CHIMAIRA : CHAOS IDEA...

-Mark : Basically, I was watching the movie ‘Platoon’, and there’s a scene where Charlie Sheen is in Vietnam

and he’s writing a letter to his grandmother back home, saying : ‘someone once wrote : hell is the impossibility of reason, and that’s what this place feels like’, so for some reason when I was watching the movie, the line with the impossibility of reason kept sticking in my head. I thought that was pretty cool so I looked at it like : here’s this guy, and he’s in the worst place in the world that he can possibly be, but yet he’s making it better for himself by remembering things like being back home and taking the time to help himself make good out of a terrible situation. So I felt that was how I wanted my lyrical content to be like : if things are going bad, there’s a lot of messed up things going on, in life, in the world or whatever, and instead sit around and complain about them, let’s do some things positive about it. That’s where the title came from.

-I suppose you felt more confident for this album, after two years of touring and the success of your first album ?

-Mark : Yes definitely : when we did our first record, we were pretty much a new band, we signed a record deal and they said they’d make our record like a week later ! We only had a few songs ! It was kind of like we threw together everything , we came really fast, and just wasn’t organized and things didn’t come up the way we wanted them to, but this time we spent all the time we wanted to spend and we’ve got to do everything on our own and it was much better for us to do it this way.

-What are for you the main differences with ‘Pass out of existence’ ?

-Mark : Well, what just I get said it’s like the whole fact that we actually got to spend the time writing what we wanted to write and not supposed to hurry up and write something : you can take your time and it’s gonna be great. We had a vision as soon as, I think, two months before our first record even came out we already started writing this record because we knew it was going to be better. We had a vision, we had ideas, it just came together.

-For this record, you choose Ben Schiegel (Switched singer, too) as a producer : was it to get a more raw and heavy sound ?

-Mark : Yes. Ben has been recording the members of the group when we were in other bands for that long, so he knows all of us very well, he knows the kind of sound we like, the vibe we like, and we started playing with this band, he would do our demos for Roadrunner. This time, we did the demos for our new album and they wondered why he doesn’t just do the record, because that’s how you guys are supposed to sound, and we all agreed. He’s the person that can make our sound as honest as we need to sound.

-So, you’ll work him in the future ?

-Mark : Yes, definitely. I don’t know the actual tracking of everything, and I think I really want to work with Colin Richardson the whole way through, but I think that there will be something that we’ll do before going in like have him check out the songs and gives his ideas because he have a very good input on our songs.

-Slayer was a very big influence for you ?

-Mark : I’ve been a Slayer fan since I’m eight years old, I’m twenty six now, so it’s quite a long time ! We’ve been on tour with them, and just watching how they perform every night, it wasn’t just their songs which influenced us, it was their musicianship, how professional they were, how they treated us as an opening band : they treated us like we were headliners as well, which is very rare, and now we’re good friends, that’s very cool. We would like to tour again together, and possibly overseas, instead of in the States. It’s totally way to early to say, we’re on totally different time schedules as bands, right now !

-I suppose you’re very happy to see the end of nu metal ?

-Mark : I really didn’t understand what the nu metal thing was until we were lumped into that category in the States, and they were telling us that, and I’d say : ‘How are we the same as bands like Papa Roach, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Smack or Static X, we’ve got nothing to do with those bands !’ So it’s just frustrating, and I mean when we went to do this record, we wanted to make sure that no one would be able to call us that ever again !

-For this record, you chose a very light artwork for the cover sleeve to make a contrast with the darkness of the music. What do it represent ?

-Mark : Basically, it’s a logo that we designed for ourselves ; the original idea and the concept is from Medieval time, the Chaos. When we started our band, with so many different musicians, it’s like working in chaos, so we took the old medieval time logo for chaos and we put this in here and so our fans knows that it’s our band, and when we went to make the record, we wanted that our fans searching for our new cd would find it right in front of their face and also for new people that are going to become our fans, if you go to a record store, I guarantee that this record cover is going to stand out more than most and people are wondering what it is and want to check it out. There’s many reasons for choosing it.

