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^{Krnivool (from left): Andrew 'Drew' Goddard (guitar), Jon Stockman (bass), Ian Kenny (vocals), Steve Judd (drums), Mark 'Hoss' Hosking (guitar)}

Australia's Karnivool made the progressive rock album of the year in 2009 with their second full-length Sound Awake. Actually, scrub that, it's simply one of the best albums we heard from any genre. Sound Awake is a stunning display from talented musicians pushing the envelope with an incredibly deep and layered record while never losing sight of great melodies in great songs.

Their first tour of the UK in October found them already making waves and Guitarist can report they're every bit as impressive live as we hoped.

Ahead of that tour we talked to guitarist Andrew 'Drew' Goddard about the album, his gear and influences for a Fretbuzz feature in the mag back in issue 323. However here's the full transcript of that conversation exclusively for Guitarist.co.uk.

Your first full length album Themata was a big success in Australia and you could have easily carried on with that sound, but you decided to experiment much more with Sound Awake…

Drew: "I guess it was a conscious thing – we're always going to be a band that's going to keep changing and evolving. We're going to keep it interesting for ourselves but it felt like the obvious direction to go for this album. We weren't consciously trying to be really different to Themata, but it became clear as we went on that it would be a very different album. It felt natural."

You'd written the first part of the song Change and included that on Themata, the next and main part appears on Sound Awake – was that an important bridging song for you between the albums?

"It kind of worked out in that way, but that wasn't a conscious thing either. The story with Change is that on Themata we were approaching the stage of recording and we have a pretty unorthodox way of writing. We take quite a while to do it – we get all the tools together to write the record but it seems as though we frantically assemble it all at the last minute.

"Change was never meant to be a part one and two song. But it looked like it was turning into an epic and when we were approaching the recording of Themata we just ran out of time. We knew we weren't going to have time to put the effort in for that song that was going to be needed.

"So we ended up chopping that song to the part of the build-up and left it as a 'to be continued.' It was very different, it was the last thing we had written and I think it did point in the direction that we were headed. A more exploratory, expansive sound – more textural.

"The same thing happened at the end of the writing process for this one – we have a whole bunch of parts for songs that are still in the works. We had to make some split second decisions about Change even this time – that part should go there, that one there, etc. And it worked – it's ended up being one of our favourite songs on the record. It changes constantly – it never repeats any sections."

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