Germany is known for its rock festivals such as Wacken Open Air, the Christmas Rock Night and others. But it's also a country that lodges many talented bands. One of the bands that is definitely drawing the attention in their own country is Brain:FAQ. Even though the band doesn't exist very long, they've done dozens of shows and won several contests. With music reminiscent of bands like Machine Head and Soul Fly, they are cranking out songs that will rock the masses. Their upcoming album, however, is supposed to have only German lyrics. Is this a strategy to focus on the national market?

First of all, can you introduce the band Brain:FAQ? When did the band start, what have you done over the years and why?

In April 2000 we came together in Chemnitz (East Germany) to start Brain:FAQ. In the first place we were just four. There was Robert Kunz (guitar/vocals) and his brother Axel (drums/vocals) who had played together in the band Overhead before and Ralph Leistner (guitar). The first bass player had to quit soon so that we thought about the whole thing again. A new bass player was found and Andreas Herrmann - our lead singer -  came to the band which was the real starting point. We made a demo and played about ten shows in 2000. In the beginning of 2001 Silvia (the sister of Ralph) came to the band to replace the bass player who left us. In March 2001 we released our EP Brainstorming - which represented our state of development quite well at that time (it does not now). About 30 shows throughout whole Germany followed in 2001. Some highlights were big festivals like Christmas Rock Night and Freakstock.
In 2002 there are and will be also more than 30 shows and a new cd will be released in October.

What were the reasons for you and the others to start this band?

First of all we all love making music and pretty soon we found out that we fit together very well in musical things and very much personally. But there is one main reason why we started and still run the band: our faith in God. We are all Christians and that is a very important part of our lifes and our lyrics. We just wanna tell other people how good we feel living a life with a personal relationship to God and Jesus, This does not mean we want to preach to our audience or influence people. It's just about telling our experiences to the people - what they make out of it is their business.

What are musical inspirations for the band?

As a band there are inspirations like Soulfly, Machine Head and more. Some Meshuggah. We call our music groove-metal-core. If one calls it nu metal, it's more metal than new (even the new material). The inspirations of the members go from soul music over rock to death metal. So we have a wide set of personal favorites and musical influences.

So far you have only released one CD, the EP Brainstorming. I noticed this disc has a red, transparent jewelcase and I was wondering if there's some idea behind this or that you simply took it because it's different and looks cool...

There is no special idea behind it but a story: Originally the cd was completely blue - but while producing the factory mixed it up so that we had red cds in blue covers. We changed it and so we have some blue and some red ones. The case is just to make it really red and it's also an eye catching element.

A few weeks ago you finished recording a new album. What can you reveal about it?

There will be some more aggressive parts and also more melodic parts than before.
We tried to create bigger contrasts - and on the other hand to let it sound more straight and to find something like our own sound and style. There will be twelve songs and two instrumentals on it. We think that we brought our live sound and character on this record. It's a lot more emotional and better produced than the EP. It will be released at the end of October.

As I understand it, the band won a band contest twice which gave you some studio time. So, what did really happen?

That's right. The first one, last year, was a contest with about 60 bands from different regions (also CR) and we won one week of studio time (which we used for the upcoming album). It was really surprising for us, 'cause there have been a lotta good
bands. The second one was also regional and we won one week free studio again -
we are still thinking what to do with that - maybe an EP early next year.

I've heard that most songs on the new album are sung in German while your previous EP has mostly English songs. I've heard four of the new songs and they are in German. Why this obvious change in the policy?

All our songs are in German now. We changed that for several reasons. First of all, we think that our English is not good enough (in pronounciation and in words) to be released on CD. It's much easier for us to express ourselves in German. Our lyrics are quite important for us and we are very happy with the new lyrics which gonna reach the German audience much better we think (the average german does not understand a lotta english - I mean really understand!). Another point is that at the moment it's commercially much better to sing in German here and there are not that many metal bands which do so. So we could be kind of special with that way too.

Yet on the other hand you might loose interest from fans internationally. How much interest has there been in Brain:FAQ internationally so far?

I'm not sure if that will be the case - just look at Rammstein (not that I want to stress a comparison). They won popularity internationally because of their German lyrics. I think that's not so important. But still, our focus is more on Germany right now. You know we are working on coming on the German market and into the German Metal scene (that means there's a lotta work in front of us) so we don't think that much
about Europe so far. To your question - We didn't play any shows outside Germany so far (except one) and so I don't think that there was much interest for us outside the borders of our country (but we don't know what the future will bring...).

The album is supposed to come out this fall, followed by a tour with   the German metal band Sacrificium. What will this tour encompass? Is it a German only tour or does it have more countries on the list?

There are dates in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland and Germany of course. There will also be some gigs in Holland, but we will not be there on that part of the tour.

Any particular show you're looking forward to?

We are especially looking forward to the shows in Eastern Europe. The people over there are not so "overfilled" with music and media and if a band's playing in a club it's really special. They are still able to be excited (does not mean other countries are not,  but I think you know what I mean - It's special). But apart from that every show is special and there is always something surprising what makes it worth playing
everywhere.