Alexisonfire’s Wade MacNeil talks touring with Underoath, their upcoming Australian tour, and why they hope they never get ‘too good’.
Alexisonfire’s Wade MacNeil is currently on his couch, sitting next to a full-sized human skeleton. Upon seeing a grimace crawl across my face, MacNeil immediately assures me that this skeleton is not, in fact, real. “I just purchased it for Halloween, then it made its way into my studio,” he laughs.
Dialling in from his home in Montreal, Canada, MacNeil is dressed for the sub-arctic temperatures outside his door. “Yeah, the weather here is really stupid,” he snorts through a wide-reaching smile. Though MacNeil won’t have to worry about these temperatures for much longer. In a few months, he and his bandmates in Alexisonfire will be basking under blue Australian skies.
“It’s going to be amazing,” MacNeil says when asked about the band’s March 2025 Australian tour. “I love coming to Australia. It just really reminds me of home. I think culturally, Canada and Australia are very similar.” The weather clearly plays an additional incentive too.
For this tour, the band will be supported by post-hardcore icons Underoath. Having toured with the hard rockers in the early 2000s, Alexisonfire knew Underoath would be a good fit for the Australian run.
“We just don’t want to tour with losers anymore,” MacNeil responds through a giggle. “We’re just not going to go on the road with a bunch of dorks we hate. Twenty years in, you’re not doing anything you don’t want to do.”
Touring, for MacNeil, has long been one of his favourite aspects of the job. When asked if he sometimes feels jaded by the experience, MacNeil immediately shakes his head.
“I love doing it. Like anything, there are challenges. But in my opinion, the point of playing music is to play music. I also find that the songs open up in different ways the more you play them. They become what they fully should be.” MacNeil has also found that touring has made Alexisonfire a better band, something they are still striving to do, even after all these years.
However, through his years of touring, MacNeil has noticed some drawbacks.
“I’ve noticed that if a band tours enough, their third record is just about touring. For us, Crisis [2006 album] is a lot about being in a band. If you tour enough, your life is just that. Music can’t be just that.”
This, along with several other factors, contributed to the band’s decision in August 2011 to break up. Reflecting on that choice, MacNeil offered, “We toured so much that we had to stop. We toured hard for 12 years. Life just caught up with us.”
The band later returned to the studio, recording their fifth album, Otherness, which was released in 2022. Finally, the music felt fresh again.
“We now try our best to record all our music live. We try to facilitate us being in one room together, playing the song a few times, and getting the most vibey one. If we can get the lighting right, and relax enough to forget that we’re recording, that’s usually the take.”
Continuing to make great music, Alexisonfire have come a long way since their self-titled debut album. Reflecting on the record and its legacy, MacNeil shared, “I look back on it more fondly now than I used to. For a long time, all I heard were the things that were wrong with it. But now, when I look at the record, I can’t believe we did it. The mistakes are the rough edges that give it its charm.”
Looking forward—or rather at the skeleton that continues to sit next to him—MacNeil has one hope for the band. “In my experience, when a band gets too good, they start to suck. Thankfully, we haven’t gotten there quite yet.”
Let’s hope they never do.
Alexisonfire & Underoath 2025 Australian Tour Dates
Perth – March 6 – Perth HPC
Brisbane – March 8 – Riverstage
Sydney – March 11 – Hordern Pavilion
Melbourne – March 14 – Festival Hall
Tickets are on sale now at Frontier Touring.
