SICK OF SOCIETY - We Have Something To Say ! (Punk-Rock - Interview with Chris)

- Please introduce yourself and let me know how it all began with the band ?
Hi, my name is Chris, i play guitar and sing in Sick of Society.
After longtime member Fizzi retired from Punkrock, the boys needed someone to fill the gap.
Falko who has already been a long time friend of the band joined them but wasn't quite sure if he could offer enough time to cover the bands needs since he was already a father at that time so the idea was to have not only one person but two to fill Fizzi's gap. That way a show could be played with either one of the guitarists or with both.
At that time i had already been part of several local bands that fit more or less to my taste and goals. The funny thing is, most of those bands blended Punkrock, Metal and 50ies music such as Rock'n'Roll or country together. Fun Times but those bands rarely played outside of their hometown so i wanted to get a step further and also i wanted to focus on Punk and play songs that contain a certain message. That's why i registered on some kind of TINDER for musicians. Oli wrote me a message one night that he stumbled across my profile and that he considers me the right person for the band. I was quite sceptic at first since i didn't like german music and Sick of Society already hat a lot of german songs that time but nevertheless i took part in one or two rehersals. Pretty soon it was quite obvious that he was right and i joined the band as a full time member.

- Describe your sound and explain why I should listen to YOUR band at all cost ?
We play loud and fast punk music leaning towards the metal side from time to time. Even though that's pretty common in punk music i think the speed, energy an precission have become some kind of trademark of Sick of Society. You can hear that on our records but more important you can feel it on our shows. At least that's what people always tell us after the shows so if there's someone to judge, it's these people :-)

- Lyrical and musical inspirations/influences ? How important are the lyrics for you ? Are there any specific messages or thoughts you try to develop and share through your lyrics ?
That's an interesting question and kind of hard to answer since our musical interests are so different and spread so widely.
On the one hand there are Steini and Oli who have their background in Metal, HC and all those tough music styles on the other hand there's me and Falko, beeing punkrockers from day one who are also into alternative, indie, postpunk and such styles. I think you can hear all those influences in our music. Lyricalwise we often deal with political or socially critical topics such as police violence, gentrification, social injustice and so on. At least those were the topics on our latest record but since that is again quite common in punk on the songs for our upcomming releases we tried to come up with a different approach. While writing we tried to find out what all the problems these days mean to us or how they affect our own lives, our own mental health and so on. Sometimes that's quite challenging but that really helps us to keep things fresh. So yes... lyrics are really important to us. We are definitely not the band to write some happy drinking song that everyone will sing along. We have something to say !

- About your latest release ?
All the songs on our latest release were written roughly between 2018 and 2020 and most of them dealt with topics that were big in those years. As mentioned before police violence, hate against refugees, social injustice and so on.
As we all know in 2020 we were hit by a worldwide pandemic. Rehearsals and shows weren't possible but homerecording was so we had all the time in the world to record our songs. We all have basic knowledge in recording and the necessary equipment for it so each member of the band recorded it's own tracks. After we were done we sent our tracks to a professional studio to get the songs mixed and mastered.
Oli always loved the Idea to name an album "Akupunktur" since the word also contains the word "punk" and he obviously also loves skulls so he came up with the idea of a skull that is covered in needles to match it to the word Akupunktur wich translates as acupuncture. Besides playing guitar and writing songs Falko also has a big passion for painting and anything graphic-related. Based on Oli's Idea he drew the head that is now on the front of the record. He also created the whole layout of the case, the booklet and so on. It's quite cool to have someone in the band who knows how to do all those things so we can keep it almost 100% DIY.
We released our Album as an ordinary CD and as an LP pressed in yellow vinyl. You can order it on our homepage www.sickofsociety.de, on our label 30 Kilo Records our you visit one of our shows, have a beer with us and buy it directly from our trunk ;-) But for now you can also stream it on spotify, deezer, and so on.
We also released a small 7" split record that we did toghether with our friends "Die Siffer". It is called "Schafe im Wolfspelz" which translates as "sheep in wolves clothing" and the message is that we're actually all really nice guys but we try to act hard. It's pressed in purple vinyl and it contains five songs. One new song by each band, one Song by each band where it covers the other band and one song that has been written by a close friend of both bands.
His name is B-Ware and he also did the artwork of the 7". I almost forgot about that record because we knew for a long time that we would do this project sooner or later so we recorded those tracks during the recording sessions for "AQ-Punk-tur"...
It kind of feels like it's also been part of "AQ-Punk-tur"

- Future plans ?
As mentioned before we're writing new songs that we want to release within the next few years. So far the new songs sound darker and more introverted but in a good way. We really like that!
Probably we'll release the first few songs in fall of 2024.
The music business has changed quite dramaticaly and releasing no music for four or five years is simply not possible if you want to stay relevant. Also we're not sure how important an album is these days. Because of all this streaming stuff sometimes it seems like people don't care much about an album anymore while single specific songs gained relevance.
So like i said the plan is to release a few songs now and then while working on the next few songs and as soon as we have 12 to 15 songs ready we MAYBE put them together and press them on vinyl.

- Your most insane dream with the band would be ?
I guess the answer to that question would differ quite a lot depending on who of the for of us you ask but to me that would definitely be opening for some idols of my teenage years such as Rancid, NOFX, Bouncing Souls, you name them... Those things do happen.
An earlier line up of our band opened the show for Sick Of It All for example. The boys often tell us about that evening and it makes me jealous everytime i hear about it but since we open quite often for big artists i still have hope :-)

- Your BEST & WORST concert and why ?
Best concert... Well since there have been many highlights i really can't name a specific one. Even though the venue was a rat hole opening for The Casualties was a special thing. We played a festival to raise money for children suffering from cancer. That show was also really nice and i think about it a lot. Next month we'll play in the legendary SO36 Club in Berlin. That will also be a higlight i guess.
While i really can't name a certain best show i can definitely name the worst one. It's been somewhere in eastern Germany. The stage barely offered enough space for our drumset, there were no people except of two or three drunkheads, the food for the bands was beyond awful, the sound wasn't good either since the bare concrete walls echoed like s#it and to make matters worse i played the wrong notes all the time.

- Next live-appearance(s) ?
- Berlin / SO36 / 11.05.
- Themar / Kulturgarten Festival / 24.05.
- Ulm / Beteigeuze / 26.07.
- Berlin / Cafe Köpenick / 10.08.

- Some words on your local scene - bands you're friends with and you'd like to name ?
Also a tough one... I could name at least 50 bands if not more, 'cause there are so many bands out there that we call friends and who deserve more attention than they actually get. I really don't want to forget someone.If you follow us on spotify we have that playlist called "Unsere Perlen vor eure Säue" where we try to support bands we like or that we're friends with. We also try to update it quite frequently. You should definitely check those bands out.

- Last word is yours..
Stay nice, stay positive, support your local and f*ck the facist scum out there...

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