It's not till their show starts, but that doesn't stop Andy Williams joining me at the top of a set of steps at the Mean Fiddler for a chat about life on the road and the craziness of Japan.

R13: Is this your first date on the tour?
AW: No, no, we've done five shows. This is the sixth one.
R13: Cool, and how are you finding it?
AW: It's good, this time's awesome. The last time we came over, we headlined with Twelve Tribes and it was a good tour but this is actually even better.
R13: How do you mean?
AW: It's just like more kids, better reception, stuff like that.

R13: OK, and as you're an American band, what sort of differences do you find between British and American audiences?
AW: Um, in the States they're not as fanatical just due to the fact that it's shoved down their throats basically, you can pick and choose what shows you go to. So, if you're going to see Every Time I Die with Protest the Hero one month and you're not into the support, then the next month you can see ETID with a whole bunch of new bands. Whereas here, it's kind of like they make the best of it. You come out and they're all stoked about live music.
R13: Cool. What sort of reaction have you got so far?
AW: We're lucky 'cause kids go crazy when we play, so that's good and that's kind of what we want; we don't want people to - and I'm not talking moshing or anything like that - we just want kids to be stoked that they're here to see us.

R13: What's the best thing about touring?
AW: Just being out with your friends, and for me, it's not like a rock star thing, our band is not like the rock star thing. So we would never say like [puts on a dumb American accent] 'oh the chicks!', or the drinking, or anything like that, it's basically one huge hang out for us, 'cause we go out with all our best friends.

R13: You're touring with Protest the Hero and It Dies Today, what's it like touring with them? Are they really good friends of your's?
AW: Protest the Hero we just met on this tour, and It Dies Today are from the same city we're from, so they're dudes we hang out with at home anyway. It's like we have even more dudes on tour this time, there are more friends than ever - we're sharing a bus with them. It's amazing.
R13: What's the experience like of sharing a bus with them?
AW: Oh, it's awesome, it's like being at home. It's so weird, you get on the bus and you're seriously surrounded by every good person you could possibly be surrounded by.

R13: Where's the best place that you've played?
AW: Japan is just unbelievable. I mean, no matter where I play I'm having fun, but Japan is just so different and life is just so different there just because they have everything - I mean you guys have what? 60m people on this island - and they have double that, living a smaller island. Especially for me, I'm a giant there, literally; I'm 6'2", go 230 [pounds] and I walk around the streets and everyone's just like 5ft 2, 5ft 3, they weigh 90 pounds and it's super funny.
And they stack everything. In the States, everything's wide because there's so much space, you can have a one storey building that's enormous, like three city blocks; there, they have buildings that are one city block but straight up. It's fascinating, 'cause we're on Roadrunner here and in Japan and I remember we had a day of press to do, you sit in a building and do all your press then you leave. It's an all day thing and they just bring the people in and I was done for the day so I was like 'I'm gonna go walk, I wanna find a guitar place, show me where it is'. So this guy was like 'oh yeah, you take a right, you go down the street, you take a left, and it's right there. So, I go and do it and then the thing I didn't notice was that it was nine storeys up so I couldn't find it and I was looking around thinking 'where is this guitar shop, I can't find it'. You can't ask people either, 'cause they don't know English and I'm asking people going 'guitar, guitar, guitar'. Finally, one guy knew and he pointed up, and I was like 'oh, there it is'. It's just so different.
R13: Because the Japanese have got a reputation for being fanatical about a lot of things
AW: Yeah, yeah, everything, it was insane. The funny thing is, here kids wanna take a picture with you, where like in Japan they just wanna picture of you - it was really weird, standing there like you've just got out of a place of eating. And they'll literally follow you for miles, they'll walk and walk and walk. It's not a thing where they'll come up to you, you've gotta turn round and say, 'ok, come here' and then you'll sign. It was funny 'cause I was picking kids up over my head and for me it was mind-blowing.

R13: Awesome. You're also a relatively new band, do you feel a lot of pressure is on you to succeed?
AW: We've been in a band for eight years, but here's the thing, right, we've just got pushed into this situation where now: we've always toured as much as we always have but for some reason people are starting to take notice of us. I mean, for us, it's about time, y'know.
R13: Was there ever a point where you thought you'd never make it?
AW: Kinda yeah, kinda no, but the thing is, it's never been about that - it's always been about playing music, it's always been about just getting people off through the music. So whether we're selling a thousand trillion records, or there's a thousand trillion people coming to see us, we're still gonna play no matter what.

