ELECTRO rockers Pvris will bring their new album to Glasgow on Monday night – after recording it in a studio they reckon was haunted.

The American trio have exploded into the big time and sophomore release All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell is a massive step forwards for the group.

However the studio they based themselves in was an interesting one.

“We stumbled upon this place called Big Blue North, in northern New York,” explains the band’s bassist, Brian MacDonald.

“It’s in an old renovated church, and is a beautiful place, and the acoustics are amazing, but we think it was haunted. There was a hang out room down in the basement. Alex (Babinski, guitarist) was there and kept hearing footsteps down the stairs but there was no-one there.

“Lynn (Gunn, singer) and our engineer set up a couple of ghost traps and they worked, we had ping pong balls being moved about and stuff like that. There was spooky stuff going on there, but it just added to the making of the album.”

Originally Pvris started out as a metal band called Operation Guillotine, before slimming down into the current Pvris line-up, and shifting their sound to electro-flavoured rock and pop. Debut album White Noise was a smash hit, and their second offering went Top 5 in the UK charts.

Yet Brian’s life could have been very different. He was given a helping hand in his musical career by his parents, as they were keen for him to find a new hobby that wasn’t skateboarding.

“I used to come home with broken bones from skateboarding all the time, and eventually my parents were like ‘you should try something else’,” he recalls with a chuckle.

“But I had always loved music as a kid, I’d be buying a bunch of CDs like Hybrid Theory, by Linkin Park. The one record that really got me into playing an instrument was Sing The Sorrow by AFI. I started playing my dad’s guitar, and then he got me an Epiphone SG, that was left handed.

“I’d put the AFI album in my PS2 and just play along to the whole record, jumping around my room. My dad would walk in and be like ‘yeah, keep rocking out’.”

Now Brian is getting to indulge that rock star side all over the world. On Glasgow they’ll be at the O2 Academy, but he is hoping he can discover a bit more about his own family history beforehand.

“My last name’s MacDonald so I’ve got to love playing Scotland,” he chuckles.

“My grandparents have roots in Scotland, from outside Edinburgh, so I need to do a bit more research about their background. We love the gigs too, we always get loads of chanting there. We’re standing backstage and everyone’s going ‘here we, here we,’ before the start and it makes you think that it’s going to be the best show ever and an unbelievable crowd.”

The group’s popularity is partly due to frontwoman Lynn Gunn. On All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell, she is blunt about her struggles with depression and time in therapy. The rest of the band tried to support her as best they could while she was trying to cope.

“We’re all family so we were there for her,” says Brian.

“Lynn’s a strong person and worked through it. I know it was a big weight on her with that all going on, and writing these lyrics and putting them out for people to hear is like a gateway for those emotions.

“But whatever Lynn’s going through, or I’m going through, or Alex’s going through, then we’re there for each other.”

The band take their responsibilities seriously, beyond just each other. They work closely with various LGBT groups, with Gunn having previously said she didn’t feel like she had any gay role models when growing up, before she eventually came out just before the band released their first album.

That attitude of offering support is something that Brian is in complete agreement with.

“If you have the limelight or the platform to talk about these things then you should talk about it, because a lot of people can’t do that,” he says.

“Maybe they’re in a small town and they can’t explain to anyone about how they feel. We donate to charities and try to help organisations like the Ally Coalition, they’re amazing and we have them volunteer at our shows.”

Pvris, O2 Academy, Monday, £19.50, 7pm