Intervju i tyska tidningen Intro

Här följer en översättning av en intervju i tyska tidningen Intro från tyska till engelska, gjord av en kille i Comatorium-forumet. Här får man veta lite om hur det gick till när dom började använda ouija-brädan, och “andarna” började framträda. Hemskt, verkligen hemskt.

The article says that Cedric used words from the voice that came from the Ouija board in his lyrics.

- How serious do we have to take the story behind the album?
Cedric: You can take it as serious as you like. If you don’t want to believe it, we’re ok with it. And when you do believe it, you’re one of the many people who think such things are possible. There are also people who believe in a devil next to a god. Nature is like that as well: ambiguous.

- Did all of that really happen? The Ouija board, the voices and the bad luck?

Omar: Of course. Why would we lie about that?
Cedric: Nobody forced us to tell this story, and nobody forced us to keep the story for ourselves.

- Omar, don’t you think you bought the Ouija board intrinsically?

Omar: That might be possible. But it didn’t seem like that to me. I just gathered some stuff and the board was something special, an antiquity. I also bought oil paintings from the 17th century in Jerusalem on which Jesus and Marie are pictured. The board was one of the many things I brought from Jerusalem.

- How do we have to imagine this store?

Omar: In fact it was a stand on a market place, a filthy place.
Cedric: The owners there are obviously looking for Americans and Europeans. In such a place, it’s difficult to sell things without upsetting radical Muslims, Jews or fundamental Christians.

- Can you describe your first session with the Ouija-board? How does it work?

Cedric: Just like a normal Ouija board. There are letters and numbers on the board. On our board, ‘the soothsayer’, the alphabet is backwards and the numbers started with 0 and ended with 0 (the last 0 means 10). ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are also on the board. You play with a pointer on which you and your friend need to put your hands on. You have to find out at which letters the pointer points.

- I have seen boards like that, but I can’t imagine that you can receive mythical messages through it.

Cedric: We have played so much with the soothsayer that we examined the board in many ways because we believed something was hidden within. Under some kind of protective coating, we found a piece of paper on which old poems were written. The poems were about 3 people: a mother, her daughter and a man who had a triangle relationship. The poem was about love, deception and infidelity. After their traumatizing death, they became ghosts trapped the board. We were in a way guards who passed their prison, heard their moaning, talked with them and wrote down everything.

- Scientists say that the movements of the pointer are the result of the carpenter-effect. Thinking about a movement can cause the movement to actually happen. What influence did you have on the story?

Cedric: That is the most pragmatic point of view. We were paranoid and we thought about it ourselves. If that theory is true, I must have a very angry and evil karma. But I think it’s not true. When we became successful as a band we didn’t want to lose a lot of friends, but it just happens…

- Was there a point at which you couldn’t rationally explain what the board was doing ?

Cedric: Yeah. For me that point was when our sound engineer collapsed which whom we had been working for 4 years. He was a person who knew how the songs needed to sound. In his manic state, he accused us of making a kind of hellish machine with our music. I don’t want to think about that anymore. It really hurt us when he went crazy. At that moment I thought: something’s not right here.

- How big was the chance of the band breaking up because of the board?

Cedric: *presses fingers together* this close. We have had 2 drummers and had to start over once again. That is why the album was a new start after a lot of bad luck. We knew well that the album had a powerful sound and was truly aggressive. We were able to handle the past events with it. We also found Thomas (Pridgen) this way. It was a duty to write down the voices of the Ouija board and to comprehend them.

- Is ‘The Bedlam in Goliath’ a concept album for you?

Cedric: Yes.

- How much were you responsible for the album?

Cedric: I would have said 50% but I think that the board knew that we didn’t read the messages out loud but that we wrote them down. The board could’ve adjusted itself to us because we weren’t afraid of the board. A lot of the lyrics were conceived through ‘automatic writing’. I sing exactly what the board has told us. Believe it or not…

- How did the rest of the text originate?

Cedric: I wanted to stay within the same theme. ‘Papillion’ grabbed my attention, the film with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. In the movie, McQueen is put in confinement for a very long time. I wanted to put myself into the mind of such an imprisoned person. Their greatest wish is to see the daylight. They would do anything for that. So my lyrics would be about desperate thoughts of such prisoners.

- What is the role of the character Goliath?

Cedric: Goliath is the sum of the three people: the mother, the daughter and the man. Goliath personifies the schizophrenic, the tormented voices on the album.

- Where on the world could this ‘Drama’ have taken place?

Cedric: In the Middle-East. Or in Africa. For me the story resembles the story of Adam and Eve because of the many religious artifacts. But when it would resemble the story of Jesus Christ, Jesus would be black and probably a woman. The Middle-East is an interesting place today because there a lot of stereotypes/prejudices about that region. The average Joe doesn’t know anything about the Middle-East. Everyone thinks everything is chaotic there and that they don’t have any technology. When people will listen to the album as a sort of audio-book, they will be able to imagine being there.

- Is ‘The Bedlam in Goliath’ strange to you now, a long time after its completion?

Cedric: No, the Ouija board was strange to us. Our album is the positive result of the confrontation with the board.

- Can Goliath (mentioned in the title and the title track) be seen as a personification of your music?

Omar: I have written the music for the album before it all happened. The events have influenced the strength of the music, but that’s all.

- The title means ‘The Chaos in Goliath’. When listening to the album, it sounds a lot more restless and aggressive than ‘Amputechture”.
Cedric: That probably has to do with our new drummer, Thomas. He has brought a lot of energy which is typical for our band. There wasn’t too much energy left in fact.

- With ‘Wax Simulacra’ you have made a pop-format single of under 3 minutes. How did this outsider song came to be?

Cedric: That’s easy: people expect something like that from us. If you are a fan of us you will always get to know something new. When we started with The Mars Volta, a lot of people wanted us to sound like At The Drive-In. Now a lot of people are hoping for a second Frances the Mute. For us a song like this is the best way to say ‘fuck you’. When people want to enjoy our concert, they have adapt to our rules. In the end we’re not DJ’s, we don’t do requests.

- The album is produced very interestingly. Sometimes the sound collapses as if someone pulled the plug out. Cedric’s vocals are distorted very unnaturally. Is there a bit of madness reflected in the production of the album?

Omar: No. Like I said: It might have an impact on the strength of the whole project. You said that the album sounds restless. This refers to that. But it simply sounds like us after our daily struggle for survival, after our own madness. I already had an aggressive album in mind from the start. I wanted to distance myself from the music we had already made. Away from Frances the Mute and Amputechture. It was just an artistic decision to make something new.

- Are we safe from the dangers of the board after listening the The Bedlam in Goliath thoroughly?

Cedric: No. The album is the antidote and the board Is the snake. When you are bitten by a snake, you use an antidote. That album is a serum, a remedy.

- What would you say if a lot of your young fans started to use Ouija boards and also began to experience strange things?

Cedric: That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll

Andra bloggar om: the mars volta, rock, musik, new age, skrock