PipemanRadio Interviews Lena Scissorhands of Infected Rain About TIME

0:00 Hi, you have unto censure for se Wow crazy young Row, Wake up of America. It's time for the Adventures of pipe Man on W four c HY dot com. West Pompeas is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man. This strongs tell SKR. This is pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm so excited about our next guest because their music is badass. This front woman is a badass. So let's welcome to show Infected Rain. How are you?

1:14 Hello, Hello everybody, Thank you for having me, Thank you for that nice introduction. Oh my pleasure. And you know, not only do I love your music and all your videos and stuff like that, but man, I love your guest appearances and live stuff and like it. And now you have this new album coming out here that I mean, this is probably your best music yet, I think it. And I love the idea that you're experimental with music because the thing that bothers me as an old school, long term metal head is there's so many metal bands out there that are just doing the same thing, almost like they're just plugging in a formula. And you know, there's so many any bands out there that you have to do something to stick out, and that's exactly what you do. Well, thank you.

2:07 We've we've tried to set this so called no rule policy when it comes to composing since the beginning, because it's just so difficult to follow a specific recipe when you like so many things. Right like, if you like music, you don't just like one genre. You like music. Music is something that makes you feel. Music is something that speaks to you, and it can be in different genre. And growing up that's what I did. I listened to different music. Yes, eventually, when I was, you know, a teenager, I started so called rebelling and listening to specifically alternative music mainly. But I've learned again once again, and I've remembered once again how amazing all the music really is. Slowly, like in closer to my twenties and after, you know, like up until now, I love music, and it would be so such a pity to just not create with what you like or how the way you like it to sound, just because you're trying to fit some sort of criteria. And I know not every metal had agrees with me and you when it comes to that, because you know, it's all about this being like distincting people from one another, like the differences.

3:46 I don't understand why this is necessary in life, in culture, in why is that necessary to be so? Like I am like this, and you know, no step to the left or to the right. This is what I am. You know if it works for you and for your art or for your job or for your life in general, because we are now talking in general, just in general the rules that humans invent for themselves to restrain themselves without even realizing that. And we live in society like this. Look at what we are surrounded by. There's oh, you can't love this person because it's your same Uh, it's because it's your same gender. Or you can't dress that way because you're a boy, or you can't dress that way because you're a girl, or you can't sing in a metal band and add some electronic and some pop or some wrap. Why not, like, let's have fun, you know what I mean? You write, just do it with positivity. As long as you don't hurting and want like anybody, and as long as you're a gen you in and true to yourself, have fun.

5:01 And that's what we're doing totally. And my biggest line is just be you like it doesn't. You don't have to be what somebody thinks you should be, especially as an artist, because how can you really be a true artist unless you're being totally true yourself and just letting. It's just like me on the radio, whatever floats in my head sometimes on my show will just come out. There's no filter, there's no ooh, maybe I shouldn't be this, maybe I should fit into this box. And there's nothing wrong with that because we're not perfect, and we often make mistakes and noticing something we said or did was out of line or maybe not appropriate, it's actually the first step to recognition is the first step to becoming better. So there's nothing wrong with realizing. Like let's say tomorrow you watch this and you're like, ah, I wish I said this different. That's totally fine. We need to perfect what we're doing, no matter if it's for fun or if it's for money, or that's our career or that's just something we do in the house. We should at least strike for perfection, right, So it's certainly fine if we do mistakes. We're human beings and like something a year ago, maybe I will be better this year, hopefully, because I try to at least notice these things. But of course we don't even notice a lot of things that we do so colled wrong. You know. It's the same

6:34 with shows and music and everything. I'm often rewatching certain things. I'm like, ah, I should do this differently next time, or whatever, you know, like just because I we don't see ourselves in the moment. We don't see ourselves. We don't like watch. We are not the watcher. We are the protagonist. We are the one talking, and often we get carried away with emotions and it's okay, just right, you know, I'm sure you do it. I all the time, Like I'll watch and listen to my interviews after the fact and critique it as the person watching it or listening to it that I didn't even notice because I'm in the zone while I'm doing the interview. But I'm also my own worst critic, as I'm sure you are and every artist is, because everybody else will say, wow, that was great, and I'm sitting or going, well, actually, blah blah blah blah blah in my head. Yeah yeah, and I don't know.

