Interview Lacrimas Profundere: Oliver Nikolas Schmid

Artiest: Lacrimas Profundere

Geïnterviewde: Oliver Nikolas Schmid (gitarist)

Interview afgenomen via: e-mail

Label: Napalm Records

Hi! I’m Tim from Festivalblog. With whom do I have the pleasure? I have some questions for you, would you like to answer them? Thanks in advance!

Hey Tim, great to hear you, Oliver Nikolas of Lacrimas Profundere talking.

Normally I was going to interview you on Eurorock, but due to the circumstances I imagine, this didn’t work out. How did you experience this festival?

Yeah, it was a real nightmare of organisation and there was simply no chance for a normal timetable including concert, eating, drinking beer or doing interviews. Many people said that they didn´t get paid and that nobody knew if the festival continued. We got the pre-payment confirmation a day before we started the trip and we knew Eurorock, a very cool and well known festival, so we decided to put our backline on the stage and make a quick soundcheck. After that, suddenly our technican guy came to me and said, he got the order to „stop“ for a while, because there were some problems he didn´t know, so we left the stage and went directy to the production office to ask what was going on and also were directy thrown out of it. We tried to get some food or a beer after a 10 hour trip from Munich to Belgium, but there was no food. After 2 hours waiting and fighting for the 3 bottles of beer we finally got the stage manager to come in and he said that we should start now with the show, so we tried to do the show as good as possible. After the concert we went to the next supermarket in Neerpelt and bought some beers and some food by ‚our own‘, checked out the show of our alltime favorites Anathema and went directy to the hotel and a really hard and strange day came to an end.

Regardless of all the issues, what did you think about your concert and performance there?

Like I said, it was a really hard job at this time to open the stage again after 3 hours of nothing in front of a, for sure,  distracted audiance because at this time nobody knew how or if the festival continued. So we only can say THANK YOU to all the people there and it was great to see that the tent was completely packed during our performance, on the other hand, it was rainy outside, so perhaps the only reason was the weather, haha!

Lots of festivals to come, are you looking forward to it?

Yeah, so many, we´re so proud to play Metalhead Meeting in Bucharest and Masters of Rock in Czech Republic during the summer, or the shows in St. Petersburg or Finland, we really can´t wait.

Do you prefer festivals or venue concerts?

Both, it really doesn´t matter. For me life is good if there is an amp, a stage and my guitar. Ah I forgot: and a handful of people would be nice.

You recently performed some shows together with Moonspell. How did it go?

Yeah, we know the guys for such a long time, they are on the same record label as us, I adore them since the 90´s, so it was really the time to do some shows together. It was awesome, especially the London gig!

You last album studio album ‘Antiadore’ already dates from a few years back. Are you busy with a new album?

Time passes by and for me it felt like we just recorded the Antiadore album and now it´s time to enter the studio again! We´re not that kind of band that could release an album every year. We always need about 2 or 3 years to charge our batteries and find the right mood to compose. If you want to create something special that lasts for eternity, you need time to throw yourself into the unknown and see what happens, I think this is what rocknroll means, to lose yourself in music. At the moment we have about 16 songs very rough and surprisingly dark, so I´m really sure we will enter the studio this year!

How do you compare it to previous albums?

More deeper, more slower, more melancholic, more „doomy“ and more into the mood of the albums we did during the 2000 to 2007 period!

How are you guys recording an album? Is there 1 person responsible for writing lyrics, another for the music or is it a team effort?

Normally I am at home and send the stuff to the others. We discuss it, the direction, the tune and I continue. At the end it´s really simple, there is only one rule in Lacrimas: let the funny part in music do the David Hasselhoffs, or the Beach Boys out there. Ah, another one: tell about something that happens to yourself! How could I write about fighting a dragon, if I never did? [Laughs]

Where do you get your inspiration from?

You know, every Musician is on a never ending search. A search for new challenges, for the next drink or simply the door to the tourbus, haha. We all grow older and we´ve learned from our mistakes, we don´t look left or right and do what other bands do, we only play what we are and what we feel at the moment of composing a new album. We don´t paint our faces because Kiss do it so great, we don´t wear masks, because this is something Slipknot stands for, we arrive at a club or a festival, jump out of the bus and enter the stage. The only thing I do, is to change my socks. [Laughs] We don’t give a shit to whats “in” at the moment! Inspiration is everywhere, just open your eyes. By the way,  last week I read something really cool on Youtube in the comments to our track My Release in pain: one girl said our singer sounds like Ville Valo of HIM, another guy wrote that the music sometimes reminds him of In Flames and the other guy added, OK, then “HIM FLAMES”,  so this could be the next inspiration, to create the supergroup HIM FLAMES. [Laughs]

As a musician, do you still have the chance to visit concerts yourselves and if so which ones?

We play so many festivals during a summer, or toured with most of my favourite bands, that we almost have the chance to see every band we wanted at the same festival, so normally we don´t visit concerts in our free time, my last concert I was travelling for about 200 miles was Mötley Crue back in 2009 I think…

How did you end up being a musician and in a band? Did you follow any professional lessons?

Yeah, I had some lessons, a friend of mine is guitar teacher and one of the best players I met so far, on the other hand I learned many things by doing myself and the Guitar-Songbooks of Overkill or other Thrash Metal Legends.

To end this interview, can you describe Lacrimas Profundere in 3 words?

“Dark”, “heavy” “and”, oh sorry delete: “and” we choose "nasty” as the third one,  hahaha!

…And maybe one last question: why did you pick a Latin phrase as band name?

take 5 crazy guys, a bottle of jack and a latin-dictionary.

Thank you for your time and lots of luck in your further career! Any last comment fort he readers and fans?

Thanks a lot. My biggest thing and most important thing is a huge thank you for all the support we’ve been given over the years. I’m really, really thankful for that. I can’t describe how much of a great life that these supporters have given to me. We’re excited about the fact that we still have the opportunity to go out and play and that people still come to the shows, you know, we still get the chance to bring our music to people. The band has been together for so long and we’re still able to keep the name alive and have a great time doing it. We’re active with all the social medias, the Twitters and the Facebooks, so on and so forth. So if people want to reach out and see what we’re doing, check it out. C U soon Belgium, it was a pleasure. Oliver Nikolas Schmid, LACRIMAS PROFUNDERE