Wild Life

"When I started the band my goal was never to even reach this sort of level,” admits Ben Bruce on the phone from Texas. “I would have been happy pottering around on tour, playing in front of four-five hundred people a night – that was what I was aiming for then. As time's gone on and we've got bigger and set new goals we have new visions of where we want to take the band now, so each time we grow and reach a goal we strive to move onwards and upwards and create new goals. It's a problem when you hit the roof and stop there.”

Up until this point, the career of Asking Alexandria has played out as a thing of increments. Since forming the group in 2008 while based in Dubai, guitarist Ben Bruce has been tirelessly working towards discovering the band he always wanted to lead. With From Death To Destiny, the British quintet's third record, he's just about there.

Charting in the Billboard top five – a first for the York hardcore act – From Death To Destiny sees Asking Alexandria pushing towards a more classic rock sound, the group somewhat turning their back on stylistic trends that Bruce now considers stale.

“We fell into a little pigeonhole from the last record of being a breakdown band and just playing a lot of open breakdowns so we really tried to steer clear of that this time,” he says. “We concentrated more on writing driving riffs or licks and weird passages and stuff and bigger and better choruses instead of relying on breakdowns to make the song heavy. We were so open with where we wanted to be and we were finally brave enough to release a record where we were like, 'We're going to play exactly what we want to play and showcase a lot of our different influences, from Guns N' Roses and Mötley Crüe to Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, to Slipknot and Korn. As a record it's so diverse and it reaches out to so many different kinds of people and different audiences.”

About to embark on a heavy touring schedule throughout the coming months, Asking Alexandria should have these new songs on lock by the time they land in our parts once more for Soundwave 2014, their second appearance at the festival following a successful run in 2011. And Bruce confesses he also has a personal agenda this time around. “Well, it's got nothing to do with music but last time I was too scared to hold a koala bear, so I might try [that this time],” he laughs awkwardly. “I heard they had syphilis or some shit like that, so I was like, eww, I don't want to touch this bear and then come home to the missus and try to explain to her, 'I swear I wasn't cheating on you, I got it from a koala bear'. [No one's ever buying that story], it's like the 'dog ate my homework' bit.”