Interview with Micha of IN MITRA MEDUSA INRI

IN MITRA MEDUSA INRI – a band that is worth it to listen up to. Now, they are releasing their new album ‘Kalte Farben’ (cold colors). In this regards, I talked to Micha about the new record, religion and friends.

Your band already exists for a couple of years. Now, your new record is going to be released. What do you hope for?
First of all, we hope to reach a big audience of people with it. We really composed beautiful songs that are worth it to be heard. On the other hand, we hope our “old fans” will remain true to us and will keep track on our development. The formation of the record wasn’t really easy, so we’re really happy that we finally got it done after two years. It wasn’t an easy work.

Reading former reviews of your new CD, you can see that it’s going to be a big success. Did you think the reactions are going to be that good?
No, not at all! Especially not because our last CD was really different from the new one. We put four German songs on it. And funnily enough, those get the best reactions. Especially the song ‘Keine Fragen’ (no questions) has really the potential to have a huge success. We are really excited about it and are looking forward to the release of it on 13th April 2007. Keep your fingers crossed! ;-)

“We as IN MITRA MEDUSA INRI are friends, not only a couple of people who were put together to produce music.” Do you think you are one of only a few bands who think that way?
It’s hard to say because you never know how people act behind the curtains. It was a long progress for us. I mean, I know Holger for over 15 years, and we had some ups and downs, too. But in the end, the friendship wins. It’s important that you always listen to each other because every person develops over the years.

IN MITRA MEDUSA INRI records music for over 10 years now. What would you think changed over the years?
We, of course, got more mature and we also got more crinkles in our faces. ;-) It’s nice for us to see things more open and clear than before and we also see that we are able to enjoy things more than before - every release of a CD, interviews and concerts. Musically, we still have our own thing we do. We don’t adapt ourselves to other people. Recently, in one review of our CD, it was said that we would not work directly with the spirit of the age. We think that’s pretty illogical, because in music, there is no spirit of age. Listen to WELLE:ERDBALL for example… completely the opposite of the spirit of the age? Yeah, sometimes, it’s really strange. But we really don’t listen to those comments. We know that we produce good music and we act really confident with that. I guess, the years since we started playing music, brought that with them.

“Religion it not a required scheme, it can be everything - a song, a poem, a feeling. Everybody should be able to believe in things he wants to believe in - but don’t forget yourself!” With that statement, you’re completely right if you ask me. How would you say, this opinion reflects in our songs?
It reflects in different situations in our lives. In our songs we don’t really do attach importance to conventions. On our last CDs, we always had a 7min-song as the first song on the record. ‘Darkness between us’ was a really slow and relaxing CD. On our new record, we have some really electronic songs and of course typical “IMMI-songs”. We like to play with the elements and opposites. That’s really important to us. We float because of our feelings. And why should you always think in categories? It’s, of course, not easy to live that way but why should you always walk on the easy way of life?

Your lyrics are mainly in English, although you are Germans. How come?
That changed a bit, too. As I said before, on our new CD ‘Kalte Farben’ (cold colors) are 4 German songs - but I have to agree with you, on all of our other CDs - which are already 6 - we used English for our lyrics. So far, it was more harmonic and it also fits more in our picture of the songs. Thinking about the songs ‘Nur für eine Minute’ (just for one minute) or ‘Komm ins Licht’ (follow me into the light), we didn’t really have to think about the language because the German lyrics really fit to the sound of the songs. It was just awesome. And the German pieces are especially not flat and operate with a senseless content. That also persuaded us to go a new way this time. So, on this new CD, English and German songs are balanced. And maybe, sometimes we might sing everything in German.

On your new CD you covered the song ‘Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind’ (tell me where the flowers are). How did you even get the idea to cover that song?
The song already came up in 1998 and basically stayed almost 10 years in our closet. But we didn’t just cover the song; we just put a new interpretation on it. So we played it how we thought was the right way to do it. And in the end, we saw that we really needed that time to develop the song, so that we could put in on the LP. He didn’t fit to all the other things we did. But we somehow believe in destiny and thought it was time to put it on the record.

Two years ago, you performed at the M´ERA LUNA FESTIVAL. Are there going to be more of those shows?
We don’t know yet. But we are always thankful for requests und are always happy to perform live in front of an audience.

Thank you for this nice interview :-)

Written by Anne Kuhfuß Sunday, 22 April 2007