UN: First off, I’m curious to ask how the deal with Century Media came about. Your last album was released in North America by Abacus and even though the two labels are linked together, Century Media is still quite a step up. Are you guys excited to call the label home?

Tom: Well, after we recorded ENDORSED BY HATE and got it out on Alveran Records we played a lot of shows in support of this album. We played everywhere, small club shows to 10000+ festivals like the With Full Force Festival. So, a lot of people talked about us as a live band and we also got good reviews for EBH. Now, the first bigger labels recognised us. Century Media was one of them. We did meet Robert, Melanie and the others a few times and soon decided to sign a contract with them. It was the normal way and we signed a worldwide deal, including the USA of course. EBH was released through Abacus because it was only a re release they kindly put out in the US!

UN: When Worlds Collide is definitely a step forward for the band. Did you guys have any specific goals going into the recording of the album? Was there anything about Endorsed by Hate that you wanted to leave behind, or do you guys really not think in those terms?

Tom: Yes we had the goal to make a better album than EBH was! We wanted to do a step forward with the new album. We didn’t start writing new songs with a plan how they have to sound; we just all knew that we have to do it better than on the last album. We always thought that way. We always want more and i think that’s the way it should be. Every band should try to get better and better with every album and I think we really achieved that with WWC! At the time we wrote EBH we had to deal with a lot of trouble and ignorance as a band. So we just wrote rough, aggressive, brutal and simple songs. EBH is just a piece of anger and hate because that was how we felt at the time. And we achieved so much with this album. We are still very pissed and a lot of stuff still makes us very angry, but as we wrote WWC we were in a better condition and focused much more on the music. We wanted something better and something of higher musical quality than the simple aggression on EBH!

UN: I was curious to ask how the album artwork ties into the album name. The artwork is amazing and quite different for this style of music. I think the visual style for a lot of bands is becoming a bit cliché, so this art definitely stands out.

Tom: Originally we wanted flowers and some naked women ha ha! No, we had some offers from other. Things with a lot of blood, fallen angels, dark stuff. But we didn’t want this typical stuff, we wanted something new and fresh. We all like the MASTODON artwork and also the things Paul did for GODFLESH so we asked him to do the cover, and luckily he did it! You’re right, I also think the artwork stands out from the rest in this genre, we wanted something light and colourful. We talked with Paul about some general things, like that we wanted something light and something with an animal and then he started working. To me think the artwork shows the power of nature and the universe and the two colliding worlds in the background is the link to the title. To me the cover shows some coldness and infinity, but everybody should make his own thoughts about the cover.

UN: The new album to my ears seems to not only be the most diverse yet from the band, but also has many moments that are much more classic metal solos. The guitar solos are particularly amazing in my eyes. Do you think it was important to expand the sound of the band? Metalcore is becoming a ridiculously flooded genre, and the added diversity definitely helps distance you guys from the rest of the genre.

Tom: Yes I think so. But mainly we changed a bit because we don’t like to do things again and again. On EBH we wanted simple and brutal songs. So that was it. Now we wanted more complexity and diversity. And it was the first time our new guitarist Riechtor was part of the songwriting, and he came with all these beautiful solos. But I think in the back of our head we also had the wish to do something new, something different than all the other bands in our genre. We wanted the album to sound fresh and varied and we wanted that people hear how much work and thoughts we put into the new songs.

UN: You guys have some fairly diverse guests on the new album. I was curious to ask how each person became involved. Was it just a matter of asking people who you wanted to work with? It must have been cool working with two legends from Agnostic Front and Napalm Death.

Tom: I mean Barney as well as Roger are both some kind of heroes for us. We all started with bands like NAPALM DEATH or AGNOSTIC FRONT. So, it was an honour for us to have them on the album. We wanted to have Roger on EBH but it didn’t work out, so we tried it again. We knew Roger already for some time, because a good friend of us knows him since many years. This friend is a very good tattoo artist (www.slamstattoo.de) and every time AF were in Europe Roger tried to visit him and as we always hung around in his tattoo shop we knew Roger. Ok, what was the question ha ha! No, we went to Bochum were AF played a show, and they played this show with NAPALM DEATH. So, we thought: Let’s ask Barney because he would be great too! So we took them both to a studio and they sang their part! Another guest on the record is Mikkel from MERCENARY. We’ve seen them play live once in Berlin and we all liked what we saw! We also liked their latest album. So we recorded in Denmark and still were looking for someone who is able to do all the keyboard stuff on the record. Because MERCENARY are from Denmark, their keyboard player Morten was the first who came to our minds. And he said he could also bring his brother Mikkel. We really love his voice, so we forced him to sing ha ha! He wanted to do it and it sounds great. Those two are really nice persons, so we had fun with them in the studio!

UN: One influence I seem to pick up on, especially in the guitar solos and the acoustic guitar parts, is Metallica. Would you say that they were an influence on the band at all? It’s not an overt influence though.

Tom: Yes of course. METALLICA was THE band for all of us! We all inhaled each and every album of them until they released LOAD ha ha. This band is the best thing when it comes to metal. We all love them! And especially Riechtor listens to METALLICA the whole day and is heavy influenced by Kirk Hammet. I also think you can hear that influence in the solos and the acoustic parts and that is nothing more than a big compliment for us and especially for Riechtor! METALLICA is an idol for us as a band in general. All they have achieved and all the great and timeless songs they’ve created. There will never be a band that can catch up with them.

UN: Metalcore definitely seems to have been born in Europe with many bands playing this style for quite sometime now. Does it seem weird to you that the style has become so popular in the US right now? Obviously the most successful bands could be considered a bit safe, but I must admit I’d rather see people listening to this then nu-metal.

Tom: No it doesn’t seem strange to me, because bands like KILLSWITCH ENGAGE or UNEARTH are doing this stuff also for a long time now. It makes me proud that a whole genre started here, and especially in Germany, and we were part of it from the beginning and it’s so good to see that it is popular in the US. Though it’s still very hard for European bands to get noticed in the USA, but I believe that this will change soon! I mean in Europe this metalcore thing is also very big and gets bigger everyday! As we started we played shows in front of 80 people now there are shows with 800 or even 10000 on a big festival. I feel very happy because of this and I think people wanted something new.

UN: When Worlds Collide will probably be the most easily available album yet in North America for the band. Is this going to be the album that you guys really try and make a name for yourselves over here? Do you guys have any touring plans yet for the US?

Tom: Yes we wanted to. We try to go to the USA now for years but all offers we got so far were not really serious. We now work with Kenmore Agency and they already offered us some very good tours but sadly we had to decline them all because it didn’t fit in out schedule. But we’ll keep on trying and Kenmore really does a great job for us. We have to go to the USA to promote the album, because we want the album to sell good there. Hopefully we will manage it to come this year!