Interview с Xandria : DARKSIDE.ru

“India” is Xandria’s third album in three years, which is an extraordinary thing nowadays, as most of the bands spend at least two years on each album. How do you manage to work so fast and still retain high quality of the songs?

I hope it doesn’t sound arrogant in any way if I say we’re very creative. (laughs) We can’t spend a single minute without writing something, and so there was no need to hurry ourselves. It was a very productive time because of producer Jose Alvarez-Brill. He’s just brilliant, so it was no problem to bring on the third album so quickly.

It’s the second time you’re working with Jose in a studio in Belgium. Why did you choose this particular place and person to record with? Aren’t there any good studios in Germany?

Well, Belgium is not that far away from Germany. (laughs) We only have to ride for about two hours by car, so it’s not that far away from us. Now we chose that producer because we had worked together on the “Ravenheart” album, but then I think it was the record label that introduced us to him. It was a great idea, and we found out that we could work together very good. We’re recording in Belgium because it’s his studio, and he’s sitting there because of the taxes in Germany. (laughs) So we have to ride for two hours to get there!

On this album you used the services of Filmorchester Babelsberg. How was it like working with such a big and famous orchestra? And how do you reproduce orchestral parts live?

I hope that Filmorchester Babelsberg is very proud that they could record a song for Xandria! (everybody laughs) Well, it was just great and I would have loved to be there when the orchestra was being recorded. But I was at home very sick, so the boys had to tell me how it was, and they were just so impressed by this recording. As to live shows, that’s quite a problem. At the moment we’re rehearsing our asses off (laughs) to make a good show on stage, but it will be quite hard. Some melodies in some parts will be coming from a synthesizer or sequencer, I think that’s OK, most of the bands in our genre are doing this, and some parts… (laughs) The people will have to imagine them! But I think we rock as hell live, so I hope people won’t mind.

In addition to the orchestra, you have a variety of guest musicians on the album, for instance, there are people from the bands Lyriel and Sceal Eile. How did it happen that they took part in the recording of “India”? Are they friends of yours?

Mmm, I think now they are, especially the guys and girls from Lyriel. Jessica Thierjung, the singer who made “Like A Rose On The Grave Of Love” with me, is so talented, so gifted, I just love her voice, and she is such a cute girl. I haven’t met the guys from Sceal Eile, this was actually quite a funny story. Our producer had a conversation while drinking loads of alcohol (laughs), it was somewhere in Germany, and he saw a poster of this band in the pub he was in. And he thought, “Well, we wanted to make this Irish folk thing, maybe I should call them.” He wrote down the name of this band and called them, and so they recorded this song for us. (laughs) I have never met them, and it’s really sad. I hope to meet them one day. And Lyriel – I just love them. You have to look out for this band, they are great.

Now it’s time to discuss the album title: why did you name the record “India”? Is anybody in the band fascinated by the Oriental culture or music?

There is a song called “India” on the album, and Marco Heubaum, who is our main songwriter, is very fascinated by these Indian music elements. He wanted to try that out, and we all loved it. We had never thought about doing something like that, but it sounds great and it’s fun to do on stage. Originally we wanted to have a concept for this album, but it didn’t work out, so we have just two songs from it (laughs) – “India” and “Return To India”. Their meaning is that if you’re looking for something and trying to reach something, you don’t necessarily have to reach what you wanted to, but on the way to it you may find something else that is great and important for you. Just like Columbus wanted to find the western way to India and found America. It was not really India, but it was great for him to find it. Thus, the title of the album is from the time that we had a concept of something, but we haven’t got a concept in our music anymore, so just forget about what I said in the past few minutes. (laughs)

The first two albums had red covers, but on the new one the color is blue. What made you change the style of artwork so dramatically?

Well, you’re the first ones to say that, I’ve never heard that before. But you’re right! Maybe this sounds a bit weird, but I think “India” is not as femal

e as the first two albums were. “Kill The Sun” (2003) and “Ravenheart” are both girlish albums (laughs) in a positive way, and “India” is more masculine. It’s cooler and harder, you know. So it’s blue.

