The Inquisition: 010.Magma Waves

1. How did you come up with the name of the band? 

We had several ideas, all of which ended up with one guy in the band not liking them. In the end we wanted something we all liked. Our drummer Dennis then got the idea of Magma Waves somehow. He cannot even remember how. And with that everybody was more or less satisfied. The most important thing about band names is that if you have a band name, no matter how stupid it sounds or what it means, it will eventually grow on the band until the music is bigger than the name. And if the people like the band for their music it doesn’t matter how they’re called. 

2. Do you have a standard procedure of creating a song? Do you just jam around or is there a main riff and the track is build up on it? 

Usually there is one main riff by Ansgar. And usually we all love it and then we just work around that. In the end everybody influences the structure and everybody is free to express themselves. Since we don’t set any limits to ourselves we experiment a lot and try to include new elements into our music. 

3. What are your influences and what kind of music do you hear when you are at home? 

Everybody has different influences. Ansgar and Josi have a hardcore and slight indie/punk background and are really into post-rock these days, Mathias is the stoner rocker and Dennis used to be really into metal but listens to almost everything from jazz, j-pop, chiptunes to sludge, doom, stoner, post-rock and classical music, 60s soul and 70s rock. Musically our biggest influence used to be pg.lost and many of our riffs sound like them but that changed over time after we found our personal style. We still love their music of course. Mathias’ influences are Queens of the Stone Age, Truckfighters and stuff like this and Dennis is a little more into heavy stuff like Cult of Luna, Fall of Efrafa, Isis and Rosetta. 

4. What’s the first record you've ever bought ? 

Dennis: Iron Maiden – The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son 

Mathias: probably a Modern Talking Best of 

Ansgar: some single from the 90s 

Josi: some 90s gangster rap 

5. Name a band that you would like to share the stage or tour with? 

There are numerous bands that would offer a great opportunity for us to share our music with their audience. Then again there are some personal preferences. Dennis would love to support Boris or Mono in Japan, Mathias would like to tour with Nine Inch Nails and he probably wouldn’t say no to a support slot for Queens of the Stone Age, Ansgar would like to tour with pg.lost (as do Dennis and Josi). 

6. Did the internet and specially the blogs helped to spread your music around the world? Name a place (country) that you were surprised to know your music has reached to? 

A few blogs and websites shared our EP and definitely helped spread our name. Also some online samplers and video compilations featured our music which gave us a good head start for our first release. The most surprising land our music reached was Indonesia. We received a long mail from someone in Tasikmalaya which is only a two day ride by train from Bali, he told us. That was pretty amazing. 

7. Do you support the idea of bandcamp where fans can decide the price or services like spotify? 

We totally support the idea to give out mp3s via a name-your-price model. Our experience with ex-bands shows that mp3s with a fixed price hardly sell at all. The listeners really appreciate the attitude of bands who give out their mp3s for free and have the customers decide whether to donate something or not. And they reward it with a donation. And the people who just don’t have any spare change for the EP can still download it, burn it onto a CD, listen to it in the car and tell their friends who hear the CD in their friends’ car which this band is. This is mouth-to-mouth promotion and this is a very valuable system for a band. 

8. Where do you see yourselves in 5 years? 

This year we want to record our first full length album and hope that we aroused enough attention by then that we might get a nice deal with a small and devoted label. We want to play live a lot and keep writing music. So in five years we probably have two records out and played many shows and have a loyal and awesome fanbase. 

9. Is the artwork of an album important nowadays in the digital era? 

We actually had the discussion about whether we need an album cover or not for our first release which was digital only at first (we are currently working on a CD version). But especially in the digital age you need a good artwork. These days digital artworks are even more interactive and present to the listener when their iTunes turns into the colours of the artworks’ edges, when it becomes the smartphone wallpaper while you listen to it etc. Therefore a unique and memorable artwork is important. Apart from that I think that the cover artwork is still the visual representation of the music. After the music was written the artwork is the visual expression of the artists’ audio impression while they listened to it beforehand. 

10. What is your favorite album cover? 

Dennis: Iron Maiden – Killers / Black Sabbath – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Mathias: John Frusciante – Niandra Lades And Usually Just A T-shirt

Ansgar: Brand New - Daisy

Josi: O’Brother - Disillusion

11. It seems that a lot of people are turning on vinyl again. Why do you think that is and which is your preferable media format? 

Vinyl seemed uninteresting to the masses for like a decade in the 90s because people were overwhelmed by new media formats. But quality will endure all which is why people came back to buying vinyl. It is made for eternity, has a way better sound and feels better when you hold it in your hands than CDs. Personally we love vinyl and would love to release everything we have on vinyl but for a small band without proper budgets it’s simply difficult to pay for such a production by ourselves. That’s why we hope to get a small release deal for our first LP or even our already digitally released EP. 

12. What's the funniest story or moment as a band? 

Well there are the occasional party stories one could tell or how nervous one gets before the show starts. But there is more to being in a band. The moment when you jam over a riff and everybody feels that you’ve just created the perfect part for the song or when you get asked to play as support for an awesome band or at a great festival, and also when someone comes to you after a concert and tells you how they liked the show or your album. Since we are only together in this lineup for a year now not much has happened to us yet.

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