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In all honesty, you probably don't need to be reminded of how amazing 2009 was to Surrey boys You Me At Six. Between playing several sold out UK tours, headlining Slam Dunk Festival, visiting Europe three times and playing two tours in America - including the infamous Warped tour - they've been very busy boys indeed. Yet, they still found time to record their second album 'Hold Me Down' before popping around the country supporting Paramore in some of the biggest rooms they have played yet. Not too shabby, right?

We were given the opportunity to chat to Max Helyer before they went onstage at Glasgow SECC about all the incredible goings-on in the You Me At Six camp, and that all important second record.

OS: You recently played on The Alternative Press Tour in the USA. How was that as an experience?
Max Helyer [guitar]: It was gruelling! At first, I think we were all like, okay, so this is a two month tour, straight off the back of doing Warped tour, and Reading and Leeds, then having that week long of show, then straight off to America for two months. I think it was a hard fact for us to figure out; we were going to be away for such a long time. But, it flew by so fast and I think we connected really well with the people on tour. It made it like, a homey place for us to be, so we all had such great fun. The shows were awesome and it did definitely gave us a bit more of a profile in the USA, which is what we needed. Playing with bands like The Academy Is..., Mayday Parade, Set Your Goals and The Secret Handshake was the perfect mix for a You Me At Six tour.

OS: And you had AP there which could really only have helped achieve that.
Max: Definitely. AP really did help us out on that tour. They gave us a signing every day - well, not every day - but each band had a signing and I think it really did boost people to come and say hello to us and introduce themselves to us.
OS: It's like starting to lay down a relationship with them.
Max: Yeah! I think we had to go over there and do what we've done in the UK and build a strong bond with fans. Just mingle about with kids, and hang out with them. That's what we did, and I think we did successfully well in that kind of factor.

OS: Was it daunting to play shows to crowds of blank faces that had never really seen you before?
Max: Well, there was a couple of people who came up to me that I'd seen at Warped tour. Or people who hadn't seen us before, from the more Eastern regions - like, we'd never done the East side [of the US] before - but I was having fans come up to me and going, "we're so happy to have you here. We've been listening to your music for three years. We've heard songs like 'Noises' and 'This Turbulence is Beautiful'" That was like, "wow". It's nice to know that we do have fans around the world. But, we've still got to branch ourselves out as a band.

OS: Was there anything you learned from the tour, or just being in America in general?
Max: Yeah, I will never moan on an English drive again, because they are nothing. Like, Josh [Francheschi, vocals] got really ill with bronchitis and they had to stay in Los Angeles - we had to pull out of basically the Californian dates, pretty much.
OS: That must've been hard.
Max: It was pretty hard. We were pretty bummed out about it, because there was some big ones, like San Diego, Pomona. They were shows we really wanted to do as a band, because they're regions that we felt our music would hit quite hard, and we could get a solid fan base down there. But, when Josh got bronchitis, him, Dan [Flint, drums] and Matt [Barnes, bass] stayed in LA, so me, Chris [Miller, guitar], Rob - our tour manager - and Nate - our merch guy - we had to drive through the desert for 24 hours.
OS: Down to the Texas shows?
Max: Yeah, all through the Texan deserts and stuff. It took us three days to travel. But, I think it [Josh's illness] was a blessing in disguise, because we were getting kind of tired at that point as well, and it just gave us a few days to relax and get back into tour mood again.

OS: You've just returned to the UK from some European shows, also supporting Paramore. How were they?
Max: Europe was amazing! We went to places like Helsinki and Stockholm.
OS: And it was dark all day!
Max: And it was dark all day! Like, literally, the minute you woke up, you'd look outside and be like, "oh, it's dark... great." But the shows, I mean, in Helsinki, we made to 6,500 people and we've never been to these places before. Kids just accepted us, and they'd heard of our band for years, and they went mental to the songs; they moved around, they jumped up and down and it was a great confidence boost for the start of the tour. We were like, "wow." We know we're not the main band, but we've got a good chance in these places that we've never been to, and we need to go back and hit these territories next year.

