From left to right: Justin Hagberg, Cam Pipes, Shane Clark, and Ash Pearson

To say that 3 Inches of Blood tour a lot would be a bit of an understatement.

“That’s our modus operandi,“ states guitarist Shane Clark, with the kind of gusto one hears only from those so passionate about their craft, it’s something they live and breathe.

“The last time I averaged it out, during an album cycle, we toured for 12 out of 14 months. Not all exactly in a row: there would be two weeks home here, two weeks home there,” continues Clark, who has been part of the Vancouver-based metal act since 2004, and has been sharing shredtastic riff writing duties with fellow guitarist Justin Hagberg ever since.

“I’ve got a small home studio and so I’ll write an entire song, drums included, and then I’ll give everyone a copy of what I did. They learn the parts and put their own stamp on it, and then we arrange it together,” Clark explains. “Justin will come over to my place and do the same thing with his songs. I’ll engineer them, but he’ll put his songs down, and sometimes we’ll both write songs together. So Justin and I write all the music, and then after we have these demos for everybody, Cam will put vocals on top.”

Frontman Cam Pipes is one of 3 Inches of Blood’s most distinguishable trademarks, and his high-octane performance on the group’s latest thrash driven album Here Waits Thy Doom [Century Media, 2009], set for a September release in North America, just reaffirms that a band can continuously challenge themselves and evolve, without losing the style that makes them unique and keeps them grounded with their fan base.

“Basically, if Cam sings on it it’ll sound like 3 Inches of Blood,” Clark says.

And it doesn’t hurt that Clark and Hagberg have honed the writing process since tackling 2007′s Fire Up the Blades [Roadrunner Records, 2007]

“It wasn’t as focused last time. Not to say we’re loaded now, but we had zero money to even have any kind of recording device last time, so we just wrote in a room together. And when I say together, I mean me and Justin wrote the music and everyone else sat there and argued about it, like all bands do,” Clark laughs in retrospect.

Everything sounds faster and more aggressive this time around. Was that intentional or did it just come out that way?

I’d have to say it just came out that way. There’s more of a prominent rock element to the record that was kind of there on the last one, but we really inadvertently focused on that because the last couple of years we listened to a lot of new stuff and a lot of new old stuff.

Guitarist Shane Clark rips it up in Calgary at last year's Monsters of Rock festival.

Do all the band members have similar tastes in music?

For sure. And then everyone has their own pocket of interests. Justin, for example, grew up with black metal and a lot of the Norwegian bands. He’s very well-versed with that and a lot of different stuff like Gordon Lightfoot. I really love doom type stuff like Neurosis, and I love listening to Waylon Jennings and Jerry Reed, and the list goes on for me, as well as everyone. A well-rounded musician is interested in a lot of music.

What kind of reaction are you expecting from listeners once the album is released?

I think fans that really liked the last record, and the others, for that matter, will stay. Then there will be the sort of bandwagon-type folks that may lose interest in the band because we’re not doing “Deadly Sinners” 12 times. You know those kinds of people? But if folks liked the last one, or just like the band live, they’ll really like the new record, because the way we recorded it, and the vibe of the album, is very much how we are live, and that’s something the band hasn’t really captured on tape before.

When you went into the studio to lay this down, how did you capture that live sound?

We tracked everything individually, but the whole basis of our band, and just rock music in general, is the drummer. So when we started with the drums, it was really important to keep the feel with him, so we didn’t use any kind of click track or triggered drum samples, and it wasn’t heavily edited afterward for timing purposes. so that would be a big thing: no click track and no sampled drum sounds. That’s how Ash [Pearson] sounds live. He got awesome performance takes and we built around those.

And are you satisfied with the end result?

I’m really happy with the way the record turned out, but after we hit the road for about a year, I believe we’ll be playing the songs better than the album. That’ll be something we’ll have to wait and see on.

Do you find you just get better as you play the songs live, or do they actually evolve somewhat over time?

Some do. We generally try to stick to what people hear on the album, so we’ll just try and replicate what’s on the album but over time ,when they do change, it’s more likely the tempos change, and some of the blazing songs will end up twice as blazing. There’s a song called “Forest King” on the last album and we’ll jam out a little during the middle section, but other than that, we don’t generally stray from the arrangements. One thing that I do personally, though, on the older stuff, if we play stuff from the first two albums, I play the solos completely differently to keep it interesting and also because solos are a personal statement of whoever is doing them and Sunny [Dhak], who I really respect as a guitar player, I’ll just let him have his solos and I’ll do my own, instead of trying to recreate his vibe.

When Ash came on board, not long after you released Fire Up The Blades, how did that change the dynamic of the band?

His way of playing is so different than our last drummer, it was refreshing. Not to speak ill of any past members, but we’d never had a drummer with such a great sense of timing. And he’s little more precision, so the dynamic was very much – he would play things exactly the same way every time, which helped the band get a lot tighter. We had to anticipate him doing the same thing every day. Some musicians like to take chances, whereas the way we do things is well-rehearsed and very consistent, and Ash really brought that to the table which really added to the live thing that we do. Studio-wise he was super easy to work with. Fast and easy. And he takes what he does very seriously. He lives and breathes drums. I’m a total – I obsess over guitars and amps and stuff, and I can relate to him because he does the same with drums.

You recently parted ways with bassist Nick Cates…

He quit the band around January. The rigors of the road can change people’s perspectives about things.

And you guys do tour a lot.

We do.

Have you found anyone to fill in yet?

We’ve got a touring bass player right now. His name is Steve Erickson. He’s an east Van guy as well, and we’ve done about six shows with him so far, and things are going great.

For a while there you guys were working with each other living in different cities and countries. Is that still the case?

There’s no longer any Americans in the band. The current lineup is all Vancouver-based, which is way easier. I know so many musicians in The States, but if we were to get someone else, another American, it would be such a hassle for that person, as well as us. Doing the cross-border thing takes its toll. Our touring guy, Steve, lives a block away form me so…

On this next tour you’re embarking on, you’re making a stop here in Alberta. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoy seeing you, but you seem to play here often.

We try not to overplay, but we try to get out there as much as we can. I’d say Calgary and Edmonton are probably the best turnouts that we have in the country. We have a really great turnout at home too, but we’re guaranteed to have the best shows in Calgary and Edmonton. We have a really solid fan base there.

Can we expect to hear much of the new material?

Totally. But, we won’t play the all new stuff, just because, as a fan, I went and saw Clutch not too long ago and they have a brand new record and they played some new stuff, but they also played stuff I knew. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if they had only played the new material. As a music fan and a fan of live music, I think we’re just going to play a lot of new stuff, but spice it up with the familiar stuff too.