Can you present the band ?

I'm Mark, I play the guitar. Patrick is on the drum, Andy on vocals, Denis also on guitar, and Marco is our new bass player.

Tonight is your second show on this tour with Machine head and God Forbid,
how was your first show ?

The first one was pretty good, but I was a festival so it was not just for this three band so I can't really tell about this tour. Today is the first real show of this tour. But the festival was good. The response was really good. Even if the promotion was not really well done because we confirmed really late for this tour, the response was great. And all the members from the other bands seems pretty nice people.

Your fourth album "The Opposite from Within" is out since few days on Roadrunner, how did you guys meet with the Roadrunner crew ?

We played in 2003 at the "With Full Force" festival in Germany. And after this festival we got some offers from many different labels. Like Century Media, SPV, Roadrunner… And I talk to Lifeforce Records (our label at that time) about it, and they said that it would be better if we change label. Because it would be better for us, they said they can't do anything more for us, because if they do anything that is necessary for us, he wouldn't have enough time for his other bands so he agreed that we change label. So we were talking to all the labels for 6 month. We did all the recording stuff, we finished the complete record. We gave it to every company. And Roadrunner had the best offer. So we choose this label because of promotion and everything.

Your new album has been produced by In Flames front man Anders Friden and mixed and mastered by Andy Sneap, what did you learned from those two metal legends ?

The most we learned was from Anders Friden during the song writing process. He helped us make songs shorter, he helped that we built the songs up with better bridges between the parts. He had great ideas, it was really great to work with him. Andy Sneap, we didn't so much because he just mixed the record. I mean, we send all the hard-drives to him, it took him 10 days to make the rough mix, and I just flew over for three days and we made the mix together. I didn't learn I would say, but it was great to see how he works and put everything together.

The CD artwork is in the true hardcore spirit with the skull and the wings.
Could you explain the meaning of it and it's link with the title of the album ?

We had this guy that was supposed to do the artwork of this album. He did a cover for us. And the bass ex player and me did a t-shirt design with just a skull and some different stuff. And we send the cover artwork and the t-shirt to Roadrunner, to our manager and friends, and everyone said that it was ok but could you us the t-shirt design as a cover artwork ? So we worked on the cover on our own, and we came up with the one that's actualy on the album.

Your music style is close to Killswitch Engage, what did you learned from your Japanese tour with them ?

They're very good musiciens. Adam D, the guitar player gave me some recording tapes from him, to see how can I make the sound better. They didn't influenced the song writing. They gave us advice to how we can set up everything better. I think on this new record it's more a naturel process from the old records. I mean it's true that it's a little like Killswitch but it's also because Andy Sneap mixed their latest album, it sounds maybe pretty similar.

Do you feel closer to the hardcore scene with bands like Hatebreed, Throwdown, or closer to the metal scene like Killswitch or maybe closer to the emo, scremo scene with bands like Poison the Well ?

We started as a hardcore band, we feel like a hardcore band. But I think our music fits anyparts of those scenes. We don't wanna be a part of a particular scene. For us it's not important how you call it, or which part of a music you want to put it into.

German bands are on of the non english speaking countries who have the posibility to play in the us, we have exemples with Rammstein, Donots or In Flames. Is there a reason of that ?

I don't know man, I don't know.

Do you have financial stucture in Germany to allows you to o that ?

No, it's pretty hard for us to go there. It took 3 or 4 months to get a licence for a year to go there for working. It costs so much money. With everything together we spend around 8 000€ just for the working visa for the band. And then you have all the usual charges, so we lost a little money on that tour. At the end of that tour, we got more money that we ever got in the state but it was not enough to pay all the charges. It was almost, kind of close to zero. But I think the next tour will be better because we already have the visa. So it will be cheaper, within a year we will go almost three times there. We plane on going there in January or February and another one around May. We're also going back in Japan in March and then come back to Europe for the Roadrage tour.

Are you going to do the Roadrage tour in the US also ?

No, just in Europe. At the moment, we're talking with God Forbid for the us. And maybe for May we're gonna be with In Flames, we're also talking with Killswitch Engage for the states. They've always wanted to have us on their US tour. It should be good.

Find the Mark Tattoo's interview !!

Interview by Manu & Ben
Translation by Tataye