Chris Schwegler / Schwegweb.com

Schwegweb talked with Dave from Noise Therapy.

SW: How's the tour going so far with Otep?
Dave: Awesome, we were a little bit concerned at the beginning of the tour, 15 hours before our plane left we heard that it had been canceled. Every show but one has been extremely good.

Do you like the bands you're out with? E-town, and Otep
Etown are awesome guys, otep is awesome. We haven't actually talked to otep herself.

Any favorite stops so far?
Shit, there's so many favorite places to play. Aside from our hometown, probably New York and LA are my two favorites, and they're supposed to be hardest markets.

How's the reaction back in Canada, where you have more exposure, compared to here in the US
A few months ago I would have agreed, but we're actually bigger down here now than we are up there. That's the problem with Canada, there's no real advantage, cause everybody up there is scared to play something heavy.

What about other Canadian heavy acts getting bigger on the US scene. Like finger eleven or pulse ultra?
Pulse Ultra, I didn't even know they were from Canada actually

Aren't they from Vancouver too?
No, well actually I don't know, I'd never heard of them til we came down to the states.

The new album Tension, came out in August, it's in stores. I know you worked with a couple different producers, did you intend that? How did that come about?
Well Mike Plotnikoff, he's done pretty much every record we've done, so we had him. He wanted us to do some work with this guy named Igor. He's one of those guys a studio guy with perfect pitch, he can play anything better than anyone else, one of those kind of guys. So that's how we got him. We wanted to use Rhys Fulber, he did alot of stuff for Fear factory. Mike Wanchic was a friend of our A&R guy, so we just ended up with a shitload of producers. Lots of tension, that's why we called the album that.

Probably not going to do that again?
You've got headphones on, and you're trying to get into that "spot" and get the emotion out and you've got like 4 guys on the talk-back all saying shit to you at the same time. You know, I can only do one thing at once.

I wasn't sure if that's how you did it, everyone at once, or a week with and then a week with another.
No, everybody kinda just sat and--The record actually, I wouldn't say we did more, but most of the songs were the way we wrote them. I mean little changes here and there.

Did you go in with everything written or did you write while you were in the studio?
We had taken a year off, I had talked to Kai, and basically we got together after a year, we started jamming, we wrote four or five songs. The record was half written before, and the other half was written while we were waiting to get into the studio.

What's your writing process, do you all write together or separate, write and come back together?
We do most of our writing all together, we vibe off each other. Rob or Kai will start a riff, then the drums will come in. We write really quickly. We've been together for like 8 years, so when someone will play one riff, you kind of know what every body else is thinking.

So how would you describe your sound to someone who's never heard you?
That would be kind of hard to explain. I don't really know what we are, nobody does. We're heavy, but we also have some mellow-er nicer stuff that we mix between the heavy, I guess like a Linkin Park kind of--I don't know, we don't have rap though. We're like a techno, metal, modern.....something. You listen to the record and tell me.

I was going to say there's also alot of melody too, it's not just chugging constantly
Yea we have breaks, we'll have loops running. It's really diverse. We're basically as heavy as we could possibly be, but then we're super mellow

Awesome. Do you have plans for a single or video?
Get Up is on the radio right now. We haven't done a video yet, if Get Up takes off, we may do a video for it, if not I believe Star 69 will be the next single off the album

Are there any younger bands you'd want to put into the spotlight and maybe help out?
There's lots. I wouldn't want to just say one. E-Town Concrete, we're playing with, really cool band.

What about out of the hometown?
Everybody we know out of our hometown that is up-and-coming is bigger than us. I'm trying to think.... I think Flybanger got a new deal, I think they changed their name back to Jarr

If you could set your own tour, with any three bands, who would they be, Live, dead, gone, whatever.
Disturbed, for business reasons Linkin Park [laughter], Mudvayne, Sevendust, Korn. I don't know I think that's five.

Well, I wanna thank you for your time, any parting words for the internet masses?
Don't stare at it too long. [Laughter}