Here’s a chance for you to tell our readers about your debut album “Grind the Oceans”.

But could you please start off by introducing the readers to The Safety Fire?

Done by vocalist, Sean McWeeney.

Thanks

We're a Progressive Metal band from London. We've been together since 2006 and have developed over that period into a melting pot of influences. Our sound takes inspiration from contemporary progressive / tech bands such as Sikth or Between the Buried and Me but we also see ourselves within an older British prog tradition, paying our dues to the great Yes and Peter Gabriel. We're not afraid to juxtapose a filthy heavy riff with a delicate melody and love to?

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And now onto “Grind the Ocean”… track-by-track, what inspired you, what topics are you dealing with, what do what to express with this song etc.

1) Huge Hammers - The lyrics for this were originally in the form of a short story. It was about a person suffering from writers block and questioning the whole point of writing. This writer is then attacked by a crow and the words of the story spew forth from this traumatic and horrific event. The main riff in the song is violent and has a chaotic sound to it but the song as a structure holds it together, just as writing often attempts to structure chaotic events that happen to us.

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2) Floods of Colour - This song is largely inspired by the writer Samuel Beckett. It is about how greater powers of systems of authority control people, not through explicit repression but through subtle manipulation of habits, hopes and aspirations. It relates more to how culture manipulates us as individuals.?

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3) DMB (FDP) - Lyrically this is probably the most chaotic but that is a reflection of the content. This song was written when we were at university and deals with the effects of drug taking. Mostly its about how the emotions and the high felt from a lot of drugs, mostly 'party drugs', are fleeting and momentary. Its not an anti-drug song just some thoughts about them.

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4) Anomalous Materials - "Without a number to know time by" - make of that what you will.

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5) Animal King - Structural this is probably the simplest song and maybe also lyrically. Its mostly about the 'death drive' - a desire to die, self-destruct and be nothing once more. Many people may be thinking by this point that I need to cheer up and perhaps write a love song, or something more light hearted, and I'm now beginning to think I will.

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6) Circassian Beauties - This song is about a beautiful girl called Circassian - no, of course not its much more pessimistic than that! For a while I was quite influenced by the Situationist, mainly French and Belgian philosophers. Their writing is very poetic and playful for philosophers. The line "the last actor should film his own death" from Raoul Vaneigem really hit me as a beautiful image of isolation, and how our culture and ideology can often alienate us.?

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7) Sections - Again this was a song inspired by literature. It is inspired by Alighieri's?Inferno?and is probably the darkess track on the album. It is inspired by a scene in hell where Dante speaks to a man who tells him that he was imprisoned with his family in a locked cell and left to die. The man tells how before he died himself he ate the flesh of his own children, 'the hunger had more Power than even sorrow.' Happy stuff!!!!!

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8) Seagraves - Interlude track. You sometimes need a musical sorbet after subject material as heavy as eating your own kids.

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9) Grind the Ocean - This was hugely inspired by the American film maker 'Maya Deren'. She is an amazing artist and is owed a lot by directors such as David Lynch, and most other 'Arthouse' film-makers. The song deals with how we approach and decode imagery and symbolism, and the fact that our unconscious speaks to us through symbols and imagery in our dreams. But how do their meanings change between a dream and reality and where do the boundaries lie??

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Tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork?

Kim Taylor from Puppydust.co.uk  designed the artwork. Its always important to reflect the music in a visual way and Kim has done amazingly well with the artwork on 'Grind the Ocean'. It works as a piece of art on its own but Kim also really engaged with the music to produce this awesome, multi-layered image.

Any last words you want to round this interview off with?

Check us out at www.thesafetyfire.com - and we hope to be in Denmark some time soon!!!!!