Expellow

Expellow comes from Switzerland and they are really a good metallic hardcoreband or what to call it. October 2018

Please tell me a little bit history of the group?  

E:Expellow was founded in 2006 by Gudi, Taz, former guitarist Sergio and former drummer Bernhard, and fronted by former Vocalists Janina and Abraham.

In 2007, Mik joined in as an additional Vocalist, in 2008 Moritz replaced Bernhard on the drumkit. After Janina and Abraham left to pursue other projects, 

Mik Dean replaced them both. The Band played various concerts and released their home recorded Demo „the silent days are over“ in 2010.

Five years later, in 2015, „Modern Age Credo“ followed and Nici replaced Sergio on the guitar. The Band started to get more known in the scene, 

went on touring Europe with danish band Raunchy in 2016 and played even more and continuingly better shows. In 2018, „We Held The Line“ was released 

and Expellows position in the game was better than ever.  

Please tell me a little about every member in the group right now, age, family, work, interests and something bad about everyone? Earlier bands?

Other bands on the side?
E:Mik, 28, works in gastronomy, lives in a shared apartment in Zurich City, enjoying life being a childless, free woman. Likes sports, video games,

 army related stuff and being outside with friends. Was bassist of [Act of Reprisal] from 2008-2010. 

Bad thing:  Can be highly unreliable at times.  

Daniel “Gudi”, 31, works in IT, lives in a small town near Zurich.

I’m mostly working … for the job or Expellow, also I’m an audio engineer and do some recording / mixing from time to time. I played a few years

with another metalcore band and actually startet a second band with some friends (hardcore/Punk-ish I would say). My worst behaviour is,

that I can’t say “NO”. Should learn this somewhen 😉.

Nici, 25, mechanical engineer student atm, live in Winterthur. Before I got to Expellow I played in a Deathmetal Band and got some experience there.

I also work parttime in a bar as a barkeeper. My bad thing is that I'm often late and lazy.

Taz, 32, works as a poly-mechanic near Zurich. Living together with my beautiful girlfriend.

Beside Expellow I do like cats and cars. I started playing bass when expellow was founded. So it is my first and only band. Sometimes

I am lazy, and I really often forget things.

Moritz, 28, works as “Building Electronic Engineer”. Hobbies are drums, riding motorbike and spending time with his beloved.

Played a few years @ Tumba Zaffa. 

I can hear much different influences but mostly hardcore and metal(metalcore) etc? Favorites from the past?   

E:Most of us are open minded and listen to all kinds of music, yet the genres we‘re most congruent as a band are punk, hardcore 

and especially metalcore, so yes, those are (and have been in the past) our main influences. 

Expellow are you satisfied with the name? How did it came up? You weren’t afraid that some other band would be named like this?

 Which is the best bandname you know? 
E:Our bassist came up with the name someday and nobody objected. It kinda mixes up the term of being expelled with the meaning of being an 

outsider, but in a way that doesn‘t really make sense (because, well, it came from a bassist). It‘s pretty unique, so if you type the name into any 

searching tool on the world wide web you‘ll find nothing but our band at first try. That‘s why we keep it.  

Best band name we know? No idea. But one of the most funny ones: We Better The Bread With Butter. Most metal one: The Black Dahlia Murder

 
What´s the best thing with playing live? 

E:Best thing with playing live is the crowd and the new friendships you make, be it fans or other musicians, promoters, whatever. There‘s no 

better way to feel the beating pulse of your musical passion than playing live. 

And where is best to play? And the worst place?

E:It really depends, there isn‘t really a country, or place, or venue where it‘s best or worst to play because a bad show can be caused by 

bad promoting, sucky lineup, boring crowd or just plain bad organisation. There are best cases, worst cases and everything in between. Sometimes you‘re lucky, sometimes you‘re not. Best to play is where the good things I listed add up, worst is where they don‘t. 

How is to play this sort of music in Switzerland right now? Which types of bands do you have concerts together with?
E:There is a scene, definitely, but it has changed a lot. Switzerland is really small but has a ton of bands in the metalcore/hardcore genre. We most often play with those kind of bands, but we‘ve played shows with artists from a very wide range of musical genres, and we couldn‘t care less. If people are cool, it‘s gonna be a fun night! 

How would you describe your music in three words?
E:Metal with breakdowns 

What does punk mean to you, is it only a word or is it a lifestyle?
E:It‘s both. Some of us were punks in their teens and have that background. But we don’t consider us part of any scene, we just do our thing. 

