Los Angeles' ABYSMAL DAWN continue to emblazon their name in the Metal community with their Death Metal shred attack. Having released their sophomore album, "Programmed To Consume", on Relapse Records, they took the U.S. by storm alongside labelmates ORIGIN and MISERY INDEX on this Summer's Relapse Contamination Tour. The future holds no limits for ABYSMAL DAWN as long as they continue their relentless journey to the top of the Metal world.

Let's talk about the new album, 'Programmed To Consume', starting with the song writing process.

"This one was written over a shorter amount of time. The first album was written over a span of couple years, this one was written in about the span of a year. We demoed a lot of stuff... I actually wrote a lot of the stuff at home and then presented it to the band rather than kicking around a bunch of riffs at multiple. There's a little bit of that on this album, but most of it was demoed at home and presented later. So the writing process went a little more smoothly, I guess, and lyrics were written at kind of a weird point of my life - came back from tour, lost my job (laughs), couldn't find work for a long time - did a lot of odd jobs and stuff like that - just gave me a lot more time to think about stuff, rather than being always caught up in the daily rat race of things and you don't always get to think as much as you would like when you have to just constantly be struggling to make ends meet like that, you know? So some of that inspired me, definitely on the lyrical side of things."

Tell us a bit about the production process.

"We went once again with John Haddad who did our first album. We went to a new studio of his - he actually works out of his home now instead of Shiva Studios. It was a brand new studio and we ran into a lot of problems as we were starting, like his board took a shit right before we were supposed to record, had to get it fixed. I don't know, man - just a lot of problems in the beginning and we didn't get as much time for drums as we would have liked, but in the end, I think it came out better, definitely better than our first album. All around, like, production, song writing, performances and everything, so that was good."

Tell us a bit about what inspired the cover art.

"The title, 'Programmed To Consume' and I presented it to Pär, who did the cover artwork and he also did the cover artwork for 'From Ashes' as well, and, I dunno, I think this time around we wanted him to have more of his own input and say in the artwork. The last time was dictated a little bit more and on this one we wanted something that wasn't as blatant and maybe made you think a little bit more than just presenting a certain depiction of a scene or something, so we gave him the album title and he came up with the orb-type thing that's the center piece for the album cover, which is sort of supposed to represent flesh and technology sort of compelled by each other, yet trying to break free. I was like, 'oh, that's cool, I wanna add a little bit more to it', so we put in the cityscape with the decaying society beneath it and the people being sucked into it, consumed by the buyer society, so to speak. So that's pretty much it."

How is your relationship with Relapse in comparison to your time on Crash Music?

"Let's put it this way - within a couple weeks, we already outsold what our first album sold in two years, so pretty damn good so far. They've been really supportive of us and we see the album in a lot of places and advertised a lot of places that it would have been before. I mean, Crash owed a lot of people money and a lot of places wouldn't cover the band because of that and Relapse has a much better standing within the Metal community, so they've been doing a really good job for us."

Tell us a bit about life on the road, like what do you like to do to kill time while touring?

"I dunno... I gues, most of the time, I'm driving. (laughs) So just listening to music and driving, you know, whatever it may be - Metal, Deal Metal, Thrash, Black Metal or non-Metal stuff, like Fusion, Trip-Hop or whatever the hell else we've got in there, so that's pretty much it, man! (laughs) Just sleeping when I can, but mostly driving and worrying about if our tires are going to fucking explode any minute; Master Craft tires - don't trust 'em!"

What are your thoughts on the recent rise of National Socialism within the Metal community, specifically in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet countries?

"You mean racism? Nazi Party, basically?"

Pretty much, yeah.

"Well, I'm against it. (laughs) I mean, I'm not for it, if that's what you mean. I don't know... what more is there to say? I mean, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and there's a certain point where that opinion can get out of hand and gain a majority like it has in the past. Like I said, everyone's entitled to their opinions, but I don't agree with it and to each his own, but if someone's going to voice their opinion like that in my face, I'm gonna voice my thoughts against it in theirs, so that's pretty much it."

What does ABYSMAL DAWN have planned for the future?

"We hope to do a lot more touring this year, maybe another tour early next year. We're hoping to go to Europe at some point, we'll see if everything works out there. If not, we're going to start writing the next album."

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

"No, that's pretty much it. Just come out to the shows, support the band - buy a fucking T-shirt 'cause gas is fucking expensive. Support your underground Metal scene so it doesn't die." [FIN]