You now have a new bass player Nils, who, as far as we understand, also happens to be your husband. Did you first get married, and then he joined the band, or vice versa?

Oh no, we married 1.5 months ago, in August this year.

Our congratulations!

Oh, thank you! (laughs) I knew him personally for some years before, because I supported his band in Bielefeld, our hometown, by playing piano and singing a bit. I was a young girl then. (laughs) Then I met him again, when we were looking for a new bass player. Our last bass player (Roland Krueger) left us for his job, because he couldn’t do this band and his job at the same time. Now I’m very glad, because I met my future husband again, and we would have never met if we hadn’t been looking for a bass player. (laughs) It was love at first sight, and now we’re married! What can I say? He’s just the greatest kind of man I can ever imagine!

Nils contributed a lot to the music and lyrics on the new album, while previously it was you and Marco who wrote most of the songs. How do you work on songs nowadays? Do you get together and jam, or does each of the composers work on his ideas separately?

We’ve got the main songwriter Marco, but I’m writing a lot and Nils is writing a lot. Mostly we sit at home and try out what we can do. The next step is to call me, because it’s quite important how the vocal lines sound like. Then it’s coming to the rehearsal room, and we try out how it sounds with the band. But sometimes we try things out in the studio when we haven’t even played them before. (laughs) We’re trying more and more to jam, because it’s a completely different way to work as a band, and I like it more to jam. It’s not like one guy had an idea, and then he calls the band to work on it. In the future we will try to jam even more.

Some of the songs on the “Ravenheart” album were inspired by movies, for instance, “Eversleeping” by “The Lord Of The Rings” and “Some Like It Cold” by the James Bond series. Did any movie inspire any song from the new album?

Oh, this is a good question! Maybe we should ask Marco! (laughs) I don’t know exactly about his songs. I think “Like A Rose On The Grave Of Love” is a bit inspired by the “Braveheart” soundtrack. But I don’t know about any other songs whether they are inspired by other movies or soundtracks. Probably they are, because Marco is a movie freak. (laughs) He’s just sitting in front of his TV or cinema and just listening to music. He always tries to write like soundtrack music.

Are most of your songs autobiographical, or do you more often write about other people or about fictional events?

Oh, this is different from song to song. Normally I am writing my lyrics about personal emotions and situations, about what I have experienced, but sometimes it’s written as if somebody else would have lived that. Marco is a bit of a storyteller, he is writing tales or fairytales, but you can’t write lyrics without putting some of your personality into it. I think every lyric is quite personal. As to Nils… I think this is very impressive, because he is writing lyrics while thinking so much whether they fit the song. He tries to feel what the music tells, and then he writes his lyrics. When I am writing lyrics, it’s not necessary that I try to express exactly what the music means. Every one of us has different ways to deal with that.

Your vocals are changing on every album, for instance, on “India” some reviewers noted similarities with Kate Bush…

(in a surprised voice) Kate Bush? Oh my goodness!

Do you think it’s incorrect?

OK, maybe you’re gonna beat me up if I tell you now, but I don’t know any song of Kate Bush, I just have a faraway idea of what she might sound like. (everybody laughs) I’m just too young to know her, I guess. I always find it funny when someone says, “Your voice sounds like…” But I don’t want to sound like anybody else actually. (laughs) It’s funny when someone comes to you and says, “You look like Brad Pitt,” and you say, “Wow, OK, I have never tried to do so, but thanks.” Well, Kate Bush – why not?

At least nobody compares you with Tarja Turunen anymore!

Hey, that’s good too! I don’t mind, she’s got a beautiful voice, I love Nightwish, but I think I really do not do any opera singing.

By the way, do you have to follow any restrictions when you are on tour to keep your voice in good condition? We read in some magazi

ne that you drink whiskey and smoke a lot. Doesn’t it have any effect on your vocals?

