SYN*ERROR

i've been planning on doing this interview since hrm... last summer? when SYN*ERROR where on the road through europe with blog favorites WHAT PRICE, WONDERLAND? and they played a show in a small venue/youth centre in slovenia with KHERE from italy and slovenian local heroes WITH ENGINE HEART (a.k.a. MIT MOTOREN HERZ). i hadn't heard anything by them and truth be told i was only there to see the WEH guys again and shake my head and ass to the fine tuneage of the WP,W?
well, SYN*ERROR blew me away that evening. instead of the expected usual emo-ish nu-skramz that every single band out of germany plays right now (which is fine and dandy but pretty boring after the fiftieth band) i got a lovely blast of mid90s revival. jangly guitars, sometimes upbeat, then tearing everything down again with dual screams.
so yhea, after me being a lazy asshole and the band not answering for a long time, here we finally have it. an interview with rob, the guitarist. my questions are boring but, aw read it anyway. and check out the band.

- first things first, tell us who's in the band, where you're from, what you have released so far and since when you're playing together.

well, syn*error is stephan, who plays bass and sings, daniel and rob, who both play guitar and sing, and mark, who is drumming. we're from berlin. actually we all grew up in east berlin. stephan, dan and me basically played together in a punk rock band since our teenage days, but it didn't really work out with the drummer. some time in spring/summer 2005 mark joined us on drums and that's where i see the starting point of syn*error. we started playing gigs, on one of these early gigs timo from Leben Macht Durstig, who is a really close friend now, saw us, liked what he saw, and asked us to be the first band on his newly founded label. which brings us to the releases. so far we've released a s/t 3 song cd-r on Leben Macht Durstig, a split tape with jet pilot, also on Leben Macht Durstig, a self released cd-r ("five songs") which featured songs of the two earlier releases [the s/t cd-r was sold out and out of print but we still wanted the songs to be available] and a self released split cd-r with our summer touring buddies what price, wonderland?, which we sold on the summer tour 2007. some new releases, for example a split with adorno from portugal that'll be released on Unterm Durchschnitt, will be out some time soon.


- i've heard about your drummer also playing in petethepiratesquid. is your band connected to a berlin emo scene or what are other connections to other bands?

haha, no, mark is not playing in petethepiratesquid. but actually daniel and bjoern, the pete's drummer, are confused very often because of their similar looks. the petes are good friends though, love their music! bjoern also plays in a berlin based post-hc band called it.is.imperative, who are good friends of us, too. also there's a nice band called telekolleg from berlin that we've played quite some shows with and that should be checked out. other connections are that i used to play in a band called malatesta together with timo and thomas (who does most of our recordings) which recently broke up. oh, and some of us are setting up shows in berlin under the moniker 'little league shows'. so you see, we definitely are connected to a little scene here in berlin. i wouldn't want to call it an 'emo scene' though, we're rather calling it diy punk rock.


- do you consider touring a valuable part of the band and are you touring a lot? how was the tour with what price, wonderland? any weird or funny stories?

touring/playing shows is actually the most fun part about being in a band. really. there's nothing better. we'd like to play more shows than we are right now, but jobs and university and money issues kinda stand in our way there. the tour with wpw was the best experience we had as a band so far. we've met so many incredibly nice people, have seen quite a lot of europe, played with some awesome bands, and had some extremely good meals. we actually took a picture of every meal we got, as this tour also was marks personal 'tour de gourmet'. it was like a vacation with your best friends, a two week long road trip with beautiful summer weather and a show to play every night. it's hard to pick one particularly funny or weird story though, as there's so many unique memories and experiences we made on that tour. also i'm answering this question 6 months after the tour which makes it kinda hard, haha. but it think i might have posted a blog on our 'myspace' which might give some more insight...



- the split cd-r with WHAT PRICE, WONDERLAND? had extraordinary artwork. is it important to you that a release is more than just a simple cd in a case?

yeah, i'd say so. especially if it's only cd-r releases, haha. also this was a special release, it deserved special package. ;) it's really nice if you see that someone actually thought about the artwork/packaging and put effort into doing it, that makes it way more personal than just having a cd-r in a plastic case. i think it's important though that it's not that ridiculously arty-farty that it actually skyrockets the price of that release too high, after all it's the music that makes me want to buy the cd/vinyl/tape, not the packing/artwork, that's just the extra mile.


- the lyrics on the split cd-r mostly fall into the personal reign, since this zine is also more or less a political zine i'd be interested if you would also consider to express political views or problems in your lyrics or if that is completely out of the question?

well, i personally don't like most lyrics that are specifically political, only a few bands can pull that off without sounding preachy. it would feel weird to express our own personal political views with the band, to be honest we just don't feel the need to. at least to do it too obviously, because i think there's some [personal] politics in our lyrics. also i think/hope that most people at shows we play, or that buy our records, already are self aware enough about their political views and that they can think for themselves and they most probably would already know/agree on what we'd have to tell them about politics, that's like preaching to the choir. we are all more or less political persons and express our views in our everyday lifes, or maybe indirectly with the way we run our band.


- since your music is pretty oriented on older stuff like still life or floodgate, which is a little unusual in today's emo/screamo scene, where most bands play the level plane or witching hour styles, which records would you recommend a dude who's interested in older emo but doesn't know eher to start ;)

ah thanks, i really enjoy floodgate and especially still life. to be honest we don't try to sound like those bands though, this just seems to be the point where our different musical tastes meet and the results being written in the rehearsal room kinda end up reminding people of that stuff. which is cool. well, i'd definitely recommend that dude some shotmaker, policy of 3, julia and indian summer. for some more chaotic, screamy stuff i'd recommend him mohinder and heroin, for some more mellow tunes i'd recommend one of my personal favourites, the 'departures and landfalls' record by boys life.




so well. nice dudes playing awesome music. go check them out.

the usual linkage: myspace. buy their stuff and go see their shows.
or at least check out a livevid: