Oliver Nikolas Schmid, Rob and Peter Kafka
By: Elvira Visser
– Can you describe Lacrimas Profundere for potential fans?
Peter: “If you find a real big category I would say it is a mixture of
69eyes and HIM but now we got a new singer, who brings new influence into the band so sometimes it is more rock and I would say there are even some psychedelic elements now in some songs. What you can say of 69eyes for example, it is just okay but not psychedelic.”
– Can you describe Lacrimas Profundere in 3 words?
Peter: “Very melodic, you know when you hear a song it really sticks to
your mind.”
Oliver: “Rock ‘n Sad, that is our description for it. We want to mix the
sadness and the power of rock and roll.”
Peter: “Yeah! The power of rock and roll.”
Oliver: “When I think back about my life, for me all the rock bands have
those funny things and party things in their music. We want to cancel the party
things out of rock and put the melancholic stuff back inside. We have our own
description “Rock ‘n Sad” because reporters always need words to describe
the music. So we thought it would be good to find some new words for our music,
we want to play, and Rock ‘n Sad fits perfectly. So you have 3 words: rock ‘n
sad.”
– Rob and Peter joined Lacrimas Profundere this year, how was your first experience
with them on stage?
Oliver: “First show with new member you don’t know how they act on stage,
you know them from band rehearsals. For me it is always an adventure, you know
how they are at rehearsals but is always different, you don’t know them. You
don’t know what they will do the next minute, perhaps they are naked.”
Peter: “That is what we will do tonight.”
Rob: “Maybe, that is a great idea.”
Peter: “We just do it.”
Oliver: “They might jump into the audience, you don’t know how the people
react, because it is complete different situation if you are in band rehearsal
or on stage. You can do band rehearses, but live is a complete different situation.
But I am very satisfied with both of them.”
Peter: “He has to say that now, otherwise we would knock him down.”
Oliver: “Yeah that is my problem: I see myself drunken and alone in a dark
street and then just…”
Rob: “No, just here…”
– How was it for you guys to be on stage with an existing band, the fans must
have had expectations?
Rob: “I think it was exciting for me, cause I am, still am a big fan and
started to listen to the music since the “Ave End” album. It still
is my favourite album. For me it was good, it was absolutely a great experience
and it still is a great experience to be on stage with those guys and do rehearsals
and stuff like that. It is …in a way a dream come true.”
Peter: “Not for me, I’m just the funny bass player.”
– Does playing in a band change your life?
Oliver: “I live in a very small village and played guitar and we rehearsed
in this small village, in the house of my parents and then you get the offer
to play with Apocalyptica on tour. We played with 69eyes, Type O Negative and
Marilyn Manson on festivals. You can buy our CD’s in every shops, we enter the
charts in Germany and you can watch our videos on TV,” sighs “But
it is hard as well because you play 17 of 16 concerts in 5 different countries
but you don’t see a lot of the countries.
The beer taste in every country the same.” (Then a small discussion about
beer starts)
Oliver: “After the tour you can say we played in Barcelona, Paris and Belgium
but….okay you put your feet on the ground in London but you don’t see anything
because there is no time, you have to do interviews, drive to the concert, breakfast,
do rehearsals after that you have to drive to the next concert hall so sometimes
you forget in what country you are that day. You always see the same. The same
people, the same bus, the same…every concert hall looks the same, the first
thing I do as I wake up is find the breakfast room and it is always a big labyrinth
for me.”
*Peter and Rob laugh big time.*
– Did you had any doubts continuing after Christopher left, because he wrote
the lyrics?
Oliver: “For me I like the new singer more, but that is only my opinion.
For me…it was always clear that I will continue. I will continue my whole
life even if there are only two people in the whole world that will buy our
CD, but I will stop with the music if the two people are only my father and
my mother. But if we can attract with every new record two new persons who like
to listen to our music it is okay for me. So I did not thought about stop playing
music, only because my brother left, okay he wrote the lyrics but…I have new
girls in my group.”
