A quick few words with Lunatica

If you were talking to a brand new listener, how would you describe your music?

I would say that we consequently developed our sound. It is still sort of symphonic melodic metal although it gets more difficult to put it into a drawer. I describe it as warm melodic metal with symphonic elements and a lot of feeling. The most important to us is always the melody.

What or who most inspires you to play this type of music?

Everybody in the band is listening to metal for many years. It was logical from the beginning to do this type of music, but not only metal, we have also various other different influences like movie scores and pop songs and, I think,we are also inspired by life in general. There are a lot of things going on this planet, so there will always be something to write about.

What has been the reaction to your latest album?

We knew that this album would polarize. We never released an album which is that various before. The response from fans and press is mostly positive so far. There are some critical voices who don’t like it at all, they say it’s still too poppy and too harmless. But hey! You can’t satisfy everybody! I always prefer having some negative reviews instead of having an album that is not interesting anybody. The fans love us for our melodies. We like it and the fans like it, that’s the most important to me.

What is the biggest inspiration for the album?

The last year was very exciting for us. We had some big changes as in the line-up, a new record company, recording a new album. All these things had in the end a positive aspect. We were really starting up to “new shores”. From the beginning we new that we would choose it to be the title for the new album. We did not set ourselves any limits during the songwriting process. With that in mind we let us inspire from many different influences which you can find on the new album. It was also not the intention to follow only a certain style. We just let grow all the ideas that we had in the creative process. Not thinking whether they would fit us or not.

On that album what track are you personally most proud of? (i.e. which one do you feel has the most of you in it?)

This often changes during the whole time you promote an album. Right now I like very much “My Hardest walk” because its powerful and has also beautiful soft parts. I think it represents perfectly the style of Lunatica. These extreme changes from hard to soft within a song are typical for Alex’s way of composing. Regarding the vocal parts, I think I gave every emotion that is possible to “Winds Of Heaven”, a song that is so different from the others. It was a real challenge to sing it and I’m happy with the final result.

What for you was your best tour/show?

There was first our tour with Mob Rules and Domain across Europe. This was a very special time. It was the first time that we were on tour and we had a good time out there. With the last album we were able to do a promotional gig for a spectacles producer in Milan. We were their new faces and had the perfect sound for his new collection called “Gothic”. We played that gig in a little club that was located in a former chapel. No one in the audience was a metal fan, there were opticians from all over the world. But they really liked our sound and freaked ttally out at the end.

If you could play with any band, who would it be?

You always hope, that you can hop on a big tour, that you can reach o lot of people with your music – for example like Nightwish or Blind Guardian. We know Nightwish personally but there was not the occasion to play a gig together so far. For me personally, I would love to go on tour with Pagans Mind, they are my absolute Number 1. I really love their sound.

What is your best story about this band?(i.e. when touring, recording or writing)

I don’t know if it’s the best story but it’s a funny one. For a gig in Zurich we rented a little transporter for the first time. Before that we always carried our equipment in our private cars but we knew that at that club there were not many possibilities to park the cars. We knew that the transporter was higher than our cars but our driver, I won’t tell any names, was not conscient anymore how high it really was. He tried to enter the parking garage of the venue and ripped off the whole roof of the transporter. Since that day, in certain circles they call him “cabrio driver”.

What’s next?

We are right now starting our tour in Switzerland. We also plan to do a tour outside Switzerland but I can’t give you further informations at this time. We are right now looking who is going on tour this autumn. We would like to accompany a more known band as a support act. The actual tourdates are immediately put on our homepage when it’s official.

What is your most headbanging track?

Do you mean from Lunatica or my personal headbanging track? From Lunatica it’s definitely “The Chosen Ones”, it has a cool guitar riff. My personal headbanging track ever is “Enter Sandman” from Metallica.