by feenhaube The exceptional band "conXious" from Vienna has a new long player at the marketplace with "Never before/Never again". A good time for an interview with the gentlemen.

There have been several line-up changes. How did these band interiors changes come up?
 
When you're not able to make living with music, it's quite a strain. After all we are expecting the max from everybody. Private, professional and artistic dimensions collide and all of them contain potential for conflict. It's not easy to maintain a stable team. Michael and I play in this band for 14 years and that's probably the maximum in continuality. The biggest problem are the singers. Skill, personality, charisma and passion for our music have to fit. And with Albert, who is with us for more than a year, for the first time all of this works. He enriches us. What does the band name mean? What makes the perfect band name: it needs to sound good, it needs to be unmistakeable and (and that's the most important thing) it needs to say something about the band and really stand for it. It took us almost half a year to fix up a band name like this. After one of those endless discussions about this theme, lining in bed, sleepless, thinking about it, one question occupied my mind: What makes our way of approaching music? And the answer was close: We experience all of this very consciously. And there was the band name - conscious. Just made conXious out of it, so it would never overlap with others. By now I think we couldn't have brought it on the point any more. Which way did you go on your new album? The previous album ("between arrival and departure") was a complete riddle from a lot of people. So many different and surprising things, thousands of melodies moving in the back. One of our consultants brought it on the point: I've never heard anything like that before. That was what we wanted to achieve. But now we wanted to do something totally different. "Never before /never again" should, above all, have become more modern and less eccentric. Our music remains what it always was: a bit of complexity, a bit of variety, very little of melancholy and loads of rock. But it all approaches a little more direct and aggressive. For this we, most of all, have to thank Kris, our producer, for whom it was very important that everything bangs. The fact that we have a new singer on board, who is technically on top, made it possible for us to put more effort into the vocals. Downloads across our creations are available at www.conious.com How does the song writing work with you? The songs are mine and come up in every possible way. In the resent times one of those ways became established, which was very inspiring for me. I take all the ideas in my head into the rehearsal and the rest is created spontaneously. Ever the lyrics are created in this process. Thus they are very authentic, honest and sometimes too direct. But what is finished once must not be changed. That's possible because we have a very disciplined way of rehearsing. There is the routine of 14 years. Do you cultivate relationships with other Prog-rock-collegs of foreign countries? We try to. It worked great with Arena, who we met at a few beers at a Arena/Jadis/John Wetton-Gig. There we convinced them of playing a show with us together ( September 19 th 2005 at the Planet Music). That's the Arena concert in Vienna . They wanted to avoid coming to Vienna again - it's somehow not on their route. Now finally. What do live-performances mean to you? Live - that's just THE experience. When you're able to delight an audience and get the people to dance ever to our complex songs, that's like fire in your soul. For that we give the audience the one or the other chart-song. (Our version of Britney Spears' Toxic is almost a classic) That's also where my roots of 80's rock show. Our music can't be too serious not to rock with all the heart (I just fall for Van Halen, Malmsteen and Europe ).