(cracks) This is past and gone, you assholes!!! I stopped smoking three weeks ago, and but you made me think about smoking again! It’s true, the history of my voice is the following: I took classical opera singing lessons for about four years, and I stopped them because I tried to sing a jazz song, and something like (imitates a Tarja-wannabe) “aaaahhh” came out of my mouth. It was so disgusting, I didn’t wand to sound like that, I didn’t want to sound like Tarja Turunen, I wanted to sound like Lisa. So I stopped taking opera singing lessons and smoked a lot and drank loads of whiskey. It worked! (laughs) I couldn’t have sung opera even if I wanted, and now it’s a bit more dusty and smoky. But I stopped smoking a few weeks ago, because I found out it’s not good for my health, and it’s not good for my voice. Now for one or two weeks my voice has been getting free and I have much more breath to work with. I hope my voice will stay what it is, but I love to change a lot. Hey, why shouldn’t we change?

Not much is known about early days of Xandria. When did you join the band, and how did Marco “discover” you?

(laughs) Hey, did Marco “discover” me?

But you said it yourself in a few previous interviews!

Yeah! It’s right, but it sounds as if I was a little girl. (cracks) OK, it was like that. I joined the band in the year 2000. Marco saw me on stage when I was doing some kind of a go-go girl for a band I knew. I was just dancing on stage for this other band. He came to me and said, “Hey, I heard you sing very well, why don’t you come to a rehearsal and try out if you want to sing for my band.” This was at a moment when nobody knew Xandria. I said, “Well, OK, sure,” but I didn’t want to go there, I just wanted to go away and wanted him to go away, because I didn’t want to think of anything like that. Then I met him again, and he said, “Hey, you wanted to come to a rehearsal, so why don’t you come?” I said, “Yes, OK,” and I nodded, but I didn’t want to come there. So he forced me, because he found out my telephone number and called me every time. (laughs) He was just annoying me every day until I said, “OK, I’m going to do this rehearsal with you.” After this rehearsal I was so keen on singing for Xandria, but he said, “Well, I have to think about it, I don’t know yet…” (everybody laughs) We did three rehearsals, and on my mother’s birthday, on the 29th October 2000, Marco called me and said, “Have a good time tomorrow evening!” I said, “Yes, but why?” And he answered, “Because your first band rehearsal is tomorrow.” I was like screaming out, “Wow!!! Wow!!! That’s great!” I bought some bottles of Prosecco and wine and I don’t know what, and we were drinking a lot and having much fun. I think it was a good decision!

Yes, indeed. (everybody laughs) What do you think about Xandria’s early demos that they did before you joined the band? Is it still possible to get them anywhere?

It’s possible to get them, but I wouldn’t do it if I was normal. (cracks) Some day I might say it’s some kind of cult, but at the moment I’ll just say they’re interesting, you know. Interesting! If somebody really wants to hear THAT, he should try to contact Marco at marco@xandria.de, and he will probably send the stuff to anyone interested.

As far as we understood from the lyrics of the first album, in the beginning of Xandria Marco was your boyfriend. How did you manage to go separate ways personally and still remain in the same band?

Well, it’s quite simple – we hate each other and we don’t talk with each other! (laughs) Sometimes it was hard, but it’s like with every friendship after a relationship. Friendship is possible and is beautiful and great after a relationship, if you push yourself to meet the other one again and again. If you have a possibility to stay away from that person, you will never have friendship, because you’ll never learn to look each other into the eyes. We had to do it because we were in one band, there were three or four difficult months, and then it worked out very well. At the moment we’re best friends. Everyone is changing a lot – he’s got a girlfriend and I’m married. I think on some days we’re gonna be best friends, and in some moments we’re gonna hate each other, that’s why we are alive.

In the beginning Marco was the main songwriter, but already on “Ravenheart” you wrote nearly as much as him. When did you start to write, and do you remember the very first song you wrote?

I started writing songs when I was 13 years old. Some people tell me this is quite early to write songs, but I tried to write since I was 11 and it didn’t work out, so I think two years for my first song

is quite a long time. My first song – I know how to play it, and I do it sometimes just to laugh at myself. As I told you before, I was 13, and the song dealt with a lost relationship and a broken heart, thought I never kissed a boy when I was 13. (laughs) I was in a Catholic school! (cracks) It was quite a simple song, but I’m proud of it, and I’m never going to forget it. At the moment I’m writing a lot, three or four songs a month.