-Sepultura used it long ago...

-Mark : Yes, for Chaos A.D, but ours is quite different.

-I’ve heard that your lyrics were influenced by cinema too, especially Kubrick and Clive Barker movies ?

-Mark : Kind of, and more Stanley Kubrick, for ‘Shining’ : the sound pictures in the gold room. I wasn’t watching the film, but I had pen and paper in front of me and I was listening to the film and wrote down my own visions. Even if I have seen the movie million times and know what’s happening, I try to put myself in a different mind set, and not even watch but just listen and write lyrics based on that, it’s pretty fun !

-So, would you enjoy to compose a score, or a soundtrack ?

-Mark : Yes, I‘ve always been into creating music by myself, and in studio I’ve done noise stuff, hardcore stuff, anything just on my own, playing all instruments. I have met somebody from where you live, in Cleveland, he’s starting to get the money together to make an horror film and he asked me to do the score for it. So if it comes together, then I’ll get to do it, and I think that would be pretty neat. But I have no time, right now, to offer services and writing stuff, I’m just concentrate on this band and so I don’t think I would be able to do that before maybe two years. It’s pretty far down the road !

-More score or songs ?

-Mark : I would probably want to have a song from the band I’m in, and also score stuff.

-Talking about movies, you met James Gandolfini, from the Sopranos, on the set of your last video, ‘Great white’, when everything burned down ?

-Mark : Yes, it was in March this year, we were shooting the video for ‘Down again’ and, if you’ve ever seen the video, it’s like a tomb of gaze, like bandages, and the light exploded one of the lighting things, a spontaneous spark hit the gaze and everything burst into flames ! Where we were filming was a whole set for movies and everything, tons of different studios, and James Gandolfini was working on a film next door, a movie with Ben Affleck, something for Christmas. So he came out, and all the fire trucks were there and he said : ‘I knew I just took a shit, but I didn’t think it was this bad !’ He’s really nice and really cool, we took pictures of him and it was really cool of him to do that, and we were pretty happy.

-If Chimaira was a movie, which one could it be ?

-Mark : ‘Freddy versus Jason’, which we already did : I’ve been waiting for that movie for ten years, so when I knew they were making it, I said we’ve got to get on this soundtrack, and be the music and the movie. And both happened, so it was pretty cool, but I think that if they do anything related to horror movies, I would like to be a part of that, because our music is not meant to fit into American Pie or movies like that. With horror movies, we can get away with it.

-Could you tell 4 records with changed your life at a moment ?

-Mark : Alice in chains ‘Dirt’, Slayer’s ‘Reign in blood’, Metallica’s ’ Kill them all’, and, this is a weird one, but Portishead ‘Live in New York City’ !

-One record on which you would have loved to participate to, at any level ?

-Mark : Alice in chains’ self-titled record, the last one they put out.

-What do you think about the Internet and tell me about the website of the band ?

-Mark : The Internet is basically how I’ve come to be sitting here right now with you, because when we first started playing was when Napster was coming under a lot of pressure and getting taken down in the States : we were wondering why all of these musicians were going against Napster and why don’t we kind of like build our career that way, using Napster, so we would all e-mail people to check us out on Napster, download our songs, and kids thought it was cool that some bands are telling us to listen and download their music. I don’t know anybody that’s not on line now, it’s so important, more so than magazines : it helped us to get signed, so it’s very important. Everything we do, we make sure that the main Internet people know what we’re doing, so we’re always sending like a whole list of contacts, people that report news on bands, we send everything.

-The great thing is you can get Internet anywhere in the world, and in the contrary, many magazines are difficult to find even in their own country !

-Mark : Oh yes ! I’m always trying to find magazines where we are in ! When I’m not on tour, I’m on line for twelve hours a day sometimes !

Interview made on 13th October 2003 in Paris

Thanks to Karine, Anne Claire and Alex !

Visit Chimaira's official site : www.chimaira.com