After being wowed by their forthcoming album 'Heroes & Villains', it made sense to have a chat with a member of Britain's premier AOR band FM. Normally, it's vocalist Steve Overland who does the interview malarky, but we thought it might be interesting to chat with guitarist Jim Kirkpatrick, who only joined the band after they reformed, replacing Andy Barnett.

What caused the band to move to Frontiers? has it changed anything?

We've always been on each other's radars. It just seemed the right time to get together.

I assume you're happy with the new album Do you have a favourite track?

Yes, I'm definitely happy with the album! My favourites change every day so I can't say.

Early reviews have been 100% positive, was there any worry beforehand about what reception it would get?

Obviously we hope that the reception is always going to be good with every album we put out but I think we have to be happy with it ourselves first before we worry about anybody else.

How long did it take to make, start to finish?

Apart from Cold Hearted which we recorded at the end of 2013 the rest of the album was recorded between around June to January on and off.

What kind of sound did you have in mind when entering the studio?

We thought that we'd possibly make the album a bit heavier and more uptempo than Rockville.

The album seems to be a mix of traditional melodic rock (eg Youre The best Thing) and crunchier numbers (eg Digging Up the Dirt) - is this due to different writing styles or are they all a joint effort?

The songs all come in different ways but we wrote together a lot more on this record.

So you have any interesting stories from the making of the album?

Errr, not really. How boring does that sound?

Do the guys still treat you as the new kid, making you get the coffee etc?

The guys never treated me as the new kid. Believe it or not but this is the longest serving lineup of the band and also the lineup that has produced the most material.

Tell me a little about your other band, JLS... interesting name!

JLS is an acoustic trio that myself and two good friends play in local to where we live for fun. The band is Jim, Les & Steve (Les Hunt - Climax Blues Band, Steve Hayes - Nearly Dan) - JLS!

You also did an excellent album with Diesel and have played a few shows - tell me more about that, and is there going to be another?

Diesel has been a really fun project to work on with my good friend Robert Hart and we were very happy with the album. We're currently writing a follow up and hoping to play some more shows in September.

Tell us something we don't know about the other band members?

Jem likes Take That, Pete likes dance music, Merv likes Steely Dan and Steve loves Stevie Wonder.

Who's the better guitarist, you or Steve?

Is that a serious question??

Would you rather see a band with a great singer and average guitarist, or a great guitarist and average singer?