Thanks to their efforts spent towards recording earlier this summer, You Me At Six are now sitting on top of what could be their most important album to date, Cavalier Youth. The UK rock quintet flew out to Los Angeles to record with legendary producer Neal Avron, and in the process, have put together what could be treated as three album’s worth of songs.

With less than a week to go until their upcoming US headlining tour, rhythm guitarist Max Helyer recently took the time to exclusively tell us more about what came from those long tedious days in the studio. Follow the jump to see what he had to say.

So you just recently finished recording your fourth album, how do you feel about your results?

Feel fantastic about it, we had a blast with this record and spent a lot of time writing the songs. I would say we wrote over 30 songs in the entire process which is the most we have ever done before, but it gave us the chance to choose the best songs which worked best for the overall sound of the record. It is definitely the most we have progressed in sound as a band, we have really started to find our sound.

Neal Avron has quite a few big records under his belt. What was it like to record with him? Specifically, what were the first few days like?

Neal was amazing to work with, not just for the fact he has worked with big artists such as Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, Aerosmith etc., but he was very relaxing to work with. We knew when we would have to work hard, especially the first few days with him when we were in pre-production. He would turn around to us and say this song is good but it’s 70% complete and you should work on a certain part and that would spur us five then to find new things to play around with and create a new part for a song or change the structure. We learnt a lot from Neal as well, I think more so on how to perfect a song with little touches.

Is there any one specific topic or theme that this album is centered around?

Well the album title is called Cavalier Youth which means care-free youth. I think it’s something that represents us for when we were growing up, we started touring at an early age and we lived a care-free youth being on the road doing the things we wanted to do and loved. I think especially when you get to hear the lyrics as well it all ties in with the name.

Did you guys get much time to experiment in the studio?

Yeah, we had a fair bit of time to mess about with equipment. We didn’t want to take too long because we didn’t want to fall behind schedule. Chris and myself kind of knew which sounds we wanted to achieve and create, and with parts we weren’t sure of we spent a few hours working out sounds and messing about with the part to really get in the zone. We also got to use a lot more percussion on this record and at a few points we did gang vocals between us five.

How long have you guys been writing this record?

Well one of the first riffs for the CD came about in January 2012 when we were recording “The Swarm,” but then a lot more ideas started to come from that summer of 2012. Once we finished our summer tours we had a few months before we had to do anything again and we spent time writing in that period. After we played Wembley we went to a place called Doghouse Studios in Henley, where we carried on with writing the record and spent one week at a time there living and breathing the writing experience and we did this a few times from December till March. But we didn’t stop there, we knew if we kept on writing after being in Henley it had to be a song that contributed to the record. And the funniest thing is that the first song on the CD is the last song we wrote for the record, which was a surprise for all of us.

You guys have always changed things up in between releases. Which of your past albums would you say this one resembles the most?

I wouldn’t really say it really resembles anything else we’ve done in the past. I think we have all grown up a lot more now and we all have different tastes in music which I think you’ll be able to tell when you hear the CD. It’s definitely the most we have progressed and I think we are really starting to find our sound.

Wembley had to be an experience. What was the one thing you got out of the whole experience of playing to such a massive sold out crowd?

For me, it’s a historical venue that many big bands have played over the years. I went to my first ever show there to see Green Day and it holds a lot of memories going to gigs there. Most importantly Pink Floyd played there on ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ tour, pretty much playing in the same room as a band of that size was insane. Plus the fans that night went extra crazy because we recorded the show for a DVD, so being able to watch it back is a special feeling for all of us because we captured something that we thought we would never do.

Do you guys have anything else you’d like to share regarding your upcoming album? When can fans expect to hear something from these sessions?

More news to be coming soon, we have released our first single for the album, called “Lived A Lie,” and that is just the start of lots of things to be coming your way for the rest of the year.

Do you have any other plans after your upcoming headlining US tour in the fall?

We go on tour with 30 Seconds To Mars in Europe which we are really excited for. Then hopefully the album will come out early next year so we will be building up to the release of that.

Interview Written and conducted by: Adrian Garza (Follow on Twitter)

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