We spoke to SF frontman Brian Fair before their gig with Decimate in Birmingham.

Metal Mayhem: How would you describe Shadows Fall to someone who hasn’t heard of you?
Brian Fair: It’s a mixture of different styles of metal, full on aggressive stuff. There’s definitely lots of melody and rock ‘n’ roll influences that should appeal to anyone into aggressive music.

MM: How would you compare the gigs over here in the UK to the ones back in the US?
BF: Well were just making a name for ourselves over here in the UK, so gigs over in the US are a lot bigger. It’s been really cool playing here with smaller venues and seeing new crowds. We’ve been touring the states for about six years so it’s a bit different over there.

MM: You play pretty non-stop until august now including Kerrang Week-Ender, the US Ozzfest & hopefully the Download Festival. Which bands are you looking forward to playing alongside?
BF: We’re looking forward to the Kerrang Week-Ender because were playing with a lot of our good friends like Glassjaw, Killswitch Engage and Amen who we’ve toured with in the past. Also Iron Maiden at Donnington should be amazing.

MM: Are you playing the UK Ozzfest?
BF: We don’t know yet, we haven’t heard anything about it. It sounds cool though.

MM: We’ve been looking at some reviews of your latest album, and to be honest we found very little negative comments. Were you surprised at the reaction or did you realize you had created something special? BF: To be honest we made a pretty selfish record. We did exactly what we wanted without worrying about the consequences. So far the reviews have been amazing, so it was definitely worth going with our gut feelings. It does get a little nervous though because when you start getting too many good reviews, people start looking for reasons not to like you.

MM: Who are the bands main influences?
BF: We all listen to tons of different music, but the band as a whole are into the old school thrash, bands like Metallica, Exodus and Testement. We also listen to some of the classic rock, bands like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and Sabbath. As we are all so different the music on long drives is just totally insane.

MM: If you could create you own festival, which five bands would you like to play alongside?
BF: We pretty much are as we’re playing with Iron Maiden at Donnington, it doesn’t get any better that that. Besides that maybe old Metallica circa 1987, Slayer, a few other bands to round it up, original Sabbath would be nice and maybe bring back John Bonham from the grave and have Zeppelin play.

MM: What are your top 3 CD’s of all time?
BF: That’s Tough! I’d say Bob Marley’s "Catch A Fire", "Black Sabbath" by Sabbath and maybe "Master of Puppets" by Metallica.

MM: Where would you like to be in 5 years time?
BF: Hopefully still touring with this band, definitely making music though. I’d love to see Shadow’s Fall still touring and making music as we feel we have reached all the goals we set ourselves, traveling the world and that. I’d also like to push the style of music and expose it to a few new faces.

MM: What do you think was the bands greatest and worst moment? BF: Our worst moment was probably when we blew two tyres when we were leaving Colchester, and having to sit on the side of the road whilst we tried to dry our clothes as two military vehicles drove past laughing at us, or maybe even having to drive 20 hours from Sweden to Amsterdam and having to sleep next to a dumpster in the van. Our best moment was probably some of the festivals we played in Japan, they were huge shows and amazing crowd response.

MM: What do you think of webzines?
BF: Webzines are cool. Its probably the most up to date as it can be updated constantly as Paper magazines come out a month after something’s happened, so by that time its already out of date.

MM: And finally, What do you think about the internet. How does it help and how does it hurt bands/record companies?
BF: The only thing that sucks is when a record gets leaked before it comes out. I mean Hatebreed’s record went up on one site for 15 minutes and 50,000 people downloaded it. The only way a band gets record label stature or tour support is through record sales. That’s the only problem I can see with it. Its def the best way to talk to people, my long distance phone bill has dropped tremendously. There’s everything you can imagine out there, oh there’s also some amazing porn out there as well!

Visit Shadows Fall at http://www.shadowsfall.com