The first half of 2009 presented some opportunity to play gigs with the 5 piece lineup. It was a good time for the band, and I personally believed we played some of best shows at this time. I could really get into the role of singer and the guys were playing really well. I have very fond memories of that time and I really hoped that lineup would lat forever.

We had recently put out "This Day Forth"and around this time we became friends with Simon Hoggett. We met Simon at a Grave Forsaken show and soon he started coming to all our shows. We trusted him so much that we even got him to play drums for us for a couple of shows that Dave couldn't play. It wasn't long before he became a part of the team. We decided we wanted him in permanently, so we offered him the role of playing guitar. I would concentrate solely on vocals and he would play my parts. He accepted the offer and we were back to being a 5 piece. It was an exciting move for the band.

We released the new album in the first half of 2009. We were really happy with the songs and production. We felt the album was a big step up and we eagerly anticipated the response. It was exciting to have it out on Soundmass and we felt the future was bright.

We got Ari to color the cover that Charlie had drawn. Dan finished the mix and we did a photoshoot featuring all 5 of us. It was an exciting time and we felt this album was an improvement on what we had done before. It had a stronger thrash sound and it represented the direction we wanted to take for the band at that time. Everything was ready to go. It was time to put the album out!

Elias showed me a picture his friend Charlie had drawn. It was a picture of a robot laying waste to city. It was very comic book like, and it reminded me of Transformers. Transformers was probably at peak popularity back then so this image felt quite striking and a bit modern. It was very different for us but I was keen on pursuing it as an album cover. Little did I know we had started a trend in Grave Forsaken album covers but we certainly had.

We were very keen to work with Adam from Soundmass for the album release. Adam handled all the Rowe Productions distribution so I had gotten to know him from that. It was a logical step to sign with Soundmass because we were already working closely together anyway. I made the suggestion to Adam and he responded in the affirmative. It was official - "This Day Forth" would come out on Soundmass!

It was towards the end of 2008 that we finished the mix for "This Day Forth". We were happy with how it came out and we thought we had a good album on our hands. Daniel did a great job. It was time for us to work out how we were going to release it.

As sometimes happens in band life, things ground to a bit of a halt during the second half of 2008. We decided not to go to Blackstump that year, mainly due to family commitments. It wasn't such a bad thing because we had worked pretty hard over a few years by this point. Dave was working with Mortification as well, so that was keeping him quite busy. We did a play a gig in October of 2008 and that went well. Apart from that, things were reasonably low key.

After recording the vocals we had a period of a few months in 2008 we're it was the four of us. We played a few gigs and generally kept things ticking over. My wife and I had our first child during this time, so I was very focused on that. The band did take a bit of a backseat in the immediate time after our son being born. Despite the drastic change in my life, I was still as determined as ever to make the band successful.

I arranged a time with Dan and I went in and recorded all my vocals for the album. We knew the album would be called "This Day Forth" and it was basically done. Because "Destined For Ascension" had only just come out, we didn't hurry the mix. We knew the album wouldn't come out for another 6 months or so. It was good to have it recorded in any case.