R13: So what was the reason you formed a band in the first place?
AW: Um, me, and Mike our drummer had this other band and Jordan had another band and we both broke up literally almost simultaneously, like one week one band broke up, the next week the other band broke up. A record had come out by band called Dead Guy called 'Fixation on a Co-Worker' and Jordan was super into it, me and Mike were super into it so we started a band because we wanted to sound like that. So that's how it started.
R13: So Dead Guy are one of your main influences then?
AW: Yeah, for sure.

R13: You've got a new album coming out here, what can we expect it to sound like?
AW: It's basically the same, we've never really changed. I know there's going to be some people who'll go, 'oh, well so and so sang on it, so they probably sold out', but yeah, it's the same shit three years later than 'Hot Damn!'.

R13: Presumably you've travelled quite a lot, how much of an effect has all the touring and seeing different places had?
AW: I think it just makes you grow a little bit more. You get to see different cultures and you get to see how things are; I mean, like I'm such a ham about that shit 'cause I love seeing the way people are and I love people watching. So, for me, I could sit outside this place and watch a million different people walk by and find something interesting about every single person. Whereas, at home, it's like I already, I mean I don't have everybody figured out but I see that shit everyday. Here it's so much different, or in Japan there's so much difference, anywhere else in the world it's awesome.

R13: How much do you think you've progressed? I get the impression from what you said before not very much...
AW: Songwriting-wise, we didn't but I think we just got tighter as a band; we have the exact same ideas as we did on Barrel Pump it's just now we're writing songs instead of throwing a bunch of parts in and not writing bridges. It's a little better composed, I guess.

R13: Fair enough, and when it comes to songwriting, is it a group effort or is it literally one or two people writing everything?
AW: Well it's definitely a group effort, specially on 'Gutter Phenomenon'; at the time we were having bass player issues so there was no bass player in the writing process and we basically hired a guy to come in and play bass on the record. But, yeah, me, Jordan, Mike and Keith wrote everything and we've always written everything - we've never had a bass player that spoke up.

R13: You talked about collaborating with people on this record, Gerard Way of MCR for example, how did this come about?
AW: It was definitely one of those things, those MCR guys have always been fans of ETID, which like I said, being a band for eight years, we've destroyed the United States with touring, know what I mean? We've toured consistently and it's just funny 'cause there are the guys in the Starting Line and bands like that, that you see 'em and they're just like 'oh man! I grew up going to your shows'. It's just so weird 'cause I'm like ' you guys are a huge band and there's no reason for you to like us. You're probably gonna be touring with David Bowie or something, soon'.
So yeah, Gerard always said that he'd love to sing on one of our records and he said that after 'Hot Damn!' so the next thing we had was 'Gutter Phenomenon'. We recorded it in New Jersey and he came in and just did it; We had Daryl Palumbo, too, from Glassjaw and for me that was meant little more than Gerard - I love Gerard and I love that he came in and did it - we've all been Glassjaw fans, that was just unbelievable. He's just such a professional, and even though he doesn't think he is, he's one of the greatest singers there ever was.

R13: You've also come in for a fair amount of criticism on the Gerard Way collaboration, does that bother you?
AW: Not at all, not at all, 'cause you wanna know something: the people that criticise are the people who don't have the balls to take chances, they're the ones who'll sit back and they're the ones who'll give you the negative criticism because they don't have the balls to go out and take risks. They're gonna work their 8-hour jobs a day, sit in a cubicle and not take a chance. It's funny, because every time I read that stuff it doesn't bother me. The thing is, right now, as egotistical as it sounds, I'm the one in London that's gonna play in front of kids tonight; they're gonna be the ones in the crowd and gonna write how we're pompous assholes, y'know what I mean.

R13: I know what you mean. What next for Every Time I Die then?
AW: We've got the Warped tour in the States which is like this huge punk festival in the States. This year, and this is no joke, there's like 50 dates, it's like a long tour. We'll be gone for 62 days, I know that.
R13: Are you ready?
AW: Yeah, yeah, I'm ready. Like I said, I love touring so it's not a bad thing and on a tour like that, there's forty something bands, so there's gonna be so many friends, so you don't get homesick, you don't miss people 'cause you have loved ones around you.