How do you see on downloading, mp3 and that stuff? 
E:It‘s good mostly. It has made it easier to connect to people and spread your music. If people like you enough they‘re still going to support you. But you don‘t make the big money with music anymore, you make cash with being a show, with the marketing of yourself as indivduals. Times have changed. 

But yeah, we‘re making the wrong kind of music to be famous anyway, so we can have a postive look on the situation and be happy about the word spreading fast and with great reach. 

How is it to live in Switzerland right now? Politically? Fascists? We had an election this Sunday where the “racists” got almost 18 %?
E:Switzerland has 25% foreigners and it‘s mostly absolutely peaceful. Our social welfare systems are working well. Of course we are facing problems too, there‘s a fascist scene, fueled by high migration numbers, as there is in almost every European country nowadays. But thanks to direct democracy, swiss people feel included in the governing process and are also partly in power of where the country is headed politically, so we don‘t have that breeding ground for extreme outrages that is causing right wing parties to win elections in other countries.

We do have some problems too, regarding integration and welfare abuse, but we‘re doing comparably well. I‘d say our worst problem in Switzerland is, that everything is so goddamn expensive.

Is there any good bands from Switzerland now? Is the punkscene/hardcorescene/metalscene big? How is it in your hometown? 
E:There are a lot of good bands from Switzerland from many genres and scenes! Especially in Zurich, there are many possibilities to visit some shows from rock music to black metal and everything in between.
           

What do you know about Sweden? Many people thinks Switzerland is Sweden and the opposite way , is there anything you have been noticed of? 

E:When we hear of Sweden, the first things that comes to our minds is the big amount of metal bands in Sweden. The second thing is the “parliamentary monarchy” which in fact is a normal democratic parliament; I think, that’s because the media often present the Swedish royals. 

The biggest problem is, that in many latin languages those two countrys are pronounced more or less the same (Expample Spanish: Suecia / Suiza).  

 
Have you heard any good bands from Sweden? 

E:Sure! We were supporting Raunchy (DK) on their “Singularity Tour” with Wasteland Skills (SWE). Sweden is really known for their great metal bands like Opeth, Meshuggah, At The Gates, In Flames, Arch Enemy etc. etc. etc!  

 
Your lyrics, who does them and what influences you? Is it easier to do lyrics now or was its easier to do it when you was younger? Never in Polish( I wrote wrong language here)? 

E:Mik writes all the lyrics.

Mik: my main influence is life itself, stuff I‘ve experienced and such. I‘m mostly very direct about it, but sometimes I‘ll parcel the things in a story, as for example in our most recent albums title track „We held the line“, where the lyrics are about a group of soldiers standing their ground until their very death, which is in reality a metaphor for surviving depression.

Writing flow really depends on your current state of mind, not really your age. From my experience, I can tell that I‘m more creative the worse I feel. When my life is most fucked up and hopeless, I never run out of ideas.

It‘s a little difficult now, as for I‘ve widely stopped giving a fuck, so most things that affected and concerned me years ago don‘t matter anymore. I guess I‘ll have to throw myself into the next borderline experience to write another record, haha!

I don‘t speak polish, so no.

And swiss german only works with feel-good-hip hop, trust me. 

Is there any subject that you never will write anything about?? 

E:Politics, because even while we’re all left-leaning we‘re not a political band. None of us is enough into politics to go specific in our lyrics. Yeah, and probably everything that falls into the category of stuff that Tobias Sammet would use in his music. Rule of thumb to live by.

 
Politic and music, does it goes hand in hand? Which is your most political song? 

E:Politics and music CAN go “hand in hand”, but we never really had a straight political song.  

 
Best political band/artist? 

E:For me (Daniel) “The Dead Kennedys” always did a great job in putting hard and true words in their songs (politically). And I also have to mention Reinhard Mey and Slime (first of many that come to my mind). But in the end, it’s also how you interpret and understand the lyrics when they aren’t really straight forward.  

 
Do you think that music(lyrics and so on) can change anyones life, I mean people who listens to music? 

E:Music can help you through rough times and it never asks for anything but to be listened! And it can always bring you back to a certain point in time. The lyrics especially can also direct you to a certain way or can support your actual thoughts. For lyrics to change a life, you really need to be in a special situation, a turning point, to really have a big impact on your life. Music can’t change you, but you can let it help you. 

