With Wacken XXX looming up to stomp its big metal footprint on Germany again this summer, we’re taking a look at a bunch of the bands who are hitting its iconic stages for the first time. Today we feature the band with probably the best name on the bill: Critical Mess…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We are from Hanover in Germany.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
The whole world is in a sick state. It’s a Critical Mess we’re living in.
Describe your music. Who are your musical influences?
We’re all metal heads, death metal in particular, and that’s what you’ll find in Critical Mess. Everyone in the band exerts his/her influences. The initial idea was to play old school death metal with modern stylistics and sound. After hours and hours of rehearsing and discussing ideas, we ended up with a fresh style of death metal, that’s still brutal enough. There’s not too many bands that really had a grave influence on our music, but if you’re into old school death metal from the 90’s, you might get an idea of where most of our inspiration came from.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
Yeah, kind of. Both our albums have certain topics lyrical wise. On our first effort Human Præy, the lyrics portray humanity as greedy scavengers exploiting the earth. On our second album Man Made Machine Made Man, strong artificial intelligence is rising and taking over control of the planet. Dark stuff but hey, we play death metal.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
I don’t know, I’d have to count. Quite a few, especially last year when we played two European tours with Six Feet Under in Spring and Sinsaenum in Autumn. Playing live is the best thing you can do as a band. It’s the moment when everything you’ve worked and rehearsed for is coming together. We put a lot of energy into our shows and get back the same from the audience. That’s what it’s all about I guess.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
There were many. Maybe this one. It happened in Slovakia when we were on tour with Six Feet Under last year, when there was a totally drunk dude banging his head off in the front row the whole show. When we finished our set, he asked for Elmo’s pick. When he got it, he grinned at us and one moment later he swallowed it with a big gulp of beer and then stuck out his tongue, gave Elmo a high five and disappeared in the crowd without saying a word.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
Our second album will be released June 21st and we’re promoting the hell out of it! Can’t wait to play the new songs throughout the festival season.
Other than Wacken, what are your plans for 2019?
Besides the release of our second album, alongside a few club shows, we’ll be playing a bunch of pretty cool festivals this summer, Wacken Open Air just being one of them.
What are you most looking forward to at Wacken this year?
We’re planning a special little thing in Wacken. We will turn the audience into our camera crew and have them record videos to one particular song (using their mobile phones), that we will put together to a (hopefully) awesome live video. You can’t really plan that out 100%, and therefore we hope to gather enough great material to turn it into something worth seeing.
Critical Mess: official | facebook | instagram | youtube | spotify
