| Oblivion Interview |
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A_LIFE [DIVIDED] Support the Underground After a three-year pause, the modern-rock commanders from Munich, A_liFe [DIVIDED], still know how to totally win you over with their second work “Far,” appearing in February, and set off true fireworks of intelligent, atmospheric songwriting combined with bombastic feel-good choruses. Unfortunately the band must once again undertake the production as well as the marketing of the album, since despite the enthusiastic reaction towards the debute album “Virtualized,” they couldn’t manage to find a record company that would sign them under contract. In light of this circumstance, the new and absolutely proffessional end product is amazing, and definitey knows how to win you over production-wise, visually, and qualitatively. Oblivion speaks with singer Jürgen Plangger about the past, present, and future of A_liFe [DIVIDED]… Jürgen, first of all, congratulations on your new album. How did it go for you guys during the time between “Virtualized” and “Far,” because in light of the consistently positive reactions that your debut was able to reap in online magazines and in heavy-metal press [among others ALD finds themselves on a RockHard “Unheard Of” CD], have you been hoping for a response from various labels? No, to be honest we didn’t get our hopes up. We released our debut album alone, without any record company. For us it was just important to reach as many people as possible without support. In the meantime we’ve played about 50 concerts, locally and abroad, we’ve been featured on various samplers, and we’ve devoted ourselves to the songwriting for “Far.” As far as I know you’ve sent promos for “Far” to the music industry in the past year. How are they receiving the new, highly professional submissions? With the same old friendly empty phrases? Unlike with our debut album, we were actually getting some concrete proposals with “Far”, all of which were out of the question for us, since what they were offering as far as promotion and marketing was only slightly more than what we could accomplish ourselves. If what is demanded from us in return isn’t relational to the label’s performance, then we’d rather do it ourselves. We’re not just a traditional metal band that can get along with just marketing, but we require a little bit more, and that of course costs accordingly. In light of the current market conditions it’s obviously a big risk to establish a newcomer band for the masses. But risk, to a certain extent, simply goes with this business, in my opinion. First of all, a fundamental difference from “Virtualized” is with audio improvement in the ways of production. Thanks. You keep learning more and more about it over the years, and we took quite a lot of time for “Far.” I think the guitars alone were re-recorded five times all together. Other than that we tried not to repeat the mistakes that we were making with “Virtualized” and we went into a real mastering studio for the mastering. …but also the songwriting seems to have matured. Your composition acts more balanced and complex, less oriented on superficial catchiness. Accordingly “Far” is more difficult to access than “Virtualized,” however that way it keeps opening up new facets and temperaments, for a clearly more long-term effect. To what extent is this step deliberate, or does this slight change of course merely reflect a completely natural, spontaneous development? It’s exactly like that. Before we didn’t have any concrete thoughts about it. We’re not the band that shuts ourselves in the practice room two months before the studio deadline and writes new songs. With us it lasts the entire time. So you could say that we’ve been writing for the record for two years. So we delayed the arrangements a little, because at some point it’s no fun anymore to always write according to the same model. I wouldn’t say that we’re bigger risk-takers than three years ago, but we place more value on definitive arrangements. Two songs from the new disc [“Friends” and “The Persistence of Memory”] are a little out of the ordinary, since they are primarily on the electric side and use a few industrial sounds as well. This direction wasn’t very surprising, but where did the idea come from, especially as you noticeably held back the songs’ degree of heaviness overall (aside from the specifically intermittent shouts.) We actually have the electronic elements in almost every song, in these two they’re just a bit more distinct. We always try to show the wide variety of our sound as much as possible. It makes it more exciting for us. As far as the degree of hardness you’re right, the speed of the songs, aside from a few exceptions, gets slower. The record is definitely more atmospheric than “Virtualized.” Your lyrics aren’t necessarily suited for a jester’s speech at a carnival. Is your melancholy, in part outright pessimistic and critical direction a part of the band’s concept? Ultimately lyrics about isolation and failure in relationships go better with your profound sound than the praising of nose-pickers. Or: in what way does your text relate to the recent direction of your music? Good question…maybe the negative direction is really bound to the music. Because the song are always made certain first. Other than that, for me the melancholy side has more depth and power. I think there’s only one level of human high, and countless lows if it’s not going well for you. It can always go further down, without seeing any end. That doesn’t mean that things are always going badly for me, just the opposite. Most of the time things are actually really good. But somehow the bad days salvage a huge inspiration. Jürgen, what hopes do you hold for the future of the band? Very simply we hope that we can spark more people’s interest with our new record, we’ll be playing live a lot and who knows, maybe someday the time will come when we conduct it so professionally that we’ll be able to make a living from it. And finally: what are the chances that Bavarians or Franconians will be able to admire you live again? Right now we’re in the booking phase for the festival season and doing our best. A few dates in the north will definitely spring up. It’s best to check the live dates on our homepage every now and then. |