7:32 I often do think about it and what is the right way to react there, like, for example, we recently had a show that I am very unsatisfied with for many reasons. Some reasons were not connected to me, some reasons we're not connected to my band. It was like local reason, technical problems, certain things that were done different, and we trusted, you know, and then so thinks I didn't do up to my standards, and I have an explanation why, But I don't want to be that person that is like finding excuses, you know. And people kept telling us how awesome the show was, and I kept having the urge to say thank you, but you know, I know it wasn't. We had so many difficulties.

8:20 I was so nauseous, and it was on a cruise. I never I never performed on a cruise, And so many excuses, right, And I stop myself often and think people don't even need these excuses. They are so excited they tell you about their emotions and even if they are exaggerating a little bit, because they are such big fans, and they maybe they even know that you can be better because they've seen your life before or something, you know, some people did, or maybe that was their first time, and I don't know. I often think do we have to tell them everything that is behind the scene from one side. You want them to know because then, you know, it's good when the listeners and the fans they do realize how much more is involved in a show, just like your show right now, how much is involved in like I never even used this platform for example, you know, like and stuff like that, like this background you chose with the album. I'm sure you put so much work in it. It looks fantastic. Thank you so much, but thank you, you know, and things like that that people don't know how you did it, and what are the little maybe obstacles that you might find every day because we depend on technology, we depend on programs, we depend on other people, we depend on gadgets, We depend on the ship moving. In that moment, I was depending on that. Apparently I'm way more motion you know, sensitive than I thought, even even though I took precaution I did just in case I guess I don't know. You know, I was going to ask you about

9:52 that too, because I saw in your socials being on seventy thousand tons of metal, and most of what I saw was all the fun you were having, which was so cool. But then I'm thinking myself as an artist, man, it must be really difficult like to perform, especially if the boat sway. And for get getting sick for a second, because that's one whole problem. Yeah, but even like I've been standing on a boat and just standing there and the boat moved me. So if you're performing on a first performance, we had two shows. On the first show, I fell on my butt. I had like a big bruise in my butt cheek because I actually on the third or fourth song. It was already late evening. It was when the cruise moved. We played the first day and I didn't realize that that's what happened, but my floor all of a sudden went away from under my beat and I was jumping like normal. I didn't think that I had to move a little bit different, maybe on a moving vessel. But you know, I guess you live and learn. There you go, Thank you. We tried to show you know, some awesome moments from the cruise, but there was a lot of challenges for all the musicians. We we got to talk with a lot of bands, and a lot of bands, like one band even canceled their performance. They had the same situation as ours, there was some like gear that was lost and at least not delivering time.

11:24 Let's say that because it was never fully lost, they found they found it when we didn't need it anymore. Right, And that happens even on tour, right, that happens. That happens all the time on tour. People don't. I was at one of the festivals in uh Europe. I think it was Hell Yeah, it was, I think it was hell Fest, and one of the bands they their stuff did not get there, and so another band let them use their instruments, which was way cool that everybody, you know, helped each other. But then even so it's like you're used to your own kay, thank you. That's one thing people don't realize because often people that are not musicians, actual performing musicians, people that are a part of crew. Even that's what they tried to tell us, you know, they're like, we will find you instruments, you know, we will find you instruments. But we were like, okay, every band has unique instruments. My guitar player plays half of the show on seven string guitars and another half on eight. Now, not many people even have a seven string guitar because the most common one is six right then the bass bass player, even though it's four string, is specific tuning, and it's you have to untune and tune a different instrument for someone. The weight of the instrument is different. Everything is so different, the strings are different. Like my bass player did not have her bass. We did have amazing musicians stepping up and trying to help us. I want to say thank you by the way

12:58 so much, Oh my god. We had three or four different bands trying their best to help us during this moment. And finally she borrowed an instrument, but she hurt her fingers so much because she was not used to the quirks that were specifically put on this instrument. And there are so many ups and downs. And then the same happened with the drummer. The drummer didn't have his own snare, which is also tuned in a certain way. And also, you know, it's a certain sound that we are all kind of used to, and everything sounded different. Everything, And let's not forget about the stress we up until ten minutes before the showtime, we thought we were not going to play. That's how stressful that was. And you know, what are you going to say? You don't play because you don't have instruments, you have the right to do that. That's what the other band did, you know, I believe it Equilibrium had the same situation as us, and they didn't even play. And I don't blame them. You know, we took the hit and we decided to play no matter that what, And I mean, of course we did our best. Of course, people were happy to see us because there were a lot of people there for us, and it was so cool that they were. They stopped letting people like in this like little area where we were performing. But at the same time, you want, especially big events like festivals to be as perfect as possible for

14:33 a band, because festivals are out there for exposure mainly unless you're the headliner of the main guest, and then that's not for exposure. That's you know, a little bit different. You are bringing people. We're talking about every other band that plays at festivals. There was sixty bands on this cruise. We were there mainly like ninety percent of these bands were they're for exposure. That means doing your best, to sound your best, to look your best so people can come back, hopefully and see you. When you tour you know, and that is the disappointed the disappointing part, because if we are not happy with our own performance, I mean, yeah, of course it matters how much people say they liked the performance. Absolutely, of course.

15:18 However, we are not satisfied with ourselves and with everything that happened. And I mean we did our best. Of course, we know we did our best, and we had our best crew that did their best, and the local crew did their best, but it's just circumstances of the things all kind of went together and it led to that, you know, which, again, it was an experience. We tried to learn from our experiences, and yeah, hopefully people do understand how stressful it is for a band to play in those conditions. I hope they really do, because and you're mentioning festivals. I think it's way more stress for a band at a festival because sometimes it's not your sound people. Sometimes this happened. There was I think it was a couple of years ago. Nine Inch Nails was playing Welcome to Rockville and it's so freaking humid in Florida that something went haywire and Trent's vocals you couldn't hear and he had to stop like three times. Yeah, and like if I was in that position, which I've been in that position too, It's like people don't realize how much stress that is or how bad you feel, because of course, you know this is maybe there's somebody there only seeing you for the first time and they think that's what you're all about. Yeah, thank you. And then of course you don't want people to, you

16:51 know, have this memory and especially share this memory with other friends and be like, ah, they are okay life. You know, you want to be the band that they want to see life, of course, because light shows is where everything is at, you know, the emotion and the adrenaline and everything a musician feels on stage is why we are going through all this stress and discomfort on tour. It's for this one hour on stage. If we're lucky, sometimes it's less forty five minutes. Sometimes it's more seventy five minutes. You know. So it depends on the conditions that you agree on, and depends on the tour, and depends on the festival. But yeah, festivals are unpredictable. You don't have time for sound check unless maybe the headliner. And when I say maybe, I mean if there is time if they fly in time with no delays, because sometimes there is time, but you have delays. On the other side, there are so many factors that can in impact a band's performance that like a couple of pages now being off both sides for me to fill out how many things influence how you sound, how you look, how you feel on stage. For example, my second performance on the same cruise, I had a device that was not working.

18:14 With this device is what gives me sound for myself. My inner monitors were attached to this wireless little body pack. Let's say that was malfunctioning. It was just turning off. On song number one after the very first few two words, I said, it turned fully off. Now I cannot stop the song. As the first song, I take it off, give it to the crew, and I continue singing without hearing anything like a deaf person. That doesn't mean audience didn't hear me. So what I'm trying to say is what the audience hears, and the quality of what audience hears is not even close to what we hear on stage. And in order for us to perform well, we have to hear as good as possible, as asome as possible, as close as possible to what we are used to, because all of a sudden, I don't hear myself, I don't hear the musicians. I don't even know if I'm in a right part of the song. Granted, it's a song that we played many many times, and I could go by memory, but that's not fun. Not fun to by memory and hope that everything's fine. You know. The problem continued even with the second song, and it was a heavier, more difficult song where I don't really have time to stop and breathe and check what's going on. And in my head, the stress about it, that feeling that I'm going to have to deal with this with the entire show also influences my mood. Right My mood in a way or another is reflected through my voice, and I really despise that very

19:47 much. That's something that has so many ups and downs in my career, my instrument being my own body, because if I'm very emotional about out what's going on or about the song, people will feel it. And often it's the good emotion that I do want to deliver. I focus on that. If the sound is good and I have no problems, that's what I'm focusing on and I continue with that, and I can deliver as good as I can that day at my let's say, at my best that day, right, because we all feel different different days. But if I have extra problems so many at the same time, it's quite difficult for me to filter this emotions and not think about them and not have anxiety about that, like straight up anxiety that you went such a long way to be here, and now who knows whose fold this is? The person that gave me that body pack didn't even know what happened. He comes to me, So what happened with it? I was like, I don't know. You tell me it's your equipment, right, not mine? So you tell me. I didn't even jump once I said two words and it turned off. So again, I don't want to that's stressful too, exactly. I don't want to speak badly about any crew. We are very grateful for local crew, our crew.

