The album is written in memory of our 7-year-old cousin whose life was tragically taken. It is dedicated to him, our way to say goodbye and for us to come to terms with this most tragic incomprehensible loss. The record was mainly written in the immediate aftermath. All of the songs are about the different aspects of the tragedy. This is by far the darkest and most personal record we have ever written. The album doesn't transport the listener away like some of our previous releases, its intention is to take you to the dark, traumatic and somber moments that we had experienced.

Rob and Conor (Xenon Field) helped us a lot with post production and sound design. We wanted the style to reflect the subject matter by making them more imperfect. We put the sounds through various tape devices with bad tracking, the notes warbling in and out tune, helped it feel more haunted. Using lots of tape saturation, made it feel more stressed. The piano for example was processed in a way to sound fat more vintage and broken, we recorded it onto an old 4 track Akai recorder, some even onto Ferric tape. They were further processed putting it through a tape echo unit. We wanted the sounds to morph and develop and not be stagnant, we wanted the piano to move sonically throughout the different parts of Epitaph using distortion and filters etc

We worked tirelessly on the textures using devices like the Niio Iotine core, Mutronics Mutator and Snazzy FX Tracer City to try to give the sounds a real Analog flavour. We also used experimental plugins liked unfiltered audio Spec ops to really make the textures unusual and unique. Vintage amps were used, amp simulation equipment didn't quite fit the style. Jimmy Scanlon who owns Jimi's music store helped me out by supplying lots of old vintage amps and also played on our record. We used ribbon mics to keep the sound warm. We used the lowest tunings (drop A) which we never used before. The drums were miked with a pair of Ribbon Coles 4038 which is something we never used before, it gives the drums a dark sound that the music craved for. It's the first time we did Analog mastering, we wanted something more vintage and authentic.

Our drive to write music is down to the necessity to simply express ourselves during tough times, it is has always been therapeutic for me if I'm fully content, it translates into writer's block or going through the motions. In general, if I was deprived of writing music, I would be very unhappy.

We grew up listening to Heavy Rock and Metal music mostly, Metallica, AC/DC, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, NIN, Tool etc…

We chose the name while watching a Clive Barker movie back in 1999 in the early hours of the morning called "Nightbreed", I just loved the whole quote "God is an Astronaut and Oz is over the Rainbow", Niels shortened it to "God is an Astronaut".

It was great experience traveling to all these places, and seeing a large audience turn up to see us was a proud moment for us. The downside it's always hard to bring our equipment with us with all the airline hand luggage limitations, certain things you can't put in the hold because it most likely would turn up on the other side broken due to rough baggage handlers.

Robert is extremely professional and his work ethic is second to none. He is a perfectionist and is always striving to continuously make improvements. I've known Robert for many years, he has always programmed our Mainstage synths for us even when Jamie was in the group. Jamie simply lost interest, he expressed to us that he was getting tired of touring. The music business is not as glamorous as some may think.

Thank you, Niels has designed many of them with the exception of Epitaph (Fursy Teyssier), Origins (Derval Freeman) and the S/T and Age of the Fifth Sun (Dave King).

We feel it's a necessary part of the creative process, for someone else to mix or produce it would feel like someone else painting part of the picture for us. I mix as emotively as I can and really tune in to what the music wants to convey.

When we used visuals in our shows, Niels would spend a long time to match the imagery to the sentiment of the song. After many years of using visuals, we simply didn't have the source material to keep it fresh. Derval Freeman is our lighting engineer, she is in artist and approaches lighting in a different way to others, when she listens to our music, she can see the colours that match, her work is very emotive and we are very fortunate to have her on board.

We would love to tour with so many groups, (NIN, The Cure, Tool, Sigur Ros etc)

Our plans are to support this album by touring over the next 2 years. Beyond that we will really have to wait and see.

Thank you very much for the interview.