Peter: “He is talking about us now…”
Oliver: “And they write lyrics too, for me there is….I don’t miss him,
it is hard, but the relationship between me and my brother is better then ever,
since he left the band. It is funny to see this because we meet at family parties,
and as we composed the new record it was not clear if he would definately leave
the band. We had about 5 song finished then I had the big problem to find the
follower for him, because I wanted not like Nightwish a complete different voice.
I wanted exactly the same voice. Exactly the same!”
Oliver *tries to catch some breath*: “And a vocalist is not a guitar or a
keyboard player. It is very hard. I found some perfect voices but also found
so many crap voices. We always lose time because our label said to me we have
to release the next CD as fast as you can. It is a gap between the former record
and the new one is more than 3 years, you loose so many fans you got with the
last record. And in Germany we have many, many of them. So we have to try to
find new member, as fast as we can to record the CD as fast as we can, because
this is our release plan and you have to do it our way, like we will it.
I really lost so many time at band rehearsals, because we had many talented
singers but no one sounded just like Christopher. I got an email from him and
two weeks later he stood near in the rehearsal room and if I turned back or
forward or to the side…I thought Christopher stood beside me..it is…weird.
The good thing is that he can sing like Christopher but he can do more…Christopher
has one voice, that was okay, but he can do more. He is like a guitar. You can
switch him.”
All: *laughs*
Peter: “Yeah you can switch him off.”
Oliver: “We like to compose really rocky sound on the new record. I called
him with the question can you sing rougher? And he said: “yes no problem.”
Now we have the chance to put more and new elements in our music and the new
record. We like what we did in the past and there are so many songs on the new
record that sound exactly like what we did in the past, because we liked what
we did. Now we brought so many new elements in our music and it makes it more
different than other Gothic rock bands, our style. For us it is important because
our style, if if you read an review about our music you always read two names:
Him and 69eyes. It is okay we like both bands but ..for me, it is time to…we
like to get our own style.”
– How did you ended up touring with Apocalyptica, 69eyes and Apocalyptica has
the same manger is that the link?
Oliver: First of all we know the 69eyes and wanted to tour with them so I checked
the website to check when they wanted to play in America. To see the dates but
saw they changed the management from a Finnish one to a German one so I thought
lets contact the management because in Finland you have to wait 2 weeks…before
someone replies. He said to me, sorry you don’t have any chance to play this
tour. You need 3 months to get a working permit/visa thing. And that cost 3
months…will not work. Okay then he said…hey, who are you by the way?
So I explain him who we are and he said please send me some CD’s and a biography.
I did of course, and then I did not hear anything for a month but suddenly I
got an email from him and he said “I am also a publisher, would you like
to sign with me? ” But I don’t play music to make money, I play music to
reach more fans.”
Oliver *smiles and continues*, “He said: “I can give you some contacts
and I know that you wanted to play with 69eyes and then he said maybe there
is a change to play with Apocalyptica”, and I said yeah…So yeah the link
is the manager.”
– Is the audience very different this tour because they came to see Apocalyptica?
Oliver: “For us we played shows with Lacuna Coil and 69eyes and we always
played Germany, Swiss and Austria so the people know us in these countries.
So as we got the offer to play with Apocalyptica we had the choice to play again
those country or try to catch some new fans and play in countries we never played
before. And maybe for some old fans who are waiting.
I think we had one concert in Holland that was 5 years or longer….for us we
don’t expect to see any fans of us, in front of the stage because that is the
reason we play this tour.”
Peter: “We want new fans…”
Oliver: …“Completely new audience, so perhaps sometimes we expect too
much of them, because most of them and maybe 99% see us playing the first time
in their lives, this is like an advertising tour for us. We play our first time
in London and it will be in the famous Astoria in London. So hey…pfff…we
are so happy because we get the chance to play exactly this part of the tour
because in Germany, and all the people that likes Gothic music they all know
our name. Don’t know if they like what we do, but they know our name. But now
it is time to check out other countries and European fans…it is time to play
in front of them, and that some of them hopefully likes us and remembers our
name after the tour.”