 
Your cover on your CDs looks really nice, is it important to have a record cover which shows people which type of music you play? Do you have any history about every one of your covers. If you have please tell me.. Your favorite recordcover? Who does your covers? And do you have any good recordstores in your hometown? 

E:THX! 😊 I think, it can give the album a special vibe whenever you take it from the shelf. It’s just important for the “first contact” when you don’t know an album. But it can give you a certain picture how the music could be when you see the artwork.  

There’s not really a history to the artwork of our albums; we always let our designers some space to do what they want to. But there’s always the human being in the foreground so you can empathize to the feeling of the picture.  

The last two covers were done by Oly (Breakdown Of Sanity, Guitar). The first one was done by Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe. 

 
Is it important to get out physical records of your stuff? Why or why not? Vinyl, CD, cassette, what do you prefer if you could choose whatever ? 

E:For us, it’s important to have something in our hands after creating songs. It’s just a good feeling to be able hold your work in your hands! CD’s are great; Vinyl is also cool for really special albums that you want to celebrate even more. It just gets you in a special mood to take a vinyl out and put it on the player. 

 
Please tell me a funny thing which have happened during your career and under some gig? 

E:One of the best things was our guitarist Nici falling to the ground and landing on his bottom but kept playing (video footage available)!  

 
How does your audience look like? Which people do you miss on your concerts? Which is the biggest band you ever have played together with?  

E:It depends from show to show; we have supporters from the hardcore and metal scene alike. So we don’t miss anyone; we’ll just wait for the next gig 😉. The biggest band we played with is “Soulfly” I think.  

 
Please rank your five favoriterecords, five favoriteconcerts and five most important things in life? 

E:1 per band member: 

Gudi“Killswitch Engage – Alive Or Just Breathing”, Vale Tudo @ Werk21 (2016), Justice & Music 

Mik: Px-Pain - Denying the Consequences. Killswitch Engage @ With Full Force 2011, Personal growth, love, pain.

Moritz: Breakdown Of Sanity – Perception. Arch Enemy show a few years ago.

Nici Phinehas – Till The End , Rise Against somewhen in 2014 I guess, A good work&life balance

Taz  In Flames – Clayman, my favourite concert was System of a Down. And most important is to be happy, with what you have, but never give up your dreams.

 
First, last and most expensive record ever bought? 

E:Gudi: Perhaps “Nowhere – 1. Demo”, “First Brawl – Full Of Nothing”, Never checked prices 

Mik: can’t remember

Moritz: Blink182 – Take Of Your Pants And Jacket, prices were never checked.

Nici  First I think was “Eluveitie - Slania” and the last could be “Phinehas - Till The End”, also never checked the prices

Taz  First is Captain _Jack – The Misson. And the last one was Eskimo Callboy – The Scene. I guess they are all equally priced.

 
Is it boring with interviews? Is it much interviews?? 

E:Mostly, we don’t get the same questions. So It’s quite interesting to hear what people want to know. There aren’t too much interview requests; perhaps one per month. 

 
If you could choose five bands from the past and the history and nowadays and both dead and living bands to have a concert together with your band. Which five have you been chosen? 

E:That’s perfect to choose a band for every member:  

Gudi: Killswitch Engage 

Mik: Queen. Just to see Freddy live.

Moritz: As many as possible

Nici  Pantera probably.

Taz  First I wanted to play with Caliban and Eskimo Callboy, both dreams came true. So Parkway Drive is next.

 
Is music a good way to get out frustration and become a nicer person outside the music?? 

E:For sure! It really helps to get out of your daily routine and be allowed to be angry what isn’t really possible in “the real world”. 

 
Which is the most odd question you ever have got in an interview? 

E:There was an interview many years ago, where we we’re asked, how long you are able to play in a band without being too old for it. The answer should be: Hopefully never 😉  

Futureplans for the band? 

E:Play many shows, next year hopefully some more festivals and start to write on a new album. For short: just keep moving on! 

For yourself? 

E:Gudi:        Try to get more time again for creating music.

Taz:              Start doing sport again, and do no stop!

Moritz: Toooo private 😉
Nici: Firstly finish my studies, then I'll see.             

Mik: That’s private

Wisdomword? 

E:Let’s take a simple quote “Hatebreed – If you don’t live for something, you’ll die for nothing”.