Photograph © Owain Richards

MALEFICE have been hard at work, touring and promoting their album constantly and tirelessly. Having played here in Cardiff not so long ago on the UK DevilDriver tour alongside God Forbid and with their album ‘Entities’ out now, the band have gained critical acclaim from press and fans alike.

Halfway through a sweep of the UK supporting Darkest Hour, MALEFICE are about to open the show at Cardiff, which is where we caught up with vocalist Dale and guitarist Ben shortly before they took to the stage for a quick chat.

At the moment there seems to be a lot of successful bands coming from Reading, including yourselves and bands like Sylosis. What’s the secret?

DALE: I dunno. I mean we never really class ourselves as a Reading band because we’ve never really stuck around the Reading scene, we’ve branched out to see the rest of the country. If you just sit on your doorstep all day long you never really get anywhere. And I think that is kind of the mentality of Reading bands as there’s nowhere really to play anymore where we’re from. We’re forced out and around so we just fucking go for it.

BEN: Our music is a bit different to the other bands too. Those bands are all quite similar really.

Tell me a little about your trip to Malta with Radio 1.

DALE: Malta was fucking ridiculous. There’s a blog up on our MySpace from Radio 1. They did a podcast out in Malta. It was wicked. We got invited over and has anyone really gone over there before? Any metal bands?

BEN: Not really.

DALE: I think Iron Maiden may have gone over there. ‘86? Or ‘87? We just thought it was a really good opportunity. It was in the Mediterranean so when we got offered it, it was too good to turn down really. Even if it had turned out to be a pile of shit we got to play in front of people maybe we’d never have ever got in front of. But it turned out to be one of the best weekends of our lives. Just crazy. Absolutely mental.

How’s the tour been so far?

DALE: It’s been wicked. It’s been getting better the further south we’ve come. Just for us really. In Scotland we didn’t do too well personally and I don’t think many people know who we are up there. Birmingham last night was fucking crazy. We always enjoy playing Cardiff. Cardiff had a show on the DevilDriver tour which was fucking brilliant, so we can’t wait to play Cardiff again.

Finally, what are your plans for 2008? A new album perhaps?

DALE: We can’t really say at the moment but we are in the process of writing a new album which will be out this year at some point. We’re recording a live DVD in a couple of weeks and just basically our press campaign in 2008. We’ve got lots going on and we’re keeping busy and pushing ‘Entities’ a lot more.

Thanks guys, enjoy the show tonight.