"Sepultura. I mean they were heroes in our youth"

YOU ARE ABOUT TO START THIS EUROPEAN TOUR SUPPORTING SEPULTURA, HOW DOES IT FEEL?
It feels really good, actually. We are excited as hell to open up for an act like Sepultura.В I mean they were heroes in our youth. They are not the same band anymore though, but still Andreas Kisser within and he is definatelly a hero from our youth.

YOUR SECOND ALBUM ‘ORIGIN OF THE STORM’ WILL BE OUT END OF THIS MONTH  AND THEY SAY IT’S A GOOD ONE…
We do as well actually. I guess we progressed a little bit since the first album, we just grown up in our songwritting with the songs. I think you can hear it actually. The reaction we already got is pretty good.

AFTER YOU FIRST RECORD YOU WERE BLAMED FOR SOUNDING PRETTY MUCH LIKE KILLSWITCH ENGAGE…NOT ANYMORE?
Well, we don’t have big problems with us being mentioned in one sentence with Killswitch Engage, I mean they are spearheading the whole thing. I’d rather be compared to the good things, then to the bad ones. That’s not a problem with us. 

CAN WE SAY THAT YOU ARE PART OF SOMETHING LIKE THE ‘EUROPEAN ANSWER’ TO BANDS LIKE KILLSWITCH ENGAGE?
You can do. I mean I feel honored to be part of the European bands that are coming up strong now, so it feels good, yeah.

YOU ARE FROM AUSTRIA – A COUNTRY WHICH IS NOT EXACTLY FAMOUS FOR METAL MUSIC. OK, WE ARE FAMILIAR WITH PUNGENT STENCH OF COURSE, BUT IS THERE A LOCAL BAND THAT HAD A PARTICULAR INFLUENCE ON YOU?
Not directly. There are bands like Pungent Stench that you mentioned or Belphegor who at the moment are really growing big all over the world. But I can’t say that the local bands had any influence on us directly.

I mean, we were in touch and still are with bands from the Austrian community but not that there was a really big input. We live really close to the Swiss and German border and the German bands had rather a bigger influence on us.
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WHAT IS THE BIGGEST LESSON THAT YOU’VE LEARNED AFTER SO MANY LIVE SHOWS?
We knew it even before playing all those shows – you have to give always 100 % and you have to be always prepared as good as you can if you go on the big stage. I can’t say there is a big lesson for playing live but there are some things we learned while touring and it’s that you have always to treat everyone as you want to be treated.

Some bigger musicians sometimes forget that point. And we always said to ourselves that we never want to forget where we come from and how glad we were when someone treated us nicely so we want to give this the band we are touring with back as well.

SO IS THERE A SUCCESFULL BAND THAT TREATED YOU GUYS REALLY BADLY?
No one treated us really badly but I can say there were some points on the tour with Chimaira when we told them “Ok guys, this and that aren’t really right to do. I don’t want to mention any details there. And still, we like the Chimaira guys but at some point they did some stuff we didn’t appreciate that much.

Rights: Tangra Mega Rock