OS: Now that you're back in the UK, you're playing to massive crowds. Are you a little nervous, since you're the main support?
Max: I think being the main support on this tour, we're just trying to push ourselves for next year because we have obviously got the release of our second album, 'Hold Me Down' in January. We wanted to go out on a bang, and make sure that we're tight. We've put one new song into the setlist so that kids can hear what it sounds like live. We've got to make sure that we stick in people's brains if they've never heard us before these Paramore shows. There's obviously people out here at the Paramore shows that have never heard of You Me At Six before, and we're trying to promote ourselves too for this second album, and get some hype for next year. I think doing this tour was definitely a beneficial start.

OS: You're about to release your second album 'Hold Me Down', and Josh has already said that this album is going to change people's perceptions of the band. How do you think the songs going to do this?
Max: I guess, before, we'd had such a short time of writing songs and obviously being on tour, we've grown up a lot as a band and individuals. We've learnt a lot about new music. We've found out tricks for writing songs and we wanted to put them into these songs. With the recording process as well, we had a lot longer than did with 'Take Off Your Colours'. 'Take Off Your Colours' was a two-week recording process and this was a seven-week process. We spent April and May recording and then a week or two in July, before we went off to Warped tour, recording. We had time to sit down and listen to the songs, and feedback off emotions from it. Like, "does this sound good?" "I'm not sure. Let's come back to it in a few more days." Then, listen to it again, come back after a few days and say, "Actually, now I can hear this part, it doesn't feel right to me. Let's go back and change it." Just, take time on it. The songs are just mature. And normally, everyone says it, when a band comes out with a new album, "oh, it's more mature." I know it's the clicheed thing to say, but with our band... We were young kids when 'Take Off Your Colours' came out, and the process from TOYC into 'Hold Me Down', we've grown up through our teenage years. We were going into our early 19s and 20s, and we're learning about life still. We put a lot of emotions into it, no matter what we doing at that time: a few of us had a few bad patches, but I think they really helped us bring the best side of our music out.

OS: Do you have a favourite song?
Max: I really do like the album as a whole actually. This album, I've been listening to myself, personally, because I've had no choice - I've been looking at my iTunes and my iPod and been like, "what is there to listen to?" And I find myself going back to our album. That kind of sounds weird, but I'm just really happy with what we've produced as a band. The album flows together so well; it's not a story, but it feels like it flows like a story.

OS: Albums are always better when you can listen to them as a whole, rather than wanting to skip tracks, or change the ordering.
Max: Yeah, we spent a lot of time with the MD of our record label saying, "Look, from the start of the album to the finish of the album, it's got to flow well. If there's one song that doesn't flow well, it shouldn't be on the album." And there was one or two songs that we didn't have on there, that have put on there now. We would be like, "it's missing something." And then we'd realise, "we need to put that song on there! We're being such idiots - why haven't we put it on?!" There's a song call 'Hard To Swallow' and we weren't gonna put that on the album at first. Then, after time, we were listening to it more and more - just the songs we'd recorded in general - and we were like, "this song needs to go on the album. If it doesn't, it's a waste of a great song." And it basically finished off the story, as the middle part of the album. You know when you listen halfway through an album and think that it's either going to go up or down? Before, to me, there just wasn't that push up again in the middle of the album. But, that song brought it back. It just flows and it's a constant high throughout the album. It's one of my favourite songs as well.

OS: You recently released opening track 'The Consequence' as a free download for fans. How did they react to it?
Max: I think they've taken it in a good way. We were quite scared when we wanted to put that song out because obviously the ending had the screaming in it. This was the first song that fans were going to hear from the new album, and it's got screaming in.
OS: It's a little like the old demos.
Max: Yeah, it's as though it's bringing back an old school You Me At Six touch. And we were quite worried, just thinking, "how are fans going to react to this? Are they going to like it? Are they not going to like it?" But, so far, the reaction has been good. People have said that it's a grower, or that it's not their favourite track, but they like it. Yet, I think once they hear the album as a whole, with that song, they'll understand and it'll fit a lot more. I think it could change people's opinions and they'll think it's a really good song.

