New Blood is the fourth album from the ghoulish German band The Other. Vocalist Rod Usher introduces us to his band, who is well-known in Europe and now trying to conquer the rest of the world.
Give us a brief history of your band.
We started out as a Misfits cover band in 1999, just to have some fun playing cover songs of that great band. And after playing more and more shows, people kept wanting us to write our own songs in Misfits-style. We did, the fiends loved it, and after a while we stopped doing the cover shows when The Other became more and more popular and the first album was so successful.
And with the second album We Are Who We Eat we found our own style in the horrorpunk genre as well and mixed punk rock with metal and gothic influences...Very soon we actually supported the Misfits live and later bands like The 69 Eyes, German Punk-legend Bela B., The Damned, Balzac, The Cult, Alice Cooper and many more. Plus we played tons of small and huge festivals, toured Europe and the U.S. west coast and just now released our fourth album. New Blood is actually the first album to not be released on our own label Fiendforce Records, but on the well known Rock-/Metal-Label SPV.
How would you describe the sound of New Blood?
We improved our songwriting and the sound. This album is pure horror punk, with mostly fast tracks, dark singing, haunting melodies and the influences of goth and metal. Imagine Misfits, Danzig, Samhain, Rob Zombie, AFI, Type O Negative and Sisters of Mercy thrown together. The reviews in Europe are the best we've ever gotten from the huge metal magazines to the punk fanzines, so we really hope you guys over there will like it, too. I think it's our best album so far. New Blood was produced by Waldemar Sorychta who also worked with Moonspell, Therion, Lacuna Coil, The Gathering and others and he did an awesome job with giving us a big but natural sound.
Tell us about your comic book.
If you're interested in it, it's available via mailorder through www.x-tra-x.de. The book is in German, so you may need to brush up on your high school German. The storyline was written by me and then transformed into panels and speech bubbles by the artists. It tells the story of each band member's history. I, for example am the real Roderick Usher from Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and I survived the crash of the house and fled. Then it turns out that I am a werewolf and an angry mob chases me and I get shot with a silver bullet. I'm then reanimated by our drummer Doc Caligari a decade later along with my bandmates whose histories are explained as well. The comic contains references to old E.C. comic books and to Poe and Lovecraft, so I'm sure horror fans will enjoy it. The second part is in the planning stages and will include an English translation.
What are your upcoming tour plans?
This year we have to concentrate on Germany and Europe. We've just played a show with Alice Cooper and lots of smaller gigs and festivals and will also play the legendary Wacken Open Air with bands like Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Slayer etc. and the Mera Luna with Sisters of Mercy, Placebo and many more. Then in October we will head out on the road with our friends Blitzkid and Nim Vind for the Hell Nights 2010 tour here in Germany. We hope to return to the U.S. in May 2011. If you wanna book us, get in touch through MySpace.
Anything else you'd like to promote or mention?
We love to hear from the fiends out there, so if you wanna get in touch, please do so via our MySpace or Facebook sites.
(photo courtesy SPV Records)
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