Asking Alexandria"When I started the band my goal was never to even reach this sort of level,” admits Ben Bruce on the phone from Texas. “I would have been happy pottering around on tour, playing in front of four-five hundred people a night – that was what I was aiming for then. As time's gone on and we've got bigger and set new goals we have new visions of where we want to take the band now, so each time we grow and reach a goal we strive to move onwards and upwards and create new goals. It's a problem when you hit the roof and stop there.”
Up until this point, the career of Asking Alexandria has played out as a thing of increments. Since forming the group in 2008 while based in Dubai, guitarist Ben Bruce has been tirelessly working towards discovering the band he always wanted to lead. With From Death To Destiny, the British quintet's third record, he's just about there.
Charting in the Billboard top five – a first for the York hardcore act – From Death To Destiny sees Asking Alexandria pushing towards a more classic rock sound, the group somewhat turning their back on stylistic trends that Bruce now considers stale.
“We fell into a little pigeonhole from the last record of being a breakdown band and just playing a lot of open breakdowns so we really tried to steer clear of that this time,” he says. “We concentrated more on writing driving riffs or licks and weird passages and stuff and bigger and better choruses instead of relying on breakdowns to make the song heavy."
