How are you Nate?
Yeah I'm a little sick but yeah.

How does it feel to be back in Paris, do you see any differences between French and American audiences?
Honestly, the audiences are the same everywhere, people enjoying music.

And how did the audience react to your new music?
Pretty good everyone seems to be enjoying it.

And tonight you're playing in a small hall. Is it easier for you to reveal the band is it more personal?
Yeah we prefer small clubs. Its more fun, I don't like large stages and barricades we all like to be really close with the audience.

And can you tell us about the two re-released of "Petitioning" and "With forever"?
Yeah well its basically um, we were unhappy about the way the records were mastered and the way they looked because it wasn't within our means at the time to make them exactly the way we wanted them to be. So we went back and fixed them, made them look a little better. They are still pretty true to the originals, basically they're louder where needed and the artwork is an expanded version of the original artwork.

What does the first artwork of "you fail me" mean with this bleeding hand? With the title of the album can we think of a wound...
Sort of yeah, you fail me is basically a concept of looking at yourself and people around you and seeing how you fail yourself in life and instead of blaming other people for your problems, realizing how u fail yourself and how you can change in yourself and with your own power.

Jacob writes the words but how do you compose in the band?
Musically, its different for every song,. Sometimes someone will come to practice with a completely written song, some other times we jam and practice and make something new and other times we have riffs that we don't know what to do with so we build on them until we can figure it out. You know we have stuff we haven't used yet that we've been working on for the past couple of years actually.

The previous albums are more global, this album is more personal ?
I don't necessarily think it's more personal, it is more direct. The lyrics aren't necessarily meant for the listener to know exactly what we are talking about. They're meant for you to read them and pull your own meanings out of them. In that respect they are more personal, but not directed to one person in particular.

Can you tell us about the creation of Deathwish and its plans? Hand how does it work with Epitaph?
Well Deathwish is Jake's label, it started when we did a split album with a band called Hell Child from Japan, and we decided to put it out ourselves and then Jake carried on with it and built the label. As for Deathwish and Epitaph working together, Deathwish did the vinyl version of 'You fail me'.

You have a punk background what do you think of its evolution?
The evolution of punk its weird cause its fragmented and gone in a few different directions. It seems there's more of a corporate industry interest at the moment which is strange to me. There's a lot of money involved and a lot of younger bands which are interested in making a career out of it rather than making music that they enjoy.

Which bands do like?
Bands that I love, you mean new or older bands? Bands that are together now, I really like Cursed, Coliseum, that's a hard question to answer cause there's so many bands out there. When you put me on the spot with a band question my mind always goes blank I'm sorry. (Laugh)

You've worked with Nine. How was this, how were the shows, have you got anything to say on them, any anecdotes?
It was great we love those guys they're an awesome band and the shows were awesome. The kids would watch them and not know what to think and they didn't know what to expect cause they were coming to see Converge. Funny anecdotes? Em we taught Benji and Robert how to play poker and its funny cause every time we see them now we take their money from them playing poker.

You've been in tour with Nine. How was this, how were the shows, have you got anything to say on them, any anecdotes?
It was great we love those guys they're an awesome band and the shows were awesome. The kids would watch them and not know what to think and they didn't know what to expect cause they were coming to see Converge. Funny anecdotes? Em we taught Benji and Robert how to play poker and its funny cause every time we see them now we take their money from them playing poker.

Can you say that Converge has softened its music, you fail me sounds more patterned than the previous albums, even if it is still crazy and what can you tell us about your musical evolution form album to album?
Well with 'You fail me' we definitely focused on songwriting than riff-writing, if that makes sense. We wanted to write cohesive songs that flowed together to make an album but at the same time take any song off the record and it could stand on its own. But on previous records everything fit in its place and if you took one of the songs away the record would not be as powerful. So 'you fail me' was a direct attempt to write cohesive songs instead of 30 riffs together in one song because it just gets boring.

You're on tour now, what are your plans for the future. Are you working on the next album, do you have any songs?
We're currently writing songs, we're gonna do some more touring. We haven't put a lot of work in the next record yet but were hoping to have enough songs recorded by the end of 2005.

What bands are you listening to now?
Well I always listened to Led Zeppelin, today I listened to Kiss, Robin Trower,... Oh man another band question (Laugh), all of us listen to old rock'n'roll Mc5, Stooges that sort of stuff.

Interview Alexis
Translation Kostas