Before their set on Friday night at the Black Cat, Atlanta’s Black Lips sat down with DCist to discuss travel, filibusters, their love of the Maine Avenue Fish Market, and robotripping. The show was everything that band is known for — fast, fun, exciting and tight. Though the band generally trades in three minute thrashers, it has a decade’s worth of material to draw from, and played a good long set for the packed main stage crowd. With the help of a really cool projection show, stage divers and a seemingly endless supply of beer explosions from the crowd, this was not your normal head nodding, toe tapping kind of D.C. concert. People came ready to, well, rock ‘n’ roll, and the band was more than happy to give the audience what they were looking for.

So, why are you guys not down at SXSW? Did you just skip it this year?

Jared Swilley: Yeah, we did it last year. Ever since we started doing it, we usually just do it every other year. It wasn’t really much of a reason for us to go this year.

Joe Bradley: Yeah, we don’t have anything to promote right now.

Cole Alexander: It is usually, like, up-and-coming bands or bands that have their new album out or something like that.

So, you’re working on a new album now, right? How’s that coming? What are you working on?

Jared: We just had a couple of sessions, but we’ve been touring a lot in between it. We don’t have a deadline, so we’re just trying to get all the songs together and trying to get into the studio as much as possible.

Ian Saint Pé: We’re trying a lot of different formats too on recording, like some four-track recording and eight-track recording and different studios and stuff just trying to figure out what songs sound best where.