ALTER BRIDGE Frontman On Producer ELVIS BASKETTE: 'He's Not Going To Let Anything Slide By If Anybody's Tempted To Phone It In'

HardDrive Radio's Paulie Walnuts recently conducted an interview with ALTER BRIDGE vocalist Myles Kennedy and guitarist Mark Tremonti. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On why ALTER BRIDGE chose to work with producer Michael "Elvis" Baskette on its forthcoming album, "Walk The Sky":

Myles: "He's really hard on us, which is what we like. I think that at the end of the day, he's maybe the biggest ALTER BRIDGE fan, and with that said, he listens like an ALTER BRIDGE fan. He's not going to let anything slide by if anybody's tempted to phone it in; it's not going to happen on his watch. And that's great. I love that. He's not afraid to tell it how it is. At the end of the day, I think it helps us up our game considerably."

On whether ALTER BRIDGE tried anything differently during the creation of "Walk The Sky":

Mark: "I ran into some stuff that was kind of John Carpenter-esque, the old synth wave stuff. A few of the songs were kind of written with that in mind. I tried to create loops and listen to loops online and get out of my normal writing mind frame and just try to pull from somewhere else. Every record you try to do that a little bit, but that was the main outside influence that I could think of on this record that changed a little bit. As I said before, we're still the same four guys doing it; we're just trying to do it a little different each time."

On the band's current writing process:

Mark: "This time, we just demoed on our own. I turned in songs, he turned in songs and we just piled them up and went into pre-production with all of our favorite tunes ready to go. Usually we would write separately, then piece our ideas together so every song was a collaboration, but on this record, for the most part, everything was worked out as much as we could on our own. When you get in a room with five heads is better than one. We polished the songs that we worked on by ourselves and went into the studio. It was mainly because we had such a short time in the studio. We had to be more prepared than ever. The last record we did, I thought it was the most stressful record to record. Everything was about capturing lightning in a bottle, last minute — let's get in pre-production and write this song and record it. Sometimes it's kind of a race to find the next part and it's hectic for me. But I like being more prepared."

On whether there's an overall theme to "Walk The Sky":

Myles: "I mean, there's certainly a theme that runs off and on throughout the record. 'Indoctrination' is inspired by watching something on Netflix, like a cult leader. It's very dark and twisted. There's a bunch of different subject matters. I think the common idea that runs throughout it is the idea of becoming more aware, becoming more present and realizing that right now is really ultimately all that matters. I think a lot of it is very Eastern philosophy, a lot of that inspired many of the lyrics. So yeah, that's kind of the lyrical concept in a nutshell."

"Walk The Sky" will be released on October 18 via Napalm Records.

ALTER BRIDGE will kick off a European tour with SHINEDOWN, SEVENDUST and THE RAVEN AGE on November 12 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Photo credit: Dan Sturgess