Hailing from Richmond, VA, ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY is set to release their new album, Open Fire, on March 6th via Relapse Records. It is the first to feature new vocalist and New Orleans, LA native Kyle Thomas, formerly of EXHORDER and FLOODGATE.

BW&BK; scribe Aaron Small recently caught up with ATP drummer and founding member Bryan Cox. One of the topics discussed was Kyle's lyrics. “Most of them are reflective of his personal life and people he knows and things he’s been through the past few years; including the hurricane. The first song (‘The Cleansing’) is basically all about Katrina and his summary of that whole experience. He writes cool lyrics. They’re captivating. They’re not so weird and artsy and profound that they’re difficult to understand. That’s not what we do anyway. I think they fit our music really well. They’re engaging. Kyle does a really good job of coming up with interesting stuff.”

‘Whiskey War’ is particularly attention grabbing with the line: Cops confiscate your grass, then burn it up when they get home and you’re still in jail. “With Kyle coming from New Orleans, it’s kind of a commentary on the crookedness of a lot of the establishment down there. It’s pretty well known that a lot of the government and government employees and cops are in on the take down there.”

Open Fire was recorded at Etching Tin Studios in Richmond, VA - a comfortable and productive environment for ATP. “Oh yeah. It’s literally a little one and a half room hole in the wall. But it’s got a control room and an iso booth and that’s really all we need. If you’ve got a good engineer and you work on your sound, to a certain degree, it really doesn’t matter where you do it. There’s people that spend tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on these fancy studios and end up with weird sounding records. There’s something to be said for kind of doing it yourself and putting your trust in somebody you know has a good ear. That’s what we did and I think it paid off.”

Not a band to slouch about, Alabama Thunderpussy “already have five songs ready for the next one. The reason behind that is we want to be ready when it’s time to record again. Also, once the album was recorded, we started practicing again, ‘cause that’s what we do. We practice three or four nights a week, no matter what’s going on. So we could jam these songs (from Open Fire) and then by the time we had to leave for tour we’d be sick of them. Or we could start working on new stuff and get a jump on the next record. That’s what we decided to do.”

In closing, fans have nothing to worry about when it comes to the new singer tackling the old songs. “Kyle smokes it! We did a little (road) trip back in October and he learned a handful of the old songs. I don’t think we’re really going to drag out too many of them in the future. The new stuff is so much better. When we tour, we’re definitely going to spend a lot of time playing new songs, which a lot of people hate, but honestly it’s better. We’ll just get on stage with our best material and shred as hard as we can. But Kyle’s a professional man. He absolutely kills it on the old stuff!”

For a list of ATP tour dates, click here.