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God Forbid
 God Forbid's guitarist Doc Coyle is the first to tell you his band is living out their dream. "If you'd told me that we were going to get to do all the things that we have done to this point, I'd never have believed you. We never had a grand plan. Things are so much different now for us than they were. I feel like a different person."
Much of this is thanks to the band's last mammoth of a record - 2005's 'IV: Constitution Of Treason' - which saw God Forbid take a step forward both instrumentally and lyrically. As Coyle explains, "It's definitely a concept record. The lyrics were actually written first, but once we put them in order they appeared to have this certain lineage that just really seemed to work. It started with a nuclear holocaust that destroys civilization as we know it. Then it goes into detail about how society rebuilds itself gradually but throughout the story there is a lot of corruption and the civilization falls into similar patterns of violence and oppression again. It's really about how humanity repeats the same mistakes, it's a vicious cycle of destruction, violence and war-like behavior."
While it certainly may not be the first record focusing on themes such as the end of the world and history repeating itself, it holds a vast amount of significance for this New Jersey metalcore quintet.
"The album was another graduation altogether for us as far as being a heavy metal band goes," claims Coyle. "It's a step up on so many levels, we found ourselves doing genuinely good heavy metal stuff. And I would say that the concept behind it is relevant as well. One thing is our habits haven't changed as far as being a war-like civilization goes. Unfortunately, the weaponry gets more advanced while our resources are dwindling and our population is growing. I think it's short-sighted the way our leaders seem to have a frame of mind which is similar to that of barbarians. Things are eventually going to implode."
While Coyle may hold gloomy expectations about the future of the human race, he is most positive about the direction God Forbid is currently taking - the band's upcoming, first-ever tour of Australia is, for one, providing for much optimism at the moment.
"We're leaving for Australia next week. We've never been there so we're looking forward to checking it out. And I expect utter insanity," Coyle laughs. "Every band that we've talked to that's been down there, like Chime¼ra, they all say it's crazy at the Australian shows."
Coyle announces that God Forbid will be hitting the studio immediately following their visit down under. "We're going to start working on an album and hopefully have it out early next year. We don't really tend to write on the road, not as a band anyway. It's mostly done in the rehearsal studio. But I'm constantly writing riffs and trying to put things together as much as I can. It's important for us to really take our time and not force anything. We'd been going so hard for so long we were almost killing ourselves. It's important to slow down and take some time off. And we've also got the DVD to finish which was filmed a few weeks ago at a concert we did in our hometown. We're going to film a whole documentary to give people a little bit more of a personal edge, what we're really like. We definitely don't want to be mysterious, we want to open up to the fans and let people know us."
God Forbid play at Fowler's Live on Wed 21 March with Dyscord and Truth Corroded
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