Alexisonfire are one of the biggest names in post-hardcore, and their guitarist/vocalist Dallas Green is arguably one of the reasons they got there. Having written songs for four studio albums in the past nine years, as well as having great stage presence and the object of desire for many screaming girls, Green is at the top of his game right now and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
Two weeks ago, Alexisonfire ended their UK tour at Nottingham’s Rock City. The tour truly put the band through their paces, which required a lot of physical energy as well as mental stability.
“Three or four days ago I started losing my voice a little bit, just because of the cold and not sleeping very much,” Green said. “I’m trying to get it back, drinking lots of tea, it’s held up for the show. I’ll probably just go for it tonight, I’ve got nearly two weeks before the next tour.”
In the past ten years, Alexisonfire have toured all over the world. Green explains how the band’s fanbase doesn’t particularly change from country to country.
“Kids are different everywhere, but they are also kind of the same. As much as the accent changes from place to place, when they sing along to the songs, they all sing with that same voice,” Green said.
“I feel with our band we don’t really draw the supercool kids, we don’t really draw the scenester type kids, we just draw kids who are really excited about music. Sometimes we draw kids who are sort of stuck in the middle and don’t really know what they’re like.”
Alexisonfire’s fanbase at the Nottingham show definitely represented people from all walks of life, not just the ‘supercool kids’. Fans of varying age and scenes packed Rock City to the rafters. Green himself was also never part of the cool group.
“I was always looking for my own type of thing, always searching for new bands, not trying to listen to what everyone was listening to, just trying to listen to what felt good to me.
“I remember my first shows, I really like that we can be a band that kids can come up to me and say ‘this is my first show’. A lot of people would [mock] that, indie kids would be like ‘oh, you’re just playing music for kids’, those people forget what it’s like to be a kid, to go to your first show. I remember my first show and it was amazing, if I can be somebody’s first show then that’s awesome.”
The band released a new EP earlier this month entitled “Dog’s Blood” which is much more experimental than their previous work. The screaming has toned down and the final track “Vex” is a great example of progressive rock.
“It kind of started as a little bit of a joke. The ‘Dog’s Blood’ thing comes from ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, the Wes Anderson movie, it was like ‘We should do an EP called the Dog’s Blood EP’. Then I think I said it in an interview by accident and then somebody printed it, saying we were doing it, so we were like ‘I guess we should do that’.”
Last year Alexisonfire released “Old Crows/Young Cardinals”, as such the band decided on an EP for the new material as “there aren’t any rules, you don’t have to adhere to any sort of sequence or theme, or worry about songs fitting in, you can do whatever you want with it.”
But how are the crowd reacting to the new material?
“We play ‘Dog’s Blood’ every night and kids are going nuts for it, singing along and stuff already… I think people that really like us know that everything we put out is going to be different,” Green stated.
“The people who don’t like the change are kind of fair weather fans anyway. They probably just like the one record, and that’s fine, I’ve been like that with bands. Sometimes a record makes perfect sense to you, then the next record, you get older, it just doesn’t meet the same expectations emotionally for you.”
Next year sees Alexisonfire turn ten years old, a triumph for any band, especially one who isn’t considered mainstream. To celebrate this milestone Green revealed: “There’s talk of a book, sort of like a photo book… just kind of like a load of the photos we took over the years, maybe new ones and stuff. Make fun of ourselves in the photos, see how we used to look. There hasn’t really been much conversation of it yet, I think we need to get there first.”