A: Hi there! How are the reactions to Miss-Match in the meantime?

L: In the meantime its been great, I think that people were very surprised of the album, but to us it was a logical progression, a lot of the more jazz-like material that we had before just grew from a small amount to a much larger ingredient of our music, the new album just has much more of that,

A: Was that something that happened, or was it planned before?

L: We did have an intention on making an album which will showcase more of what the band is capable of, but we wanted to be more then just a metal band that does unexpected music, Right now, were kind of testing the water, trying different stuff,

A: In what ways is your bass playing influenced by the changes in the music?

L: Well, I like to play much more based on tone, then just technique, I don’t play in the usual Bass guitar fashion, I'm not exactly part of the rhythm section, I'm more of the glue between the parts.

A: Tell us about the recording process on the album.

L: Chris writes most of the basis for the music, and then we kind of break things up and work on them, then we add up the part and decided on which bit goes with what, unlike many bands, we cant really write during the touring, so we do most of the album on each one's lap tops, which isn’t easy, but we really cant do anything during tours, just not enough time.

A: Your songs are very complex; does that make the creation process more difficult?

L: Certainly, the complexity demands it, we usually write down a certain tune, and then decide on speeding it up, that the way I learn by bad parts, I start out by playing them quite slower, and then speed them up until I get them right.
But we don’t write simpler songs just to make life easy for us; on the contrary, we like to stretch our limits, take things as far as they can be taken,

A: What were your influences when creating such complex music?

L: I started out with listening to such stuff as Faith No More and Primus, and only then got into more jazz, and more complex stuff, Fusion and such, but that was an effort of me to try and get better as a musician, I just used to sit around and play with these bands,
It was mostly out of a need to understand how these things were made, how this music was made.

A: Do you try to maintain the sam3 amount of precision when doing a live show?

L: We try to do things as tight as possible on stage, but if we sacrifice some of that precision? Definitely, you cant just sit around and play things to the note, it would be pointless, we try to get thongs right which every songs, but the live set just takes a lot of the sterility of the studio element, its much more interactive, much rawer,
I think that the energy when playing live is much more important then trying to nail every note, it’s a matter of seeing the forest from the trees.
Of course its highly technical material and it's not easy to perform live, but even if I wanted to, you can't just stand around when doing this kind music!

A: You worked with Mike Patton in the past; do you still use him, for advice or otherwise?

L: We didn’t really sit with him in the writing process, even the album we did with him was already written when he came in and sang, but we have a lot of respect for him, and we do ask him from time to time, we respect his advice, I mean, he's an artist that achieved success without sacrificing his integrity, and that's something that we all respect, so there's a lot of mutual respect between us,
In any case, none of us wants to be labeled as a one-genre band, and Mike did varied things, I mean, I enjoy things like Country music, and Bjork, and that's one of the best things in the band,
We really don’t suppress any idea, or genre, if there's something we like, we'll put it into the music, even if it isn’t labeled as something we would do as a band.


A: What are your feelings regarding the band's growing success?

L: It's strange, everything is much more stable, but we get much more people interested and being into the band,
When we started out we felt that people were somewhat restrained towards is, there's something like that when you start out, that people will think that this may be a one-off album, and don’t like to get too much into it, but now, when people understand that we're a proper band, and we'll continue to release albums, they are less apprehensive about us,
We can feel it in our shoes, a lot more people; it's difficult of course, but rewarding at the same time.

A: The cover of the new album is very strange, and packed with details, who did it, and what does it mean?

L: A guy called Brian, who's also something of our super roadie, I met in NY, were we both attended art school, and we had this immediate connection, we actually gave the name to the Irony Is A Dead Scene EP,
We started talking about this album, and he kind of thought it up,
It kind of represents something which is wrong, dysfunctional, it contains many things you'd recognize, but in a wrong, unrecognized function and connection, its more general, holistic, not a clear cut cover that you can immediately recognize, we actually wanted every one who sees the cover, to take see something of his own, we wanted anyone who listens to the album to understand something else of it, and I think he did a great job with it.

A: You talked in the past about using more electronic elements in the music; did you do that with the new album?

L: Yea, we did, we always were into such bands as Ministry, or Apex Twin, so it seemed natural for us to use such elements in our music, and since we write most of our music using lap tops, it was quite easy to use them to try out these electronic sounds,
One of the great things a band such as Radiohead did, was to use electronic elements to cerate great albums, they used the right amount and did great things with it.

A: What your take on the live shows that you do?

L: Well, we're starting to pick up more in Europe, the only country we I feel there's still some reservations about is in Germany, thy are much more into traditional metal there, power metal and such, and they seems to have some difficulty in getting into us, even tough some of our live shows there were great, we do very well in the states, and in the UK, were they really like our kind of music, Italy is also very good for us, we did some great shows with bands such as System Of A down and Mr. Bungle, so we had some great chances to learn from these people.

A: Any bands you'd really like to tour with?

L: I would like to tour with NIN and Tool, maybe, so we can also pic their brains some, its great to see these bands, to understand what do they do right,

A: What are your plans for the future?

L: We'll keep on going, as long as its fun, as long as its interesting, we'll keep on going.


Alon Miasnikov

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