BW&BK; scribe Carl Begai recently spoke with THE AGONIST vocalist Alissa White-Gluz about the band's new album, Lullabies For The Dormant Mind. An excerpt from the interview appears below.

With the exception of lead-off track ‘The Tempest’, which comes off as a solid book-end to debut single ‘Business Suits And Combat Boots’, the material on Lullabies For A Dormant Mind introduces several new facets of The Agonist dynamic. The guys have stepped up their game without boosting the aggression to trendy stratospheric levels, there’s a distinctive neo-classical atmosphere to some of material, and Alissa’s death metal vocals have become positively volatile.

“The first song, ‘The Tempest’, we actually wrote that around the time we wrote ‘Business Suits…’ so it’s pretty funny you’d make the correlation. That song’s been around for a while. But when I was first given the raw material for the new album I was actually kind of worried. Not because I was super happy; actually it was the exact opposite. It was like, ‘I don’t like this song, I don’t like that song, I don’t know where this is going…’ As I started putting vocals on it I could see how it was working. Also, when the guys presented me with the raw material it was kind of hard to tell what was happening (laughs). As we recorded the album I got more and more excited about where the songs were going.”
“As for the vocals, I think I did that subconsciously,” Alissa says of her schizophrenic performance. “We have so much experience now, and having done all the touring and playing so many shows I discovered what I’m really capable of doing with my voice. Another thing that was really different for this album was that we recorded the songs without ever having played them live. For the first album we’d been playing those songs as The Tempest for years, so I was used to singing them in a specific way. With the new album I was thinking and writing a lot more as I was going, but at the same time I just let things happen. It was like, ‘Why don’t I try this? Hey, it worked!’ (laughs). I can’t speak for the other guys, but I was much more comfortable in the studio this time even though we were rushed. I knew what I was doing so it was a lot more natural for me, so I think I got a better result because of that.”

Go to this location for the complete interview. Click here for audio samples from Lullabies For The Dormant Mind.