Interview Caliban: Marc Görtz

Artiest: Caliban

Geïnterviewde: Marc Görtz

Interview afgenomen op: Groezrock

Label: Century Media Records

Groezrock kon in 2014 rekenen op de Duitse metalcore band Caliban, die aan het begin van The Progression Tour nog even kwamen zwaaien. Voordat de show mocht beginnen, kon ik nog even de gitarist Marc Görtz aan de tand voelen.

Hi. Welcome to the interview with Festivalblog.

Hi. Thank you!

What do you expect for the show today?

Well, the last time we’ve been here is quite a while ago, but it was amazing. We had some power problems, but in the end the show was very fun. I’m excited because it’s the first show of our tour with the new album.

Can you tell me something about the new album?

For me, it’s like the logical progression from the ‘I Am Nemesis’ album, just in a more consequent way, because we took a new direction on the last album. We really like how the album ‘I Am Nemesis’ turned out, so we decided that that is ‘us’ now. Also the production was done very differently, so that everything would match by style, vocals and we finished with the drums. Usually we start with the drums and the bass and the vocals, but now we started reversed. So we can make sure that every drum hit would sit with the vocal lines. Also when we hide some melodies for the vocals, then we can change it afterwards. So we feel like it was flowing together in the new album.

Well, the new album had some epic progressive sounds or more specific ‘djent’ sounds. Why did you add this in the new album? Was this intentional?

We never really write something very intentionally, but it just came along the way. I have a 7 and 8 string guitar from Ibanez and I just fooled around with it and there it was. I had some cool ideas for some riffs, they sounded cool and they came into the songs. We liked to have a different kind of tuning sound of the guitar. You can hear it on the second song of the new album, the song has much higher tuning than the beginning. It’s very strong; we had this chorus for the song ‘King’ and it would probably sound cooler and deeper because Andy (singer) can scream instead of singing clean. We brought it down and then put the rest of the song down too. It just came like that.

Okay. What can you tell me about the new tour?

It actually starts tomorrow. This is the first show. All the bands are here, except for the opening band. Yeah, I’m pretty excited because we have a pretty cool stage setup that we never had before like we’ve build some scarecrows, a city sign with light in there and lot of stuff that we hope will work out.

Well, I’m pretty excited too see it. Besides the tour, the new album has a promising artwork. Can you tell me something about it and about the artist who made this wonderful work?

We have a couple of favorite artists, but one of them is Christopher (Chris) Lovell, who did the artwork of ‘Ghost Empire’. He draws some apocalyptic stuff and so we thought about the title and we thought that it could be something matching between Chris and the album. We asked a couple of guys for the artwork, but Chris was really our favorite for doing this. We sent him a couple of our songs and also the title and everything and we asked him if he had an idea for this. He was like "I have 100 ideas!". He was so excited! He sent over some sketches in a little amount of time and we chose together what we thought was the best artwork for these songs. We liked the details and it is actually handdrawn. It’s like not somebody used Photoshop for putting stuff together. It took him like almost two weeks to really paint such a huge piece and then he did the inside pages, out of the front stuff, etc. Yeah, we really like his style.

Why did you name the album ‘Ghost Empire’?

‘I Am Nemesis’ was more critical toward all the things that are not right in this world. ‘Ghost Empire’ goes to a more personal level criticising that people don’t care for others, people don’t love each other anymore, people just only look out for themselves and walk around like they are so tough. It also gives a look on the modern internet time, nobody goes out anymore, only checking online and not chatting in bars or something like that. There’s no real interaction with real people and we thought it’s like walking around in a ‘ghost empire’. You know, it’s like no real interaction anymore. So that’s the whole theme and concept about ‘Ghost Empire’.

A whole different direction now, Caliban has been together for 15 years now. Do you feel that it becomes harder to have the interest in your fans?

In first case, we write the music for ourselves. That’s the most important, that we are behind the music. We are not like some bands that do what’s trending, that’s not us. We just grew as musicians and we grew up with different taste. It’s not intentionally to match something.

Don’t you miss the years that you had with Caliban like in the beginning?

No. Why? It’s just a different chapter in our lives. We don’t like to record the same album twice. All our albums are different. We have to feel that ‘Say Hello To Tragedy’ was a bit different from ‘The Awakening’ but not really so extremely much. I have no idea where it takes us. If we have a show where we are a headliner and we play like 75 minutes, we’ve put the songs of all of our albums together. It’s not like that we only play our new stuff. Today it’s of course more, because it’s the tour of our new album and we don’t have so much time, but in general we always pick stuff of all our albums.

Are there any favorite songs that you play on stage?

For me, one of the favorite is ‘Chaos Creation’, it’s one of the songs of the new album. It’s really one of my favorites.

Why’s that?

The midpart is that putting melodic and there is some melody that goes on to the end of the song. There’s some kind of vibe which reminds me of tv-shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, something like that. It’s more like ’28 weeks later’, that movie. It’s like spooky and I just like that! 

Well, you have been on tour with many bands, but what was the best inspirational band for you over the years?

Inspired? Difficult one. For me as a songwriter mostly Muse. Yes, it’s a very different kind of music. I really like how they experiment with sound and that is also what you can hear on the last two albums of Caliban. The thing that I also like in Muse is that they are so huge in music, not heavy maybe, but huge. They have intense melodies and even if it’s pop rock or rock of whatever, they are living and playing very successful. The melodies are different in some way and the way they arrange them; it’s just like me.

