Toronto-based indie rockers Zeus are celebrating their sixth year of existence with their third studio album, Classic Zeus. For one of the three singer-songwriters in the band, Mike O’Brien, this is a time to reflect on the past while looking forward to the future which includes a big North American tour, plans to head over to Europe and a fifth band member, Jason Haberman, who joins the fold this year to help out the group. We caught up with O’Brien recently to get familiar with this budding Canadian group.

Classic Zeus is slated to drop soon. What can we expect from the release?

I think that if you’ve heard us before it’s definitely in keeping with what you would expect from the band. If you’ve never heard us before than I guess you don’t know. We are a three-songwriter band and in the past we’ve sort of just contributed songs individually and worked them together as a band. Often times you just go off in your own sort of directions, whereas this time I feel like it’s our most cohesive sounding record. We all found common ground and I feel like we worked closely together in the song selection and in flushing them out as well.

Can you talk a little bit about what the whole writing and recording process is like for creating this album. Is there any specific inspiration?

We record our records at our own studio. This record particularly we took a long time to make it. We recorded probably something like over 30 songs. And then winnowed it down to the eleven songs that are on the record. We really wanted to try and come up with something that we felt was sort of a statement not necessarily a direct statement but just something that spoke for itself as a piece. Which is why I think we sort of went off the books a little bit and would try as many different ideas as we could to get to get down to the ones, sort of the right thing that we wanted to do. There was lots of different experimentation, but in the end sort of the songs that were the simplest and most direct were the ones that ended up becoming what made up the record. So we just sort of sound the groove that they all fit together in.

*How would you say the band has changed or grown since your last effort, 2011’s Busting Visions ?

The most direct thing is that it’s mellowed out a little bit. Maybe that comes with time and maturing and aging a little bit. But I think it’s slightly mellowed out compared to our last record. On the second record we were just becoming a band. The four of us had just started a life as a touring band and played together a lot whereas this I think we are all more comfortable with our roles and a little bit more relaxed about things. On the second record it was more about capturing the sound of the band, where as this one is more about experimenting.

We are all multi-instrumentalists as well so this time around it doesn’t really matter who played what on what song. Whatever came about naturally is what happened. There are a lot of songs where different guys are playing drums. There’s a lot of mixing, which is something we have always had in our band, but I think this time it was really about whatever serves the song best.

Are there any instrument changes on stage with the extensive instrumentation on this new record?

We actually added a 5th member to the band at this round of touring. And for the foreseeable future I guess. We’ve always been a four-piece and we’ve always performed as a four-piece, so when we started working on rehearsing these songs and learning them for touring we discovered pretty quickly that we weren’t able to get across what we wanted without adding another guy, so that has been the major change in the band in the last little while. It’s really exciting. It brings new musical possibilities. Even though the songs themselves are sparser it still required that extra something.

In terms of who plays what it just happens naturally, really depending on the songwriter and what they say they wrote the song on. If I’m singing the song and I’m playing it on guitar, everyone just sort of fills in around the edges. We have our default positions as musicians anyways. There’s a basic structure that we work around that change just depending on the song.

Who is the fifth member?

His name is Jason Haberman. We met him on tour last, in April of 2013. We were touring with a band called Yukon Blonde, from out west. They are a Vancouver based band and we toured with them and he was playing bass for them at the time. That’s how we became acquainted, and became fast friends. He lives in Toronto so we just started hanging out a lot and jamming and he was the obvious choice when we decided that we needed to add another man.

Are you guys excited about playing any place in particular?

We are kind of excited about all of it to be honest. We’ve lined up a lot of fun tour partners. We are touring with a band called The Elwins in a good part of Canada, and we are also touring with some of our really close friends in our own sort of territory in Southern Ontario. We are touring with a band called the Golden Dogs , and a guy named Taylor Knox, and another band called West Atlantic who are all sort of based out of our studio. We have a studio called Ill Eagle Studios. We are like this little scene amongst our friends. We are all based in that same studio and we all play on each other’s records. It’s a really healthy vibrant scene that we have. I’m excited about touring particularly that stretch of the tour. It will be fun because it’s just going to be a lot of good times with our friends.

You and Carlin have been friends for a while, right?

We’ve been friends since Grade 9.

Is it crazy to think that you are both still together and playing?

It is absolutely crazy to think that! I’m getting married on Friday, so last week we went and had a bachelor party at his house, which is where we use to rehearse when we were kids. He has a back house. It’s a separate structure called the back house where we grew up where we first started playing in our first band. And we were there three four days ago just hanging out having a little party and we were jamming. It’s a total trip to think its 20 years later and we are still doing it.

What’s next for Zeus?

We finish our tour in October, so that’s a stretch that’s ahead of us right now. Beyond that, we are looking at Europe possibilities. We’ve been over quite a few times. We have a label that is based out of London, so that’s sort of our next horizon if you will. We are making plans to go over there and do some touring over that way. Also I think we are all really eager to start working on new music even though we are just releasing our brand new record. Like I said, it took us a year to make it. So, to us its already a little behind us in terms of our creative input. As much as fun as learning and performing these new songs, we are all excited. Especially now that we have a new member in the band. We are all excited to start working on new music with this new version of Zeus.