21:11 We are depending on them, though, you know, and and often not knowing or not understanding what's going on with your own equipment. You know, how can I solve it? So because you get in a zone on stage, Hey, I again no finger pointing here, but it's happen. That's what I've been through. Insanely stressful, and you get in a zone when you go on stage, so when something like that happens, it snaps you out of the zone, which makes it like so hard to get back in the zone because you can't prep your head before you go on stage, and then the minute that mike turns on. I know it happens for me, there's like a switch in your head. And if you have technical issues I had happened recently because I'm currently in Costa Rica. In the first interview I did in Costa Rica where I'm not in my own studio, I had the wrong mic, like miked up, but didn't know at first, and then I realized and then I'm in the middle of the interview. I can't stop the interview. I can't like you know, I just had to go with it. But the whole time I'm thinking, oh, it's gonna sound like crap, and stopping after often stopping a show cuts the time. For example, like me and you, we have a specific amount of time because I have a different interview after same during festivals, we have a specific time on stage. And if I would have been like you know, I'm sorry for my friend. Fuck this solving problem first, then I will continue. That might have meant minus couple of songs, maybe even more, because nobody even

22:42 knew what the problem was. So I decided to go you know, hardcore, took the give you know, the device to people to look into continue the show, even though I was actually hurting myself and I was mentally insanely anxious. Let's say that. Yeah, and it's not something you want to do. It's not especially again, especially you know, when you are there for exposure and there's in a way some sort of like I don't know, you you put those these expectations on yourself in a way. You know, you're like, you need to like show the best we can here, you know, because hey, we barely we didn't even like have enough to pay off our trip. So that's what I'm trying to say. Often ben's all that, you know, without even receiving a dime or I mean, that's not what I'm trying to say. Bens do receive their fees, but often these fees are not even enough to cover your trip, but you still think it's worth it and you want to go for it, and you want to do it, and it's often worth it. But when you have all this going on, you were like, was it even worth it? Really?

24:00 You know, and you don't want to have these kind of thoughts. As a musician, you don't want to have those a negative, destructive kind of thoughts. Well, as a fan, I think it's totally worth worth it from the fan side, because a bad live show is better than no live show in my opinion. And you guys are badass. Thank you. Tell everybody how you can, how everybody can reach out to you, socials connect on socials, how they can get the new album Time, which drops on February ninth, and check out your tour dates, all that good stuff.

24:41 Well, it's it's as easy as find the official website of the band that you're interested in. Ours is just infected dot com. All the information is there, all the news about the upcoming material, upcoming tours available, merch available, meet and greet is all there. We made it as accessible and as easy as possible for everybody to understand. You can change the language, you can click and find everything there. Our album comes out indeed a February ninth. However, tomorrow is a very special day. For us as well, because a new single from this album drops as a small little gift Prayer Pray album drop, So I love it. Don't forget to click that as well. I love it, and I know you guys go So while, is there any final words you want to leave the listeners with? Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for your support, guys, even though I was quite complaining right now, we had fun meeting a lot of people, and of course we had fun hanging out with a lot of people and discovering many new things for us. So just know that we are very strict with ourselves and we are trying our best always to deliver what we can the best we can that day. And I'm not only speaking about Infected Drain. It's a human factor. It's about every single band on this

26:11 planet that plays life absolutely. And you know, I'm glad you said all that stuff because I don't think. I don't look at it as complaining. I look at it as simply informing people what you go through every day so that they can understand, because everybody has a good day that day. Thankfully, sorry, thankfully, that's very rare occasions. The more experience do you get. Let's say, the more shows you play, the more you understand what you need to in the future to avoid certain things. And I believe, as I said, we also learned many things of how to avoid like situations. So it's actually very rare nowadays that we have situations like that, very rare, And that's why it was so frustrating for us, because we're like, Okay, it's been a while since stuff like that happened to us, you know what I mean. Like, we invest and we believe in our crew so much, and we trust each other so much, and we try to grow so much together to avoid that. We talk about our performance after we perform or after a tour, and we try to you know, perfect things and make things a little bit better if possible. But it's it's unpredictable sometimes and thankfully it doesn't happen often, but it does still happen to everybody. That's right. Do we judge a band by one or two shows that you've seen, don't judge them. Immediately, give them extra tries,

27:42 because trust me, it is often even less than fifty percent depends on the band during a live show, even less than fifty often, I think You're incredible musician, incredible artists and you guys do rock live and your new music is insane. People are gonna love it, so thanks for giving that to us, and thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Thank you for having me have a beautiful day. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for CUI Radio.