RAVEN's John and Mark Gallagher are featured in a new interview with Mark Kadzielawa at 69 Faces Of Rock. They discuss the band's new aöbum, Walk Through Fire, and the events leading up to the record. An excerpt is available below.

Q: Raven was out of commission for a while, but as we all know there was a good reason for it.

Mark Gallagher: "I was drunk for five years (laughing)."

John Gallagher: "No, he wasn’t drunk. He had a bad accident in 2001 where a wall fell on his legs, and messed him up badly. It took a long time for him to rehabilitate himself, get himself back together. So really, we were out of the loop for about three years. We did a few shows with Mark in a wheel chair. We didn’t know whether or not he’ll be able to walk again or not. Being the stubborn bastard he is he’s proven all the doctors wrong."

Q: There must have been a lot of ground to recover after the break, how did you go about it?

John: "One step at a time. Basically we did some gigs, we did some festivals in Europe which was nice because we haven’t played any festivals for a while. We did Keep It True, we did Bloodstock. And then we got in touch with this engineer. Kevin 131 was calling us, and he said he was into the band, and he wanted us to check out his studio. We did, and were really impressed with it. We all came down, and did a four song demo. So we were like, we found the guy to work with, and now we got to continue to write the rest of the album. So, we spent a lot of time writing this album together."

Q: The energy of the new album is quite unbelievable, very reminiscent of the early Raven years.

Mark: "We're a live band, and we love to play live. And one thing that was always difficult for us to record is that live Raven feel onto an album. Not because of us, but because of other factors like the people we worked with, or the studio environment. I was really happy with this record that it sounds like a live Raven."

John: "And it's just a question of having the right performances with the right songs, and the right sounds. It's just a magical thing when the stars are aligning. It comes together well."

Go to this location for the complete interview.