This week fast rising South Yorkshire metallers While She Sleeps have finally been able to unveil their monstrous debut album This Is The Six to the world. The record is, as our review emphatically states, one of the best metal debuts in years and has absolutely destroyed expectation so we chatted to frontman Loz Taylor about what fuelled the band in its creation and the excitement they were feeling on the eve of its release. Here's what he had to say.

R13: How does it feel to finally have the release of This Is The Six on the horizon?
LT: We've been sat on it for a while now and it feels good man, I just want to get it out there and play it live to people. The headline tour [in September/October] will be a great opportunity to start playing songs off it while throwing in some old tracks too, it'll be great to compare the two and just enjoy it!

R13:Is this a period of transition for the band with you guys signing to a major label and giving up old practice space?
LT: Yeah it's kind of like that man, we're treating it as this is how it is now and we want to get the CD out there and really hammer it home. It's been an opportunity to show people the sound of the band, we recorded the EP ourselves so this time we were in a proper studio and it sounds really good, we hadn't released anything for about two years and we feel like our writing's really improved.

R13:We spoke to Mat [Welsh, guitarist] back in May and we were chatting about how the album was very hard to pigeonhole in terms of sound, was that the main agenda when you entered the studio?
LT: Yeah well I think everyone just gets too het up on genres and stuff like that and with the record we didn't want to pigeonhole it, we just wanted to write music and see what happened rather than have hardcore bits or do a particular thing so we just wrote together and saw the bits that were good.

R13: Throughout the album there's a mix of a real crushing heaviness and a brilliant untraditional use of melody which is really refreshing, was that another thing that you hoped to achieve while you were making it?
LT: Yeah I think that's us being suckers for a chorus. We enjoy writing choruses and having a bit of a sing-a-long, I think the best way to listen to our chorus parts is to be drunk and singing along! (laughs) I think it works brilliantly in that way.

R13: You recorded the record at both Chapel and Treehouse studios with [producer] Carl Bown, was that a real opportunity for a flood of ideas? Mat said you wrote a handful of songs actually in the studio.
LT: Yeah we were still writing parts towards the end of the recording process man, we feel we work better under a little bit of pressure, it really pushes the now out as opposed to trying to push something else. For us leaving the writing a little bit late just makes us feel more real. So being in the studio a lot and having that time to chill and write parts gave us a lot of creative freedom and Carl was amazing.

R13: Something else that's really struck us about the album is that it deals with a lot of significant issues lyrically both on a personal and a socially conscious level, in a world where a fair degree of music can miss the point lyrically this album really deals with stuff that matters.
LT: Yeah I mean we think about stuff like that a lot of the time and chat about it and rather than sugar-coat what we're thinking we're just going to throw out exactly what we're thinking in whichever way we write. So we write it down and then write a nice chorus over a part that Sean[Long, guitarist] writes and then thread it together and make sure everyone's cool with it. We're an English band and we've spent a lot of time here so we can't really write about anything else! We write about being on the road and people helping us out and us being grateful for that and just things like that that we see and experience every day.

R13:In terms of the songs which are you most excited about unveiling to the public??
LT: Errrrm there's a couple of riffy ones on there man but I like a lot of the songs for different reasons, I think I'd like to play Love At War, it creeps up on you, it draws you in with a bit of piano and then all of a sudden it's a heavy tune (laughs). The meaning means a lot to the band too about how we feel the youth of today have forgotten about those who fought in the wars and how it's affected what they've got sometimes so I think looking back and respecting the people who fought in the wars for our countries is a really good thing to write a song about.

R13:It feels like that idea bleeds into other songs on the album, The Plague Of A New Age starts with the line "What's become of the wars they won?"...
LT:..."A bright idle population" yeah man love that lyric! I think you really do take in a record a lot more if you read the lyrics. I think people don't always listen to what people are actually saying, they just hear it as heavy music, if you read the booklets of bands in this area if music and there are some incredible writers in there man so me and Mat work together and try and do the best that we can. Leading up to the album's release we've put lyrics to all the singles up on facebook, we feel it's important because the lyrics make the songs better sometimes we think.

R13:What are the band's plans for after the Autumn headline tour?
LT: Architects have offered to take us out on a tour round Europe including Russia after the headliner so that'll be the main thing after that and we've got some different things kicking off at the minute but we're waiting to hear confirmation and stuff so I won't say too much about it!

R13:With all the reviews flooding in now, the album is destroying expectations, is this the proudest that the band have felt so far?
LT: Yeah man, I mean we never expected it to get the reviews its got really, we just wrote it and put it out there so the fact that people are taking it and genuinely enjoying listening to it is fucking amazing so we're enjoying it at the minute but in time it's going to be like shit we've got to go out and smash this! (laughs) so we're getting our heads on ready for the headliner.

Not only will This Is The Six be chatted about for years to come and be practically unavoidable on critics' end of year lists but with the album at a staggering number seven in the mid-weeks, While She Sleeps have brought the metal world into the public eye. Go out and buy this absolute beast of an album and get the band all the success they deserve!