There is a very popular belief that a poet needs to be hungry to create something truly outstanding. Do you share this belief? And when do you write most – when you are happy or when you are sad?

(sighs) The writing process is more satisfying when you’re sad, because you can lay all your feelings and emotions into it, and you can just feel all these words. It’s like a crescendo. And if you’re very happy and very glad, and if you’re trying to write something, these things may be disturbing you. You feel like, “Hey, I want to hug everybody, everybody is beautiful and everything is beautiful!” And then you think, “Hey, I’m the singer of a gothic band! Maybe I should write something sad because nobody wants to hear me singing that the sun is shining and everything is great.” (everybody laughs) Such things may be disturbing, and you may not have the urge to do something unbelievably great. You need the feeling of greatness to feel comfortable with writing. This is why most of the musicians I know want to stand in the middle of every stage and just produce themselves. It doesn’t work with the small lucky things you can write on. I could write songs about butterflies, because sometimes I think they’re really cute. But it doesn’t really fit the music we’re playing.

Who is Perry Haans, to whom the first album is dedicated?

This is Marco’s uncle whom I knew personally from the time I was together with Marco. This is a very sad story. He was a great man and a great father for Marco’s niece. His job was to care for animals in the zoo, and he suddenly wanted to move to the Netherlands from Germany, so he went there before his wife and daughter to find a flat and everything. He started to work there, but two weeks before his family was to follow him to the Netherlands, he was killed by a furious elephant. This might sound somewhat weird, when I first heard it – and I knew him and liked him very much – I didn’t know if I should cry or laugh about it, but it’s really not so beautiful to be trampled down by an elephant. This happened during the recording of “Kill The Sun”, and Marco called every one of us and asked if it was OK to dedicate this album to Perry. And everybody was fine with that, because it’s dramatic for anybody to lose someone you love this way. It happened so suddenly, it’s not like when somebody is ill and you know that he hasn’t got a long time to live anymore. It’s not fine either, but you can imagine what happens, and then you’re not so surprised. But this was so surprising and so sudden, that we were all shocked.

What do you now think about the first album? How much would you change it, if you had a chance to do so?

(laughs) I wouldn’t change anything on the album, even though there are many things we could now do better. But that’s what we do when we have the possibility to play songs from the first album live. I think live they do change, and they have changed already, we do it at every rehearsal. But on the album I wouldn’t change anything, although my voice is very thin and some guitars are a bit funny. (laughs) It’s OK, I like this album, because it’s our first one. It’s like your first kiss or your first time to have sex. I’m sure your first kiss or your first sex wasn’t that great, but you don’t want to change it, do you?

(everybody laughs) You’re correct! Speaking about live activity – last year you played in South Korea, which is a really exotic place for a metal band. How did it happen that you went there, and what are your impressions from the show and the country?

I think it was one of the greatest things I did in my life, not in my musical career, but in all of my life. I don’t exactly know how we came there, and I didn’t ask, because you don’t ask why somebody wants to give you one million dollars or introduce you to your star. It was like (in an extremely enthusiastic voice), “Hey, we’re going to South Korea!!! Hey!” It was very impressive. The only bad thing was that we had a feeling of not walking around, but rather swimming, because the air there was so wet. Breathing was like drinking. We swam around in South Korea (laughs), but the people there were just great, and we had some great shows there. The culture was very interesting, we looked at some kind of palace from the medieval times there, it was just impressive. Even in German I wouldn’t find the right words to describe

that.

What do you personally prefer – playing live or working in the studio?

