My Passion – 31-08-2010

interview with: My Passion
By: Nina Mende

Tonight before seeing Julien-K live we had a nice and interesting interview with the guys of My Passion. They just had dinner and got their hair and make-up done first so I had to wait a little for them to gather up. The guys had just arrived from Birmingham, a 14 hour drive, but they had slept throughout most of the journey. But they told me that they also have x-box on the bus as well as a TV in the lounge of the bus. The guys were still a bit sleepy, but once they’d enter the stage it’ll all be fine.

My Passion were quite excited about the tour especially because of the other bands and all the new people they would meet out on the tour. My Passion had never met either of the bands before. My Passion checked out some music of Mayfield and Julien-K online before and found that Julien-K sounded a lot like Transformers. Also does My Passion like Orgy. Laurence liked Orgy also because they wear make-up just like him and they covered “Blue Monday” by New Order. That was about the time when the band got into 80s electro music.

My Passion has the same label as Julien-K, so the label thought both bands would fit together on tour since both play electronic rock music. Also did My Passion do quite well on the tour they did with Kill Hannah throughout Germany.
I also read that My Passion toured with Jeffree Star, so of course did I want to know more about that. They told me that that was their first proper tour. They toured with them twice through the UK. During the first tour they were newbie’s in touring and just toured the big cities. IN the second tour they also toured several smaller places as well and the organization of it all was just different from the first tour. Also did a few shows during the second tour get cancelled or it was just My Passion playing because Jeffree Star did not come out of the bus, but he is known as a diva, so it might be supposed to be like that. The second tour was a lot weirder than the first tour but still fun, according to My Passion.

Since My Passion don’t really look like a typical next door neighbor (at least not like my current ones….) and also don’t sound like a radio band, I wanted to know where they get their inspiration from. They like huge stage set ups and performances, as well as artists such as David Bowie, Slipknot, Rammstein, the gothic scene and all that. They don’t concentrate on just one thing but take their inspiration from all over the place, from all the weird things they see, especially the darker things. But it is also going along with the music. And when that all comes together it completes a picture and makes sense to you. Hearing the music without the looks would be a little strange.

My Passion was founded in 2005 and the debut was released 4 years later. The reasons for that were the same as always: waiting for the right time, finding a label, etc. The album was actually recorded by the end of 2008 and many of the songs were from 2005 as well as some new songs. They now have already finished the recordings for the next album. They are very proud of their latest recordings and can’t wait to get it released, but they are waiting for the right time again. You have to release it at a time where people are actually able to hear it and the My Passion album is not drowning because it was released in the same time as the top 10 artist releases. Because without having people hearing your album, releasing it is senseless. They want to reach as many people as possible with their album so they are still waiting a while longer for it to be released. Tonight they would play mostly new songs, but they also would play some old songs. This tour is basically about reaching new people in Germany, so they want to play their best songs, which are on the new album.

Then I was asking about the Kerrang story. They got nominated but they did not get the award. Yet they got on the Kerrang cover and did the Kerrang tour throughout the UK, a quite big tour, where they got treated very nicely and the tour was simply amazing. Many people came to see them and Kerrang took such good care of My Passion, supporting them wherever they could. The band that won the award is not much in the news anymore. The Kerrang award is not given away by fan votes but by a jury. Enter Shikari was nominated for the same award a couple years before and had a huge success, they didn’t get the actual award either and the band that won it disappeared really quickly afterwards. Kerrang supports My Passion a whole lot and gave them many opportunities to get big in the UK, reaching out to the people and growing their fan base. My Passion got the front cover as an unsigned band which was also their first press appearance which is pretty amazing for an unknown band. Kerrang believes in My Passion as being very special. By now all the My Passion fans are writing Kerrang like every week which makes Kerrang mention them every so often. Through all this support My Passion is quite known in the UK, not like superstars over night though, because that takes time and needs to build up slowly. But they are on their way, constantly growing their fan base and trying to reach out to everyone. Most of their club shows are sold out on their upcoming tour, but they are not upgrading them because they want to make it somehow special. Maybe the tour after that is going to be in bigger venues since this one is selling out very big.

As last question I wondered what was their favorite band to tour with. They named bands like Kill Hannah, The Blackout and some others. The last Kill Hannah tour in the UK was actually My Passion being the support act but the audience was quite split, so it was more a split headliner tour.
The last thing they told me was about their video shoot the weekend before the show in Aschaffenburg. They shot a quite dark video which is not really made for day time television and they are quite excited about it, maybe they are gonna do a rated version of it. The video and single will be out in October along with the UK tour of them.

It was a very interesting interview with the guys and I thank them all for their time. I hope to see them again someday soon.