After a little break and thinking Oliver continues: “This was an adventure
for us too, because I don’t know which group fans like Apocalyptica they attract
many types of fans…they have a really big group of different people, I don’t
know who are really Gothic or Metallica fans, You cant compose music that everyone
likes. You can only compose music you like and try to perform in front of people,
and they can see that you love what you are doing. I m sure if you can bring
that energy on to the audience then they can see…and think hey, I like this
shit.”
– The sound was bad at the Amsterdam gig, last Friday..do you notice that kind
of things on stage?
Oliver: “I heard this, I asked the mixer …because when I left the stage
I was very satisfied with the whole gig but after we met him backstage he said
we had so many problems. Because if you stand in front of the stage it is very
wide, if you stand on the stage you don’t have much space. Rob stands directly
in front of the drums, and to get a good mix for the people outside you have
to have all the instruments completely, it would be perfect if they would all
be in their own rooms. But Rob had the microphone in front of the drums, and
you could hear the drums though his microphone, and the drums were also coming
out of Rob’s monitors. So the sound guy had to do something, otherwise it was
complete crap….
So it is very important for the sound, what stage we play but this is not an
excuse for a bad sound, but I just wanted to explain why it was so bad or you
cant hear it because so many drums came via his vocal microphone…we had to
switch it of and that was just shit.”
– Can you tell anything about the new album?
Oliver: “In the new songs we always try to put the best parts of the music
of the bands we like in one song. For example we like “Blessed Be”
from the 69eyes best and from HIM we like “Greatest Lovesongs”…so
we try to put these or different musical styles together in one song but only
the best parts, this is what we tried to do.
The title of the new album will be “Songs For the Last Few”.
John Fryer did the production again, he did it last record as well, he also
did so many huge great bands. Bands like HIM, Cradle of Filth, Depeche Mode…so
many huge bands. It was great to record an album with him again. The title for
me is a concept. The songs, the title, the artwork, it all has to fit together.
For me all the songs talk about the last few. Uhm, if your getting old you know.
And you know in one or two years you have to die and when you look back,….what
did you reach, or how did you lived your life and we talk about different romances
a person has had in their past live.”
– Are the videos for your songs important, do they tell a story?
Oliver: “It is always a budget problem and we always have enough ideas.
But I don’t think our label has enough money to do what we have in mind, but
we always try to tell a story. The story behind the song…in our video clips.
But at these times so many TV-stations say we don’t want to play rock or harder
stuff , and the video cost a lot of money so sometimes it makes no sense to
make a video therefore in these times it is not always possible to make one.
But our label said to me they have so many bands under contract but we are the
only band they wanted to shoot a video again. We always shoot two videos for
a record. At the former record we shoot “Again It’s Over” “My
Velvet Little Darkness”…..and we had “Ave End” and “Amber
Girl” so 2 videos for each CD. For this record they called me and said
they would like to do a video again. Don’t know for which song, yet.”
– Do you decide which song or somebody else?
Oliver: “In the past it was always the same, we discuss too much things
and we don’t know exactly what song. We always gave the label and the publisher
three songs, and then they had to chose which song should be the video. I think
we should do this again, it worked good.”
– How was it to be features in Bam’s Unholy Union, known at MTV?
Oliver: “The fact is that Bam is a skate boarder and our promoter in America
is a skater too. Our Promoter met him at a half pipe, he said to him: “Do
you like HIM, I know a band that sounds like him, but not exactly the same but
the same genre.”
Bam said: “I get so many tapes from bands that sound exactly the same,
I’m boring with this shit.”
But our promoter tried and said: please listen to this. After a while i got
a email that he liked the last CD so much. They wanted MTV worldwide, don’t
know if they broadcasted these Bam’s Unholy Union, like 7 or 8 shows world wide.
