MISERY INDEX have been hard at work this year - their third full length album, "Traitors", saw it's release on Relapse Records, the band completed this Summer's installment of the Relapse Contamination tour alongside labelmates ORIGIN and ABYSMAL DAWN and are due out on the road again this Winter with THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER and SOILENT GREEN. The only thing more relentless than their schedule is their unique and punishing take on Death Metal. MISERY INDEX truly is a band with all the tools necessary to take the to the top of the heap.

First of all, tell us a bit about the new album, "Traitors".

"The new album, 'Traitors', will be out on September 30 on the ever wonderful Relapse Records. We recorded it with Kurt Ballou from CONVERGE up in Massachusetts, then we got the mixing job and mastering job done down in Baltimore at a place called Right Way Studios. The album has eleven songs on it, anything you ever liked about MISERY INDEX will be represented there, as well as some other things that we've incorporated into the entire framework of the band, so we highly encourage anyone who's a previous fan or an upcoming fan to check out the record and get it any way you can!"

Tell us a little bit about the song writing and production process.

"Song writing wise, everybody contributes, usually myself and Jason, our bassist, and Mark, the guitar player, will come up with the riff ideas individually, will bring them to Adam, our drummer, and then we'll flesh out the songs and everybody will have an input and opinion about different aspects of the arraignment. Jason writes most of the lyrics and he and Mark split vocal duties and as far as the actual pre-production stuff, we made use of an electronic drum kit this time, as well as Garage Band on Apple computer. We went on tour in Europe with DESPISED ICON in the early part of this year and we brought that stuff with us so when we were on tour, we were actually able to write songs and get a lot of things and ideas together, which would've been pretty hard to do in past years, so it was actually probably the smoothest song writing process we've had in the history of the band."

About the video you had on MTV a little while ago, how does it feel for a band such as yourselves to get a video on the network that has pretty much abandoned any good taste in music?

"Basically, for us, any opportunity for someone who might not have exposure to what we do, to have a chance to check it out, some kid out in the middle of nowhere whose parents won't get him an internet connection because they're afraid he's going to see porn or they're God-fearing or whatever, if he can watch that show while his parents are asleep and he can check out the band and have an idea that there's something else going on out there in the world, then that's something that we have been able to achieve and be able to get that message over to him. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff that goes on with Headbanger's Ball, with pay to play and other kinds of nonsense, a lot of other lighter, kind of milk-toast 'Metal' that they put on there, but if we can slip in a little grindy, heavy, moshy stuff and let the kids out there who don't have a chance to hear it otherwise, if they get the exposure to it, then that's fine with us."

I understand they censored the word "terrorist" in the video.

"Apparently, the way that things go on over there, they have a rotating board of people who work at the station, so we're not sure who it was, but apparently someone had an issue with it. Apparently, they're not a fan of Fox News, because if they were, then there wouldn't have been an issue with the word 'terrorist'."

Tell us a little bit about the band's record label, Anarchos Records.

"We've been self-releasing things here and there over the course of time since the band's been in existence in 2001. We're probably going to do a retrospective collection of a bunch of different things that have been previously released on vinyl, on splits, seven-inches and what have you next year, we're going to try to get all that stuff together, so that's probably going to be the next release that we have. At some point down the road, maybe we'll release some stuff with other bands, but right now it's just basically an in-house thing for us to be able to get some stuff out there."

I understand there was a DVD awhile ago. Is that still available?

"It was a thousand copies, limited run when Kevin Talley, our former drummer, was in the band, he took a bunch of video that we had compiled over the beginning three years of the band and he put everything together and sent it off to the pressing plant - it was basically all his doing. You can find them on eBay, I guess, ocassionally people will tell us they find them at a used record shop or something like that, but there's no real plans to put that in print, but maybe that will be part of the retrospective down the road."

There's a strong Hardcore Punk to your music, tell us a little bit about how you've incorporated that and how you feel it sets you apart from other Death Grind styled bands.

