The release of a new album often goes hand-in-hand with a road trip, especially when you’re trying to make a living from it.

Death metallers Goatwhore are no different. Except maybe for the fact that they tour a lot.

This month, the quartet is headlining across the continent, with two shows here in Alberta to promote “Carving Out The Eyes of God” [Metal Blade, 2009].

“That, and to have a good time, pretty much,” says vocalist Ben Falgoust, who also shares his vocal chords with the four-piece grindcore act Soilent Green.

Self-described as “a formulated ritual of diverse blasphemy to be played as a requiem for your suicide,” and “an uplifting revenge in the battle for your loss of words to prove any God is at fault for our existence,” the New Orleans, La. quartet simply loves to play it live, especially when it’s loud.

And their western Canadian shows will be no different, according to Falgoust, who insists they’ll be playing a lot of the newer material during their 45 minute set.

He won’t divulge which songs, but adds, “if you pick it up beforehand, you can be familiar with the songs a little better because we will be playing about six or seven new songs.”

Obviously playing the new material is enough to get you jazzed for a show, but how else do you get your mind ready after a long drive between towns?

I do a lot of driving, both myself and a guy that comes out on the road with us and helps out, while the rest of the members sleep a lot when we’re in the van, so they’re pretty well-rested when we get to the venue. Myself, I don’t know. I just get excited, I guess. Usually by the end of the night though, when everything is over, I’m ready to hit it because I know I have to wake up early and start the trek again.

You spend a lot of time touring in general, so how do you keep yourselves entertained between gigs, aside from the sleeping, that is?

Luckily with modern technology and things like video iPods and laptops – and usually a lot of driving – that will keep you entertained for the eight to 10 hours you have to drive to each town, depending on where the next city is. Aggravating the hell out of each other, pulling pranks on each other, fun things like that.

It’s so easy for fans to imagine tours as all bright lights and big shows, but that’s not the case at all. So what kind of planning is really involved in getting ready for the road?

Making sure that you’re ahead financially at home before you leave, because you never know how the road is going to be and if you’re going to make any money, and to make sure all yours bills are covered. And, of course, practicing. We’re going to practice tonight, tomorrow night and the next night and every night until we leave. And just ordering merch, getting things together, getting things organized, making sure our van is ready to roll and maintenance is up-to-date on it so it can do its work for the duration, even though some things are unforeseen, as far as that goes.

How do you keep that all organized?

I created a few little lists, actually, so I’m prepared, especially when it comes to things I need. For example, I want to bring less clothes. You end up wearing the same clothes for numerous days at a time, so you realize that you don’t need to bring a big giant bag with a lot of clothes, you just bring a bag with a lot of socks and a lot underwear, but fewer pants and shirts.

Socks are very important.

The socks and the underwear are so very important. But really, you learn things as you go along, and then you make your own lists of things you might need. We’ve got a list for equipment, merch stuff, things we need in the van. We might stock up on a few cases of water somewhere just to start off the tour because water is crucial on tour, especially during summer tours. I know it’s kind of crazy, but it does make things easier. It makes the road a little more fun, because if something unexpected comes up, you don’t have everything else on top of you as well.

What would you say are some of the biggest challenges touring outside your home country?

As far as going to Canada, the only thing is you’ve got to do is border crossings, which isn’t that bad. We don’t really fear them much. We know that sometimes it takes a while, so we try to go through early to get it over with because sometimes they can last anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours, depending on what’s going on. As far as touring within Canada, it’s not too different than in the U.S. I think the crowds are really awesome because of the lack of bands that actually come up to Canada to play, because of their fear of doing the border thing as well. We’ve been held before because they wanted to search everything and that’s reasonable. It’s a border you’re crossing. They want to make sure you’re not smuggling anything: dead bodies, drugs…

Guitars.

Yeah, weapons of mass destruction! But they pretty much check everything out and it usually ends up positive. We’ve had points where we’ve been in and through in 20 minutes. We’ve been in there for hours.

And so you pull out that iPod?

Yeah, well, unless you actually go into the immigration office, where you can’t have anything. You just have to kind of sit there. It’s almost like being back in school when you had to go the principal’s office and you have to wait in that little room before you get called into to his office so he can ream you about something. That’s what it is: the border is the adult version of the disciplinarian’s office when you were in high school. It truly is. And when we come back into the U.S., it really is a disciplinarian’s office. We get slagged a lot for some reason when we come back to the U.S. And we don’t have any issues. I don’t know what it is. Our country is so stern about keeping things out, that they’re keeping their own people out. It’s funny.

What would you say are the toughest things in general to contend with on tour?

I think maybe the biggest thing is you have maybe up to six guys in that van for months on end. That’s six different personalities of guys that you have to get used to. When you get to the venue, you get to separate, but the majority of the time you’re in the van together, and everybody’s got their own little quirks, and you basically have to learn to deal with something or just try to block something out.

Does the band have any “dos and don’ts” for the road?

A little bit to an extent, yes. You’re not allowed to hit another member, at all. Not even in the most dire circumstance. You wait until you get home and then you can scrap out all you want, but you can’t hit a member on tour because it’s happened before and we just put the clamp down on it. It’s basically like, if you hit a member, you’re going home, even a person working with the band, you can’t do – I mean, we just leave them at a spot and send them home on the bus. They don’t get a flight home. We send them home on the bus!

What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened on the road?

I hit a deer once. We had played this show in Rapid City, S.D. and we had to go down to Denver, Colo. And it wasn’t a main interstate that ran straight down, so we had to take a little state highway and it was a construction area, so I was doing 30 mph and I saw one cut across and I slowed up, and then all of a sudden this other one jetted out in front of me and I hit it in his face and it knocked my headlight out. I stopped and it ran off, so I don’t know if anything happened. I wasn’t going really fast, which was all a plus. And then there was another night when the guy that comes out with us, Nick, he was driving and these deer – like a whole pack of them – ran out onto the road. He was on the Interstate, so he was doing about 70 mph, and he swerved through a whole herd of them. Never hit one of them. It was crazy because the whole van was swerving with the trailer and everything.

Sort of like driving through an asteroid belt?

Yeah, it was like a scene out of Star Wars in the Millennium Falcon or something like that. And usually, at that point, I’m like, “If it happens it happens.”

Not much you can do then, I guess.

Exactly.

Any creepy gas stations in Middle America that make dodging deer worth the risk?

Oh yeah, there’s tonnes of that, man. There’s tonnes of creepy – and not just gas stations – but a lot of creepy a lot of things. Weird truck stops with weird shit going on. We stopped at this one truck stop once and there was this trucker but he was cross-dressed. He was this big overweight trucker and he had high heels on with lipstick. It was strange.