MUSIC: You, them at 7pm

Being in a rock band can lead to weird and wonderful experiences.

However, You Me At Six had one of a more hair-raising variety as they were chased by an angry man with a chainsaw!

“I almost died in Omaha, Nebraska,” recalls vocalist Josh Franceschi. “Some hillbilly chased me and our merchandise guy in a car. We’d cut him off at the lights and you clearly don’t mess with the locals!

“He kept swerving into us and trying to knock us off the road. We eventually ended up in this dead-end road, and he got out and tried to smash our van and was shouting that he would kill us!

“We can look back on that experience and laugh at how ridiculous it was, but at the time we were terrified – we could see he had a pitchfork and a chainsaw in the back of his truck!”

Josh tells the story with a laidback, almost sleepy air, as if there’s nothing unusual about apparently wandering into a new version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

In fact, he’s so carefree you wouldn’t suspect he’s the frontman of one of Britain’s biggest rock bands.

New album Hold Me Down cracked the Top 5 on its release a few weeks ago, and they’re now setting off on their biggest headline tour to date, which sees them appear at the O2 Academy on Sunday.

It’ll let fans hear the catchy pop-punk likes of Underdog and Kiss & Tell, which have already earned the group a slot on

America’s prestigious Warped Tour, and won the support of rock behemoths such as Paramore.

However, while the Surrey band are all still young, Josh points out they’ve already crammed in a lot of touring, including stopping off at nearly every venue in Glasgow.

“It’s really great that we are now able to sell out a headline show at somewhere like the Academy,” he says.

“It may seem like a small space of time for us to be playing such a big venue, but we’ve gone from Barfly to King Tut’s, then up to the Garage and then the Barrowland. We’ve

supported various bands at the Academy and the SECC too, so it’s been a natural progression to get where we are now.

“We all love coming to Scotland, as it’s always a good show and we’ve always left the stage buzzing afterwards. The thing about Scottish crowds is that they are a different breed to crowds throughout the rest of the UK.

“King Tut’s is awesome – I just love to play that venue. We had an amazing show at the SECC with Paramore, and the Barrowland is amazing too, because of the history of bands there.”

It seems the quintet had a great time supporting Hayley William’s arena rockers, and Josh believes that the dates, which took place on the Tennessee band’s European tour, were an opportunity to spread the band’s music further.

“The Paramore tour was an absolute blast. We get on really well with the band and it was a pleasure to be playing to huge crowds in those massive rooms.

“We still speak to Paramore on a regular basis. We took the situation of playing arenas in our stride and thought we should just get on with it – we didn’t want to look back on it with any regrets. We just enjoyed it, rather than being nervous.”

For their own headline dates, on which the band are supported by up and coming outfit We The Kings, fans can expect a heavy dose of material from the Hold Me Down record. While the band’s first album, Take Off Your Colours, was a big hit when released in 2007 and helped earn them Kerrang Award nominations for Britain’s best metal band two years running, Josh feels that this album helps define the band’s sound far more.

“It’s a step forward for us in the sense that the songs are far better written and more mature,” he says.

“We really set out to write a solid album and I feel like we did that. There are songs on there that people from all walks of life can get into, and we’re really happy with how it all turned out. Our band really needed to find our own sound on this record and we’ve done that.”

And Josh reckons that a key aspect of the album is that the band spent more time working in the studio, to ensure they got the sound just right.

“Me and Max (Helyet, one of the band’s guitarists) spent a lot of time writing out the guitar parts, and wanted to write an album we’ll look back on in five years and still really be proud of,” he says.

“We were in the studio for nine weeks, which was seven weeks longer than we were for the first one and I think you can hear the difference in sound between the first and second record.”

And the group are eager to return to the studio in the near future, as soon as they’ve wrapped up a hectic touring schedule that will see them head to Japan and America.

“If there are people wanting to see us, we’ll keep touring, but once people feel that this album has run its course, we’ll just go off and write a new record! We don’t want to take too much time between this and the next album.”