"The Hardcore Punk thing, I guess growing up on the East Coast in between Baltimore and Washington and being close to New York City and these other places where that style of music really had a big foothold through the early part of the eighties to the present. It was always kind of around, you know, we always played shows with Hardcore bands in DYING FETUS and then when MISERY INDEX started, it wasn't unusual for us to play one night with SUFFOCATION, then go play with PHOBIA the next night, so I think it's just the common underground ethos that we all share among all these different scenes, as well as being fans of these styles of music, so when it comes to the song writing, it just kind of comes naturally because it's the fruit of all the things that are in our heads. It just kind of comes out naturally, so I don't know - for us, it's just music, it's just whatever comes out - we don't like to try to classify it. I know labels always apply it to music to try to give people an idea of what a band sounds like, but I don't even know if we really stand apart. I think we just try to write the best songs possible, you know, catchy stuff that has all the good elements in there, so if somebody thinks we stand apart, cool, if not, just listen to it, download it and burn it for your friends."

How is your relationship with Relapse compared to your time on Nuclear Blast?

"Relapse, I say, a little more attentive, mainly because they don't have so many bands on the roster. They're also headquartered in Philidelphia, whereas Nuclear Blast has offices in Germany, offices in Califonia; the offices in California are combined with Century Media and all their sublabels - you have a lot of common employees doing a lot of different things, you have way more many bands, there's way more releases on Century Media and Nuclear Blast throughout the course of any given year. So far band like us who's not selling hundreds of thousands of records like some of the bands on Nuclear Blast, it gives us an opportunity on Relapse to be more of a priority in terms of what they're thinking about trying to do for us in promotion, so on that end of things, it's worked out a lot better for us. The style of band we are, Nuclear Blast is kind of like an afterthought almost, whereas with Relapse, it's kind of like the bread and butter of what they've done throughout the years, so we're very happy to be back working with Relapse. We had been with them previously back when Jason and I were members of DYING FETUS. So it was kind of like coming back home again - very cool."

What do you think is currently the greatest threat to society?

"People need to wake up and pay attention to all of the resources that are available to find out what is happening in the great big, wide world around them and not be distracted by all the other things that are available to kind of like the creature comfort aspect of things. Yes, I love play video games, yes, I like looking at porn on the internet, but at the end of the day, there's so many more ways to find out about what's happening either locally or globally and if you don't take advantage of the opportunity to gain that knowledge, then you're only going to fool yourself and you're going to end up in the long run not being able to benefit from all of these great things that are out there. So it seems like to me that twenty, thirty years ago, the internet was just like a dream, now everything is here - you can sit down any day and find out about anything about any subject you want, so it's a personal responsibility thing. The more people that educate themselves, the better off we'll all be in the end. If you don't, we're doomed."

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

"Well, like any other kind of political system, there's are always going to be people that adhere to whatever their own belief systems are, you know... I'm not particularly a fan of those things, but I don't live in those places, either. I didn't grow up under Communist rule and I'm not making any defense of it, but having traveled to those places and know that under Socialism, a lot of things are repressed and so it's a natural kind of... to fight back against it, no different than if you grew up in a really strict Catholic family, maybe you would become a Satanist. Again, I'm not making any excuses for this stuff that these guys are doing, but I can see where things come from, I can understand the origins of it. Personally, I would rather not see that in the scene, I'm not really a fan of people doing a sieg heil in front of me when I'm playing a show, you know, and I think there's a lot of history out there that's available and we all could see what happened and it's not really a good thing, but to each his own, just as long as they don't do it to me. (laughter)."

Have you ever gone to a show and ended up talking to some people there that for some reason got you confused with MISERY SIGNALS?

"It happens all the time. There was actually somebody from Omaha, Nebraska that sent us a message maybe two or three years ago, said 'I can't wait to see you guys in Omaha!' and we weren't even on tour at that time and I look at the website for the club and sure enough, it was MISERY SIGNALS and I wrote the kid back and I'm like, 'dude, I'm sorry, but we're not driving twenty hours for a one-off'. I don't think we've actually played with MISERY SIGNALS, which I guess would be kind of cool if we did sometime, that way everybody would be happy. But there's other bands out there with 'misery' in their name, like MISERY SPEAKS or something and MISERY LOVES COMPANY was an Earache band back in the '90s or early 2000s, so I mean, it's bound to be a confusion anytime you have a two word band name, somebody else is bound to have one of those two words in their name, so it happens." [FIN]