“It’s the same world as ten years ago, we haven’t added any planets to the universe,” Sebastien Granger analogises of the protracted period between Death From Above 1979’s debut LP and their long-awaited next step, The Physical World [reviewed here]. In their first life, the Toronto duo burned out almost as quickly as You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine’s lightning bolt left the bottle. Exhausted by heroic touring commitments (agreeing, as they did, to play almost every gig that was put their way), ‘a punk band with pop aspirations’ was evidently a difficult proposition for the duo to fully realise at the time.

Blaming growing pains for DFA1979’s early demise and quietly retiring the name shortly after a lengthy run of North American arenas at the invitation of Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age, Grainger and sparring partner Jesse F. Keeler left a lingering question over the band’s legacy while it was still very much in its ascendancy: was this a punk rock victory or a whisper of what might have been?

Following multiple projects over the years – Keeler most notably operated as one half of electro remix kings MSTRKRFT, while Grainger found form as a chameleonic solo artist – their disco metal Frankenstein jolted back to life in 2011. Treading cautiously back to the stage with an unannounced appearance at SXSW, their resurrection was formalised – as post-millennial big deal reformations often are – by a triumphant set at Coachella a few weeks later.

Since battening down the hatches and saying very little to the press on the subject of new material, Death From Above 1979 have reclaimed the element of surprise. Having relocated to Los Angeles last year, Grainger found a productive stride and worked with Keeler to lay down the foundation for their long delayed studio return. The results are genuinely electrifying; that propulsive energy is here in abundance – raw, heavy and carrying an undeniable pop nous, The Physical World has been well worth our patience. “We’ve been sitting on it for so long,” Grainger enthuses, brimming with conviction for what’s about to hit you.

"There wasn’t a myth when we were first around, there wasn’t anything to honour" – Sebastien Grainger

The Skinny: You’ve come a long way from the band we first saw laying waste to the Edinburgh Venue all the way back in 2005. How was it to walk on to the main stage at Coachella after all that time away?

Sebastien Grainger: “It was a strange transition. Those early gigs, like the Edinburgh show, were very visceral and there was a very physical connection between the audience and the band because we were sharing the same air, sweat and temperature – everything was very connected. Playing a stage like Coachella is very sterile and it becomes like Broadway in a sense. That was difficult, because the pressure, the build-up and the expectation was enormous. At the end, it’s just a fuckin’ show; sometimes you have a good one, sometimes you have a bad one. That one, for me, I fuckin’ hated it [laughs]. It was all too much. That’s not to say I don’t like playing festival stages – we’ve done it and killed it. But it really was a baptism by fire into this new era of the band.”

You’ve said previously that new material will permit you to play the gigs you want to play, and give you the freedom to do what you want. Was there a sense that the reunion circuit was keeping the band on rails?

“Really, it’s a matter of honouring this band. There wasn’t a myth when we were first around, there wasn’t anything to honour. There was just the moment. In that moment, I think we were too wound up with it and it was unsustainable. At that time I was so wrapped up with the band personally that I only identified myself as being part of it. When I started to reject that concept, that’s when shit went bad. In this particular period, the band is a completely separate thing; it’s like a third individual. Jesse and I are able to have our lives and feel a certain way about each other or about ourselves and then have this thing that we honour called Death From Above 1979. We have a respect and an excitement for the band and in the sense the audience would because it’s this external third thing that happens when we get together. That didn’t exist before; I was just this dude in the band. Now I can look at it objectively and go ‘This fuckin band is awesome,’ and ‘What would make it better?’”

When a popular band reconvenes the motivation often looks uncertain from the outside – whether it’ll be a retread of the glory days or a more daring foot forward. At what point did the possibility of another Death From Above 1979 album become a reality?

“After we’d played a number of shows under the ‘reunion’ umbrella, the conversation between Jesse and I started with: ‘If we want to continue doing this, be it next year or beyond, we can’t just keep playing the same songs.’ Not that it wasn’t fun for us, but at a certain point it becomes kind of a cheap novelty. We discovered in 2011 that there was a real active audience for our music that had grown since we’d last played together. That audience became a concern – it became something that we cared about. Before, it was hard to tell whether we had it.

We did feel the ascension of the band in the first era; we‘d play a city once, then we’d go back and play to double the number of people at the bigger club. All of those steps had happened, but that was just the groundwork. We never really got to play for an audience, even in Toronto; we never played the big club and reached this thing we were building up to. When we came back, we realised that all of that work had come around, but we didn’t want to rip people off. It wasn’t enough for us to just give them the old show. We wanted to do something better for ourselves and wanted the band to grow. We didn’t want to rush anything out either; we were looking at the landscape of what’s happening in music and still no one’s come along to pop the bubble, so we’re still in a good place. We’re excited again.”

The attitude from the camp seems to be ‘You asked for this, so don’t complain if you don’t enjoy it.’ Is another chapter for this band ultimately what you wanted or is this strictly for the fans?

