We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Tobin, vocalist of Canada’s Dead and Divine for Australian Hysteria magazine. The interview was published in issue 6 of the mag’ which went on sale this month. If you haven’t picked up a copy before, we really recommend it. It’s literally packed to the brim with interviews, reviews and news on many various heavy music sub-genres with something for everyone. Anyway, here’s the feature as it appears in the magazine:

They say that with age comes a greater sense of perspective and often more confidence in one’s own abilities. Basically, you become more comfortable in yourself and what you’re about. Clearly this must be true of the guys in Canada’s Dead and Divine: a band often lumped in with the crowded ‘metalcore’ scene and the narrow field of view its fans can sometimes display.

On their third full-length release – Antimacy – the Canadian quintet find themselves introducing more layers to their trademark sound. While this type of artistic growth and maturity can often be seen as a negative by fans, it’s something founder member and vocalist Matt Tobin is pretty chuffed about. “This time around we were like, ‘let’s try something new and let’s do what we were afraid to do with the last record’,” Tobin says. “At that point we didn’t care anymore and just wanted to make a record that we all loved. If we ended up with a part that sounded like something we normally wouldn’t do, we did it anyway if we liked how it sounded.”

With the group’s previous outings staying pretty true to formula, including 2008’s debut The Fanciful and 2009’s The Machines We Are, there are more obvious hints of primary song writers Matt and Chris LeMasters’ (guitar) childhood influences poking through into the 11 tracks that comprise Antimacy. “A lot of us grew up in the ‘90s, so that’s what we were raised on,” Tobin says. “I grew up on the Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, silverchair – they were and still are one of my favourite bands – the deftones… they were some of the biggest influences on me. A lot of grunge, too.”
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