuff stick out a bit, which I think will be good. Obviously because this is our fourth record, we've been doing it a little while now. So the idea of what the material is going to sound like live is always in the back of our minds. Especially when there's a breakdown or a part in the song that you know you can open up live and do something really cool. That's always in the back of our heads, and the more we play live the more we understand that and the more we understand how to write music to accommodate that, but not too much, y'know. It doesn't entirely dictate what we are doing when we're writing new music, but yeah, it definitely is a consideration.”

With Temper Temper already out on the streets, Bullet For My Valentine have turned their attentions towards what they're going to be doing with the new live show. There's a lot going on in the band's camp before they make their way down here for Soundwave, and Padge says that it's exciting times for the four-piece.

“We're currently back in Wales trying to work out what we're going to be doing with the set, so we're just all getting more and more excited with each day. Because there's no better place to start a tour than in Australia, so it's going to be great to be able to start off a cycle Down Under… We won't be bringing too much production down with us, but that's not going to matter. This record's going to fly off the stage and hit people in the face, so we'll be putting on a good show no matter if it's the longer headlining sets we get to play or the festival sets, which will be not as long.”

As Padge tells it, BFMV's pre-tour preparation is a rigorous affair because the band needs to have the new record up to scratch before the band head out on that first tour.

“It's going to sound exactly like the record because that's something we really want to do on this cycle, make sure that fans can hear everything they can hear on the record… I think we're going to play a lot of Temper Temper on the cycle, and now that we're in rehearsal we're killing ourselves to make sure that everything is perfect. Because it has to be spot on, we're all perfectionists. There's no room for any mistakes.”

As Padge ominously intones his comment about 'no room for mistakes', one starts to wonder what the other members of Bullet For My Valentine might do if they caught a colleague making a mistake during one of the tracks live. Does the band employ some cruel and sadistic means of corporal punishment against one another?

“You usually get laughed at by the guys if you let a mistake slip through,” Padge says with a chuckle. “It's not so much of a big thing. But it's more the personal thing, if you're up there playing and you're getting something wrong, that just would be unacceptable. But I think with us, that drive to perfection makes the mistakes that do slip through pretty minor… I mean, when you're up there anything can happen; you slip over or can get a bottle in the face – anything. But if it's something that you can control, you better well make sure that you've got it under control.”

Bullet For My Valentine will be playing the following dates:

Friday 22 February - The Hi-Fi, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 23 February - Soundwave, RNA Showgrounds, Fortitude Valley QLD
Sunday 24 February - Soundwave, Olympic Park, Sydney NSW
Wednesday 27 February - The Hi-Fi, Sydney NSW
Friday 1 March - Soundwave, Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 2 March - Soundwave, Bonython Park, Adelaide SA
Monday 4 March - Soundwave, Claremont Showgrounds, Claremont WA