“The form of Death From Above is very straightforward; when Jesse and I play together, that’s the band. It’s not like if you were starting this new thing or trying to find a new sound – we have that already. We have the form and we both have an age of experience between us to do the thing that is Death From Above. There’s no pressure from fans, aside from the occasional tweet, like ‘where’s your new shit?’ That doesn’t really resonate with me. It was a thing we internalised – let’s make something that we are really into and excites us. The philosophy has always been: if we like what we’re doing, then other people will enjoy it too, because we like good stuff. And that’s not in a cocky way! I think I have pretty good taste in music, so if I’m going to venture to make music and I’m going to enjoy it, I’d hope there’s an audience for it. Everyone who makes music may have that same attitude, but the impetus is always to do something that excites the two of us together. Everything else is external.”

Musically and lyrically, what fuels the band now? Is there some sense that the other projects you’ve both played with since have been to the benefit of your collective songwriting?

“I think so. The scene that we came out of originally was very different. The music we made was music we liked, that we enjoyed. It was also in opposition to what was happening around us. It was a contrarian reaction to the scene in a sense, we weren’t trying to fit in with what was happening in the hardcore and rock’n’roll scenes that we ended up playing in. That still exists – we’re still contrarian. No one’s come along to do what we do; there’s very little interesting angular rock music with the breadth that we give it. We’re always trying to make big fuckin’ tunes; that’s what we do. If we achieve that, great. If we don’t then, oops, we fucked up. The ambition of the band is similar and the climate is a little similar as well. Lyrically, I think I’m pulling from a larger well of experience. I’m not just finding themes to write about, but things that I feel. The ability to write a fictional song – a song that’s a story about something that didn’t exist previously – that’s something I’ve developed over the years. I’d have liked to do that on the first record, but I just didn’t have the skill.”

You hired Dave Sardy – whose CV reads like a roadmap through some of the most respected dance, rock and hip-hop albums of the last 20 years – to produce The Physical World. Unsurprisingly, it sometimes sounds like a bulldozer. Were you in safe hands?

“He was Jesse’s first choice, because I think his real skill is that he’s really good at getting certain sounds. He’s also good at recording music that’s sort of undeniable, you could say. There’re a lot of songs he’s produced that you can’t really ignore. We felt similarly about our band and figured it was a good match. Then when you look at his CV, from producing Slayer to LCD Soundsystem – those are two pretty disparate sounds and I think that we meet somewhere in the middle there. We had a new ambition for this record that was maybe a little bit bigger than the last one so it made sense to work with someone who has that experience.”

Is there a satisfaction that you get out of this band that, as yet, you haven’t been able to find in any other?

“Absolutely – I just don’t listen to heavy music. I enjoy writing and performing it, but it’s not something I gravitate towards. It really is the only therapy I have. It serves that purpose almost entirely for me sometimes. In the setting of a small show, that’s something the audience is more likely to appreciate; when you’re having a super visceral cathartic show where you’re just pounding away, you’re singing too hard and you’re playing too fast. Those gigs where, if you were to play the tape back it would sound like shit, but the people there had the most incredible time and so did you. Sometimes people just want to wile out and go crazy.

The main thing is that it’s the best collaboration I’ve ever had. I’ve worked with a lot of other people and as far as a true, equal collaboration goes, I’ve never had another like this. I enjoy making solo music where I’m a bit more of a fascist, and really love playing with other musicians on stage. On my solo record my band really gelled, but there was always this underlying feeling that ‘this is mine.’ With Death From Above I don’t feel like it’s mine – it’s ours. That’s why it works for me; I’m a fan of Jesse’s and he’s a fan of mine. That’s where the band meets, and it’s mostly with humility. Once the live show starts, it get a little bit more verbose…”

You both have numerous other projects faring well in their own right, is there a balance to be struck in terms of the time you put into this?

“Time permitting. I finished a solo record while we were still making this record, so they were kind of interwoven. What I’ve discovered with Death From Above in making this record is that, aside from certain sonic inclinations I might have, compositionally pretty much anything can go into this band. Thematically, there’s not a lot of stuff that I can write or melody that I can think of that wouldn’t be appropriate on top of Jesse’s bass sounds.

For the sake of honouring the energy and momentum that we have, I’ve made the personal decision to save everything for this. Just because it demands so much energy, it demands so much creatively and just in terms of physical energy for me, there’s not a lot of room for anything else when I’m fully immersed in this. If there’s something I just have to get out on a keyboard or an acoustic guitar then I’ll do that, but it’s gonna be limited to what I can do, given the timeframe.”

Does Death From Above 1979 finally feel like a long-term prospect – might we see a third album before this decade's out?

“We take the same approach now as we did back then. If we still enjoy doing it, people still want to see it and it doesn’t feel like a fucking joke, then we’ll do it.”