Mandrake - Entrevista

1 – Mandrake (origin and meaning of the band’s name, short bio with highlights, discography, etc):
Lutz: Mandrake was brought to life by me in the wastelands of northern germany ("Ostfriesland") in the late 90`s. In 1998, the self-produced album "Forever" was recorded, presenting the band as a mixture of slow death-metal and elements of the gothic-scene. Female vocals were rare and sung by a guest-vocalist. 1999 Birgit Lau joined the band and her part became bigger and bigger. After several demos, in 2003, Mandrake signed a contract with the label Greyfall/Prophecy Productions. The label-debut "Calm the Seas" was released at the end of 2003. For the first time, this record presents the current line-up with Garvin Bösch on Bass-guitar and Jörg Uken on drums. Live-keyboarder Julius Martinek also became a full member, but soon prefered electric guitars. The music of Mandrake is voluptuous, sometimes epic, sometimes fragile, supported by "real" strings, low guitars and powered by pounding drums. Above all, the significant voice of Birgit. Lyrics and music often deal with the forces of nature, especially water, and the desire to reach distant shores and galaxies. On stage, the musicians of "Mandrake" represent themselves as a tight soundwall with heart and brains. The term mandrake (mandragora) is taken from a poisonous plant which is a symbol for spiritual and supernatural powers. The second album "The Balance of Blue" was be released on march, 14 th. 2005, along with contributions to samplers (Orkus, Legacy a. o.). The song "soaked through the skylight" was also featured on the DVD of the WGT in Leipzig 2004. At the end of 2007 we release our third album called “Mary Celeste”.

2 – “Mary Celeste” (writing & recording process):
Lutz: Yeah, we write the songs for “Mary Celeste” during January and March 2007. The pre-recordings started in April for only one week to produce some demos to find out, how the “Mary Celeste” may sound. In May and June we recorded the whole stuff at our Soundlodge Studio (www.soundlodge.de) of Drummer Jörg Uken and the mastering was done in july at the Klangschmiede Studio e by Markus Stock (The Vision Bleak).

3 – Lyrics (influences, themes, messages):
Lutz: We handled songwriting a little different this time. A close friend of ours, namely former Mephistopheles vocalist Eike, has written all lyrics on Mary Celeste. I do not exactly know where he gets his inspiration from, I think he reads a lot of old prose, like John Keats for example. The lyrics basically are about conflicts of life and death, imaginations beyond the mortal way of thinking, embedded in landscapes of our home, the North Sea and its shores. There is no real concept about the Mary Celeste over the whole album, it’s more a red line of mysteries, sorrow and ways to deal with it. The ghostship Mary Celeste, which gave our album its title, is a fascinating story. It perfectly sums up all lyrical themes without forgetting our roots.

4 – Album frontcover / artwork (who, why, meaning, …):
Lutz: The frontcover and artwork was done by Lukasz Jaszak (http://www.jaszak.net/). Mandrake has maybe something like a tradition, that Birgit Lau is on the frontcover. So we always try to combine the Theme of the album with some photographs of Birgit. On the new album you can see Birgit in front of the ship “Mary Celeste”. The whole artwork has this old bookstyle. It shall look like an old Diarybook of the Captain of the ship.

5 – Musical and other kind of influences:
Lutz: Oh, there are so many influences. I mean, we are all addicted to different kinds of metal music. We all started playing in different metalbands. My roots go back to old stuff like first Kreator and Destruction releases. In the last years our favourite music styles became more open minded. Today we also listen to all kind of rock and pop music. So I like the Slayer stuff like “Hell awaits” and something like that, but at the same time I listen to Neil Young or music like Sigur Ros and Wovenhand. One of my faves are Katatonia, Deinonychus, Sceptikism, EA 80, Rotting Christ (old ones) and of course the great Bolt Thrower. I also like Alcest from Avignon. Yeah, and other kind of influences: it`s life with all his ups and downs.

6 – GreyFall:
Lutz: Greyfall, yeah maybe the best record-company in the world, ha ha. We are so happy to be in the Greyfall and Prophecy family and we never want to end up with them. I mean, they never told us how the music has to sound. So we really can do what we want because they believe in our music. That’s the goal for every musician I think.

7 – Tour to promote the record:
Lutz: I sadly have to say no. We all wish that we could go on tour with Mandrake to promote our new album. The main problem is, that we don’t have a booking agency. So we are on search for any help in this way. We are a live-band and we like it very much to play in front of crazy people. So: Please get in touch!!!

8 – Final Message:
Lutz: Thank you very much for this interview. We hope that your readers may have an impression of Mandrake and our new album “Mary Celeste”. So you may have a look at our page http://www.mandrake.de/ or our myspace site www.myspace.com/mandrakemetal and listen to some songs and watch our video of the wave gotik meeting in Leipzig/Germany.

GreyFall / Grau: www.grau.cd/label