OS: Personally, I think the ending really makes the song that bit more intense; it's a shock at first, but it completes the song.
Max: When I hear that ending, it reminds me of something like 'The Rumour' It's big and it's epic and it's catchy. I remember being in the practice studio and we had that song done, without the ending bit, and we were talking altogether about how we need something as epic as 'The Rumour' on this album. So, we were like, "why don't we try this at the end of 'The Consequence'?" And we were came up with the idea, and were like, "That's it! That's the one!" And, as I said, for a first song for people to hear, it is gonna be tough for people who are like, "wow, they've put screaming in the first song we've heard." I know that if I heard a song with screaming in it that a band that doesn't normally do, I would step back and say, "wait a second, what's coming along here?" I may be into it, or I may not be into it. But, I think with the album as a whole, people will understand.

OS: How does it feel knowing that you'll soon be able to play songs that no one's ever heard live before?
Max: I think I can say this on behalf of all of our band, I think we're all really looking forward to releasing this new album. Some of the songs we've been playing in the set, like 'Save It For The Bedroom' and 'The Rumour', they're three or four years old now. And, I don't know if you can tell, but I think we're starting to get a little bit tired of doing the same set - we've been doing the same set for a long time now. I think we're all excited to bring something fresh to the set, with new production and new stage moves, how we perform live. I think that's what we're all looking forward to next year as a band.

OS: What have you got in store for your UK tour in March?
Max: We have so many production ideas for it. The only way I can really describe it is that we're trying to bring an arena production into a club tour. I don't think many people have done that before! I think when people do see this tour, and come to the shows, they're gonna be really surprised with how much effort we've put into this tour. We've been planning it since last March. We've been planning it for a whole year, and it's crazy to think about it like that. We were like, "oh, march is such a long way away. It's like, a year's time" But we're in December right now and we've got three months until this tour comes about. We've gotta go into the studio to practice all these songs; we wanna our set the best set ever. For the fans coming to the show, we want to come away saying, "that was the best I've ever seen You Me At Six. They played the best songs off both albums." That's why we booked the tour for March - so that people can get the album in January and can listen to it. I remember going to see bands, who had released a new album, a week after they'd released it. So, they play tons of songs from that album, but you don't know the lyrics and you don't know how to feel about it yet. So, that's why we've done it in March; so that we've got two months breathing time for the fans to understand the album, get into the CD and hopefully, enjoy it as much as we do.

OS: How does it feel knowing that you'll be playing to a sold out Brixton Academy?
Max: Yeah, I've seen some of my favourite bands play that venue and I've been going to that venue growing up all my life. I think it's the same with the Astoria, but just on a bigger scale. We are playing such a massive venue, that we all look up to. How has our band reached from 100 capacity venues to a 5,000 cap venue in London?! I think it's an exciting time for us, and that's going to end the tour perfectly for us. It's London, it's our hometown, and to play one of the biggest clubs in London is an amazing feeling and I think we're bringing everything to it in the right way. To make people go, "that was a show." Not just a gig, but a show. A performance. That's what we want people to go away thinking.

OS: Finally, what's been your highlight or 2009?
Max: Too much has happened this year! Warped tour this year, for our whole band. We all wanted to do Warped tour, and we never thought we'd get to do something like that, so doing a month of it was definitely a special feeling for us. Then, Reading and Leeds! To play in front of 12,000 people in the Radio 1/ NME tent. When we got offered that slot, we knew we were up against some hefty contenders; I mean, the indie scene is massive.
OS: And, you went on after Dave Grohl! [in super group Them Crooked Vultures.]
Max: We didn't even know that was happening until we turned up in Leeds! So, when we turned up, we were just like, "we're following Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and Jon Paul Jones?!" To follow up after a band like that and to play in front of 12,000 people, I think we were stoked on. We didn't think we could fill up that tent, and to see that tent being filled out, both days, was such an achievement for our band. That was definitely one of the highlights of our band's career.

You Me At Six's second album 'Hold Me Down' comes out today!