Welcome back, fellas.
Roddy: Thanks. You guys have supported us from day one. In fact, Australia was the first place we had our first hit single.
Mike: We love Australia. We’ve toured there many times and done so much — everything from the Great Barrier Reef to eating some great food in Sydney and Melbourne.
WELL, It’s been 18 years since your last album. Why do one now?
Roddy: A couple of years ago we did a lot of reunion shows together and it was a bit of a coming together as friends and collaborators. It was a long journey to travel and it takes a toll on friendships. By the time we broke up we were not the greatest of friends. We’d seen enough of each other. A long time past and we became friends again. We actually really liked being together again and we like what we do together, so it seemed like new material was the next logical step.
Jon: But I don’t think it’s something that could have been planned before then.
Mike: And we actually felt like we had something to say. And it was worth saying.
Did you ever think about never doing another album?
Jon: Of course. Probably up until we started working on this one.
Mike: There was no intention of doing an album when we started the 2.0 shows. We just got together and played and saw how it felt to be ourselves.
Roddy: Yeah, at one point there was a conscientious decision amongst us, backstage, that we really didn’t want to just do shows playing the old material. So in order to make ourselves feel good we needed to make a new record, make some new songs. It wasn’t material we had sitting around from before, it was stuff that was inspired by the moment and now.
How would you describe Sol Invictus?
Roddy: It’s like a sense of maturity. It sounds a bit corny but as people mature into their craft it seems the most effect is by stripping things down rather than throwing things on, and we had such a career of throwing things into the mix. These days I love hearing a solo instrument and the voice together and nothing else. Sol Invictus is who we are but it’s also where we are going. It has to be evolution.
After so many years since your last album, did the recording process change?
Mike: It was different. The world is different, recording is different, technology is different, and we’re different. So it couldn’t be the same, but it was very natural and extremely comfortable. We had no pressure, no expectation and it was recorded in our rehearsal room. We just dipped our feet in the water and saw how it felt.
Jon: It was probably liberating for the entire band to be able to work on things at our leisure, to be able to get things done without any time constraints. We were able to take our time and let it develop naturally in a way we couldn’t have done 20 years ago.
Roddy: And being almost 20 years later we have a lot of respect for each other. I mean, we did 20 years ago but I don’t think we were as adept at expressing that respect amongst ourselves. We were real f—kers with each other. Now, there’s a level of respect for one another that wasn’t there before.
For the full interview grab the June 2015 issue of MAXIM, in stores from May 21 to June 18.
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