I watched the shows, and hey, it was so fantastic Bam drives a Lamborghini on
the highway and you can listen to our songs in the back. I recorded it on my
video recorder and on my DVD recorder and I called my parents to recorded it
too, and the best of this show is that the story is that he married his girlfriend
and it is the last episode and they came out of the church and so many famous
people like Iggy are there, and they played a complete song from us. Not a part
but a complete song.
And now Bam filmed a cinema movie and wants to use a song from us again…first
of all he wanted to use a new song so we said to him sorry we cant give you
a new song. And I though okay then he does not want to use anything, but last
week I got an email that he want to use “Ave End” for this movie.
The song we always play at the end of our shows…..and i said sure, you can
get all of us.”
Peter: “You did not say no?”
Oliver: “No…..then he wanted to use some shirts of us. He is really famous,
as he interviews famous people in TV shows and he wanted some shirts from us
to wear. I know exactly what I did I send him 2 different types in all sizes,
so that he could fit in it. Because it was so important for me that he would
wear those shirts, and I do know him, but do not know his size.”
– Idols and Popstars what do think of them?
Rob: “Bull shit.”
Peter: “Complete bullshit.”
Rob: “Yeah there are so many crazy people.”
Oliver: “It is bullshit, but I like to watch it. It is so funny to watch
because there are so many people that think they can sing. I know one of them
he lives only 30 kilometres away from my home town, the problem is …for me
it is better if your are in the music scene because you do it step by step…
and not from zero to one thousand, because the falling down is very hard. Because
when the next season starts they forget you.”
Peter: “Not only this but also what comes out…the producers in Germany
produce some mainstream shit. Take the first winner he sang: “Take me tonight,
the world is beautiful”. That was the chorus line. Which is complete and
utter bullshit, you know, it really makes me angry. So many People will buy
it. It is so unbelievable how stupid and how powerful the media is.”
Rob: “The program is disgusting.”
Oliver: “In my opinion the problem is that so many people they buy what
they see….they see it and the brain is completely dead and they turn into
zombies and have to buy it…because radio’s and TV played it. But it is not
music,…”
Rob: “Stupid shows, only to make money.”
Peter: “Money, nothing else. If a producer had a really shit song, and
would give it to the winner from this show then it suddenly turns into a hit…well
everyone knows it. But it only happens once, after that everyone forget it.”
– So what do you think of the powerful media tool myspace:
Peter: “That is great.”
Rob: “That is my favourite, but also so full of bullshit, There is so many
weird things, half of them is bullshit.”
Peter: “But for example myspace it is also how we met….”
Oliver: “For me it is always the same problem with the whole internet if
you search for something you have eighty percent only crap and you don’t want
to know about this. And it cost you two hours to find what you want to find,
because everyone has the chance to put his shit on the internet. So everybody
and band can put his crap on the internet. When Christopher left I thought,
hey it would not be a big problem I only have to search on myspace and put the
button Gothic and Germany and the enter button. Then I though I found a list
of all my favourite bands but after listening hundred fifty different things….and
drinking a box of beers I wanted to shoot me.”
Peter: “But otherwise without myspace how would you find anybody…it
would have been so much harder, if would have taken many weeks.”
Oliver: “But it is hard work to find good people. Okay there are still
good bands and good people, but I hate to work to find it. So you have to find
the right people…dig out the shit.”
– If you could collaborate with anyone who would it be?
Rob and Peter: “Easy, Nine Inch Nails.”
Peter: “That is definitely my favourite band.”
Rob: “Here we go – Apocalyptica!”
Peter: “Eicca.”
Oliver: “Pamela Anderson”
Me: “What should she do then be in the video…to sing or run…?”
Oliver: “She should sing, well she can do anything she want…”
– When is Lacrimas Profundere satisfied.
Peter: “When we play the support of Nine Inch Nails, but that will kill
us, I guess.”
Oliver: “My dream will come true if I get the chance to enter the stage
sober.”
Peter: “I would be satisfied when the catering also has champagne, that
would be sufficient for me to be happy, because all that beer all the time.
But hey, the support band can be happy if they get anything….”
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