Oh, this is hard to answer. Some months ago I would have said “working in the studio”, because playing live is not that great for me, I have a stage fright. My boys always threaten to slay me (laughs), that’s why I get on stage. But the “India” production time was very hard for me. Some songs seem to come out of my throat like honey, and some songs… they are not friends. (laughs) It’s weird, but I don’t know how to describe it. On “India” there were so many songs I didn’t get warm with, so I had to work a lot with my voice, and it was not only fun. Then again, we had so many great gigs all around Europe and in South Korea, so I found out that when I’m on stage and have no chance to get back where nobody sees me, I can enjoy it. After I have sung three or four songs, I don’t want to come down anymore. But every gig has a beginning, and every beginning is hard for me. (laughs)

You once said that having fans of your music is the greatest thing in the world. But how much are you vulnerable to criticism? If somebody writes in the forum on your official website that he didn’t like this song or that song, some guitar solo or something else, does that upset you?

When we had our first album out, it was hard to read something like that. But now it’s really OK, because there will never be a day when everybody likes us. It also some kind of compliment when somebody writes, “Hey, I don’t like this album as much as I do like “Ravenheart” or “Kill The Sun.” There’s a compliment in it, because he says, “Hey, once I liked you,” and that means that there’s something in my life I did that impressed this guy. And that’s good. You need power in yourself to just stand there and say, “Hey, I’m proud of what I’m doing,” because there will always be people who don’t like it. And that’s OK with me. What really hurts me personally is when somebody writes that I’m ugly. There are many people who write that I’m fat, and I’m NOT fat. Guys, I’m not fat! I’m not very thin, but I’m a woman and not a girl! These are things that really hurt. You can’t go there and say, “Hey, look at yourself, you’ve got spots in your face,” because they don’t send a picture along. (everybody laughs) So these things are not so nice. But I think with every month and every year in this band I’m going to grow a bit, and maybe one day I’ll laugh about the problems I have now. If you’re a woman, you have to work a lot, and it’s not only the voice. What we’re selling is not only our music, it’s so much of an image and outer appearance. It’s sometimes quite hard to realize that I’m not able to go shopping in a jogging suit anymore, even if I just want to buy a liter of milk. (laughs) I have to put my make-up on and do my hair and dress myself stylish just to by a Coke. This is quite hard, and I think most of the people don’t imagine that we’re just human beings. Though we never said something else, I never said I’m a princess, I never said I’m a beautiful woman. I said I’m a singer, and if I had wanted to become a model or an actress I would have become an actress and not a singer. I’m here because I sing. But you know, life is like that, c’est la vie.

In the song “”Who We Are” you sing, “Who we are and who we want to be is not the same all the time.” How much are you personally different from what you want to be?

That’s the song that deals with real life. It’s not about these great problems of human being, it’s just like, “Hey, I’m a girl, and if I’m standing in front of the mirror, I’m not saying that I’m totally perfect. I might say that I have bad hair or something.” (laughs) I’ve never told anybody before, and I hope you know how delicate this theme is… This song partly deals with my relationship with Nils, he knows about that. Sometimes you have one of these days when you’re getting up and you’re not satisfied with yourself, and then you have a conversation or a conflict with your partner, and everything you want to say is, “Hey, I don’t feel good, I feel like I’m ugly and disgusting, I feel like I can’t reach anything in my life, and I don’t know want to do.” But you can’t say so, because everyone is too proud, and you’re talking like, “Hey, you asshole, get out of my way!” I try very hard to cover this unsure part of myself, and then we’re getting into a conflict, because it’s normal that he won’t understand what I mean. I didn’t tell him, “Hey, I feel messy today,” and there’s gonna be misunderstanding every time you do this. It’s very important to beware of these situations and always be fair with your partner and your friends. You should rather tell them, “Hey, I feel messy today, please take care of me,” forget about your damn pride and just say what you mean. This is the reason why the ending of the song is, “I love him,” because this is the thing that I really wanted to say. This is what I really want to say when I see my husband, not, “Hey, the floor in the bathroom is wet, because you can’t wash yourself the right way, asshole!” (everybody laughs) I’m sure everybody knows these situations in a partnership or in a friendship, when you don’t say what you really want to say.

Special thanks to Art Music Group for arranging this interview

Ksenia “Wölfin” Khorina, Roman “Maniac” Patrashov
October 2, 2005
28 ноя 2005 the End

Xandria

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