Is there a band that you were on tour with that inspires you?

Back in the days it was definitely In Flames, Machine Head and when we started the band it was Earth Crisis. That was one of the reasons that I started this band in the very beginning. It all started with Morning Again and them. In the beginning they were more an influence. Nowadays it’s hard to say.

How you think about hardcore or metalcore these days? Is there a difference to the things that you believed in when you first started Caliban?

There are much more variations these days. In the beginning it was more like Swedish metalheads and some breakdowns (laughs) and nowadays it’s like that I have to like all the different genres in the hardcore. Some have electronic in there, some have hip hop, it’s all different now. There are lot of variations even if there are a lot of bands that sounds similar, there are still a lot of variations in the music that you haven’t heard yet, but that’s what I think.

Do you think that the fans are still there screaming with the songs from the very first beginning of Caliban?

We still have some fans from the very beginning, from like 1998 or 1999. But from 2000 till 2005, we lost a little amount of people that are there on shows. We’ve lost some fans in between ‘The Awakening’ and ‘The Undying Darkness’; some stayed and some left. Also some others came along and when there was ‘I Am Nemesis’, people from early days came back and the other new ones stayed. So we have now from both a bit now. I don’t know about the new one yet, but the ‘Ghost Empire’ is, suprizingly, after so many years, the most successful album of us. Even if it’s more melodic or what you’ve said.

Okay. What about the song ‘yOUR SONG’? How did you came up with this beautiful videoclip and song for the fans of Caliban?

We have a very cool forum of fans. We have so many die-hard fans and for example on this tour there’s a guy that is coming to 8 shows and he is sometimes so far away and he spent each show for so many euros on merch and the guy puts up with this. We have a lot of these fans and we would like to give them something back in return, that they know that we appreciate their following. In general our fans are really important for us and we just like to say thank you. It’s also a good party song for life. Immediately when this song came out, that was one day for the very first show and the album didn't even come out yet, 80 procent of the people were singing along with this song. I don’t know about here, we didn’t played in Belgium since Graspop 2013. The funny thing is that the new album is now coming out and it’s the first time we present it in Belgium.

Well, for the other part, how did you came up with the bandname ‘Caliban’?

Wow, that’s like ages ago. The band was founded by Andy and me and we had another name for it. I know Andy from long ago, I grew up with him, we went to school together. But when we got older, we took our music more seriously, the other guitarplayer came up with the request to change the name of the band. We wanted to have a name that we can translate, not something that didn’t have a meaning. We wanted to name it after a character which stands for something, it is from Shakespear's 'The Tempest’. What the character stands for, is that we feel the music as our strength. The character is doing everything from with the opposites of him, like he is very aggressive but he is trying to do something good. And there are many others like him, but we show this in our albums like the music is fast, melodic and aggressive. That’s actually what the band does in their own way.

For going back on the tourschedule, what is the best tour that you’ve ever did so far?

That’s very hard to pick, but the Machine Head tour was very nice. Because it was very long. I don’t know if it was 7 or 9 weeks, but we had a blast on this tour. That tour helped our career a lot. It took us from the underground hardcore scene to the introduction of other scenes. It was also a very good tour in general, because of great bands and great people. It’s hard to say, we did so many tours over the years, also in the States with bands like It Dies Today and God Forbid. Evergreen Terrace was also there. We’ve also been on tour with Scars Of Tomorrow; they are really great guys. It is hard to say, because most tours were so good. Also the tours with Suicide Silence and Maroon were memorizing and fun.

Would you do a split-album with Heaven Shall Burn again? Or maybe some other band?

(laughs) That question comes back to every interview.

Haha. I’m sorry. It’s just that I am really excited to see a third split-album between two phenomenal metalcore bands.

No, you don’t have to say you’re sorry. We actually want to do a third split-album, we talked many times about it. But we have to get some time. It’s always like this. When we are having a CD coming out and they are on a break, they call us if we have the time. But then we are on a tour or something like that. It’s our schedule problems and we want to do something cool. If we find the time, it’s definitely gonna be there. So it’s in progress. It should be easier now because now we have the same label, Century Media Records, so it could work.

How did the band between Heaven Shall Burn and Caliban come to stand?

The sounding guy from Lifeforce Records, we sent our demo records to him, he really liked our sound, but he wanted to meet us personally. Well, it was at a concert somewhere near Leipzig, Heaven Shall Burn was playing there as well, but under a different bandname. That was the very first time we met and became friends. We were constantly on tour with each other and we had somehow the same style. The people always wanted to see us together. We played tons of shows with each other and became friends. We had also a little project with some of the bandmembers of Caliban and Heaven Shall Burn, but because of time, it fell apart. It was like a melodic project, Andy was singing, Mike was playing guitar and the drummer of Edguy was also there.

What do you think the future will bring for Caliban?

I have no idea. I want to tour with the album and want to see the reactions. We haven’t played Europe a while. So we’re excited for the tour. We never look too far in the future. You will never know what will happen. We just see what comes around. We’re doing it as long as it’s fun for us.

Can you describe Caliban in 3 words?

Wow. Good question. (thinks) Ehm, Aggressive Melodic Intense.

Okay. Thank you! I wish you the best on the tour and further with Caliban.

Thank you. And thank you for this interview, too. It were very good questions!

Thank you!

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