Deadlock

author TL date 06/02/09

Those of you who are not acquainted with the German hybrid metallers in Deadlock, who fuse melodeath with techno, samples and clean female vocals, should probably be heading over to our reviews of their albums "Wolves" and "Manifesto" to find out what all the fuzz is about before reading this. Those who've been following our coverage will know who we're dealing with, and if you are among them, you may proceed to read what came of the chat we had with a bandmember before their supporting appearance at the show with The Haunted and All That Remains in Copenhagen this past Wednesday. We joined up with the Joe, who handles the screams and growls in the band, in the café area of Pumpehuset before doors, and here's what he had to tell us:

RF.net: Hello and thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. First off can you introduce yourself, your band and your music to the readers?
Joe: I'm Joe and I do the vocals for Deadlock and I guess Deadlock is pretty difficult to describe. The kind of music we play is maybe some kind of modern melodic death metal with lots of samples and experimental stuff that no one would really expect in normal metal music. We've been around for almost 11 years now and this is our first bigger tour.

RF.net: So how do you feel your career is going as a band right now? Where do you see yourself at, and where are you headed?
Joe: I guess when we started 11 years ago, we did so pretty lazily. We didn't play many shows, it was more like just hanging around with friends and playing in smaller places in Germany and having fun. Later on we came on Lifeforce Records and it at al started to become a little bit more professional, so at the moment we are in a place where we never expected to be, back when we started and just played to hang around and have fun. It's really fun to be on tour and play bigger concerts and the big summer festivals, so everything's going really well, and we will definetely keep running with it.

RF.net: How did you originally come up with the name "Deadlock"?
Joe: We were hanging around in our rehearsal room, which was actually my living room at my parent's house, and we were thinking about a bandname, and we are a vegan and straight edge band and something we work against is 'standing still' without thinking about anything, and "Deadlock" means a standstill, so we thought it sounded pretty cool and just decided to use it as the bandname.

RF.net: Can you tell us who the main influences are for your band?
Joe: Well it's always like a mirror of what we actually listen to. In the beginning it was more like the Hatebreed stuff or the Madball stuff, so the first demo tape was.. I don't know, NY hardcore maybe? And later on, all of us were listening to In Flames and all these bigger melodic death metal bands. So an album like wolves was pretty much like those bands. I could name Dark Tranquillity I guess, it sounds pretty much like that.. And later on we decided not to be afraid of trying something different, putting stuff in there which we privately listen to, like this hiphop part in "Manifesto" or whatever. So all the styles of music that we like to listen to and play pretty much influence the band.

RF.net: You mentioned that you are a vegan/straightedge band, and a lot of the lyrics, especially on "Manifesto", seem to suggest that you're not quite content with the relationship between man and nature. Did you consciously decide way back then, that this was going to be what you were going to be about as a band or did it just end up that way?
Joe: I think it's a good idea to write messages with your lyrics, because people who like your band will listen to them and read them and think about what you're saying, so we somehow try to use this music and our message as a weapon that way, at least on "Manifesto". The next album may not be a vegan album or whatever, because with "Manifesto" we made our point, we said what we think is important, that everyone should respect all living things and so, and after "Manifesto" there's nothing left to be said about that I think.

RF.net: About being vegan/straightedge, is this something that ever gives you trouble on tour? I mean there aren't that many vegetarian restaurants around in a place like Copenhagen for instance, so does this make finding something to eat while on tour difficult for you?
Joe: I don't think that it's a problem to us, because we've never felt like a part of a particular scene. When we started we weren't a part of the hardcore scene or something and there is no big crowd in our area, so there was almost no people who even knew or cared about the band. Maybe just us 5 guys who wanted to play - So we didn't care too much about being vegan/straightedge, metalcore or whatever.. There are bands that have this image and they should be allowed to, and there are metal bands that think that it has to be dark and that there can't be any fun in it, but we are just maybe five idiots and one girl who just like to party all the time and don't care. We were afraid before, thinking "What happens when we put a hiphop part in", or "What happens when we put this techno part in", but funny things happen when we play this techno part. People go crazy, they mosh and dance around and don't really recognize that it's a metal show they're at. In the beginning it was difficult because we had to think about whether it was good for the band or not to try these things out, but while there have been people complaining about, that's not something we concern ourselves with much anymore.

RF.net: I read on your website that your bassist left your band recently, so I just wanted to ask what made you and him split up?
Joe: Well he's actually more of the traditional metal guy you know. He's more into grindcore and such really hard stuff, and he didn't come clear with all these samples and the techno stuff, and for him it was almost one step forwards, when he wanted it to be one step backwards towards the traditional metal, so in the end we said that it was just better for him to leave the band. If you've seen our myspace we also have these pictures where we were having fun at the photo-shoot and dressed up like hippies, and he was the guy who said that this kind of thing was not for him. So when there were five people who wanted to do this and have fun with it and one guy who didn't, he just said that it was basically OK for him to break it off at that point, because it'd be better for both parts.. And we already found a new guy so..

RF.net: Is he playing with you tonight then?

Joe: No on the tour it's Bartosz from Fear My Thoughts, because he'd already planned holidays and so to come and help us out, and we thought that it just wasn't fair to tell him that we'd rather want to play with our new man instead. We will start playing with our new bass player as soon as we are done with this tour though.

RF.net: So I notice you're currently wearing an All That Remains shirt - Is that a coincidence, or are you a personal fan of them, and how did it come to be that you got on the tour with them?
Joe: Well this actually happened just because I was freezing outside, but I like this band. To be honest I like The Haunted much more though, because they are really my favorite band in this part of metal music - It's maybe only Lamb Of God that I like more. I didn't expect this tour to be this big, because we didn't know what to expect from All That Remains, but every show has been sold out so far almost. In Germany pretty much everywhere was sold out, and the same goes for Sweden, except maybe for Stockholm where no one seemed to know that we were playing.

RF.net: That was all the questions I had for you, so here in the end I'll just leave you the room if you want to shout something out to the readers.
Joe: I just want to thank the readers for reading this and I want to thank RF.net for your time, and then hopefully we'll all see each other on another tour!

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