Madina Lake Interview
By: Simon Mounsey |
Thursday June 25, 2009 |
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Finding Their Way... |
| Chicago-based alternative rock outfit Madina Lake, after a successful run with their first album From Them, Through Us, to You, released their new album Attics to Eden last month. Ironically, despite them being an American band, they have received a tremendous amount of praise overseas in places such as Europe and Japan. However, with a slot on the Earnie Ball stage on the Vans Warped tour, which will commence starting this Friday June 16, they are looking to take the U.S. by storm as well. Upon preparation though, they were able to take some time out to answer some questions. So you guys are on the Warped Tour this year, which starts this Friday. What can fans expect? A lot of continued reckless abandon on stage. We put everything out there and at one point or another end up hurting each other on stage. A little bit of that and confetti I imagine. Are you guys playing anything off the new album? It’s always hard to decide what balance to have. The music has evolved a bit, so we’ll probably lean heavy on the new stuff.  What separates you guys from the rest of the bill?It’s a very polarized bill. Any time you have Bad Religion and brokeNCYDE on the same bill, that’s weird. We’re one of those bands where we’re cool with everyone. In high school, we never fit in a particular clique, but we got along with everyone. Here, it’s sort of the same. We don’t belong to any particular scene. We’re like the red headed step child. We have some electronics in our music. It’ll be a good time to captivate an audience. It’s a good opportunity. Taking a step back, you guys released an album last month. What has the reception been so far from where you’re sitting? Overwhelmingly positive from critics, at least overseas. It’s always been harder in the U.S. I think kids here want something in a specific package or label. Kids want something that will fit with them based on their personality. Since we can’t be labeled, it makes it hard for us, but that’s okay even if it can be a little intimidating. What was the recording process like? The first record was recorded on the west coast with Mark Trombino. The new album on we recorded on the west coast with David Bendeth and he was brutal. He used intimidation tactics. It shocked us from the bat. We played him everything and he basically told us we sucked at first. It’s effective to construct egos, but we really don’t have egos. We battled every day. It was a war every day. We’d come back drained every day. At the end of the day though, we don’t really care if it sells five copies as long as it’s gratifying for us. What makes the current album different from your past output? After 2 ½ years where we blew up into this sort of genre for whatever reason, we got defensive and wanted to retaliate against the same. We put no parameters on ourselves. We don’t want to be anybody else’s band but our own. We have our own personal influences from Nine Inch Nails to Smashing Pumpkins. We like to have adventurous and brutally honest lyrics, and so I think we are where we want to be. Does the title Attics to Eden have any special meaning to you guys? If you listen to the album, it is a merge that is sort of escapism and the struggles we deal with. Addiction, depression, etc. It is an individual search for individual Utopia. The attic is the dark place in your mind where you can flip into. Eden is where you want to be. How did the cover come about? Did you have any input? We do everything. We don’t let anything go without approval. That artwork was done by Lynden St. Victor. We were fans of his work. He was a fan of our band. He actually gave us a loose song structure, and he wanted us to develop a song for him and in exchange he would create the cover artwork. We had hour long conversations about the ideas of what we wanted to convey and what we wanted to represent. You recently shot a video for the upcoming single “Let’s Get Out of Here”? How did that go? It’s about this girl who’s at a lame party that’s very cliché. It’s basically unfulfilling and she’s frustrated. She ends up going through a wall to the other side which is Eden where we’re playing. We always have been frustrated when working with a director. This time we nailed it though. We always submit our ideas. We send a specific narrative and notions behind the song. We submit that to the label and then we give it to the director to create something around this. After Warped, what are your plans? Are you guys thinking of doing a headlining tour? We’re gonna do some special stuff. We have been fortunate of being successful in Japan, Europe, etc. We’re going to be at the Reading Festival on the main stage. Then, we’ll tour a little bit more after that. Do you have any idea of where you guys want to be in the next five years? Good question. I think the dramatic difference is exciting between albums. We’ll expand on that again and we’ll see. As long as we have a deal, we’ll make records and tour. Try to connect as many people as we can and create a subcutlture about things we believe in.
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