We sent a few questions to The Melmacs, one of the most promising bands from Germany! They tell us about their history, their music tastes and their album “Good Advice.”
Can you tell us a bit about the band history? Have you played in other bands before?
The Melmacs formed in autumn 2017, we were hanging out at Remos and Connie, Max and our former second guitarist Martin were talking about forming a band. When we were thinking about who should sing in our band, a song came out of the stereo and Bimmi, who was sitting on the other side of the room, started singing to it like a wild ferret. That’s when it clicked and we asked “Laser Bimmi” if she wanted to sing. At first she said, “Ok, damn…. hmm, I can’t sing!… hmm… should I try? … No i can’t!” and it took her a moment to join us. “Alright! Let’s go!”
So we met in a mouldy rehearsal room in Leipzig and started covering some songs we liked. After 5 months there were a few weirdos hanging around the rehearsals, one of them was Remo, the guy in whose flat we had decided to form a band. When he heard our songs, he asked us if we wanted him to be the bass player. Connie and Max had a band with him before and since we knew he was a nice guy, the decision was easy. We were complete and had our first show in August 2018. In 2020 Martin left our band because we were supposed to play 35 concerts in 2020 and he is a big cinema lover (He goes to the cinema 4 times a week and inhales every obscure film he can see). Because of our busy schedule, he retired to focus on cinema and his heavy metal band “Prowler” which is a bit more laid back in terms of concerts. We are still grateful for the time he spent with us Deadbeats. If you are reading this, we love you and wish you many great movies in 2023!
Remo, Connie and Max played in a horror punk band 10 years ago. But that’s not worth mentioning. It was a first insight into what it’s like to play in a band and can be seen as a kind of education.
Remo also plays guitar in a band called „STRGZ” – check them out! Great wavy German punk band! He also does a bit of singer-songwriter music under the name “Remo Devago”.
Bimmi has never played in a band because she felt she didn’t belong on a stage, but more about that later in this interview.
Are you all Alf fans?
Haha! Well, we can all identify with this furry space ball in some way, some find him cute, others like his attitude and we all remember him from our childhood. Remo has a picture of himself wearing an Alf button in 1995! But Max is the one who went a bit crazy about Alf a few years ago. In his flat and in our rehearsal room you can find cushions, blankets, lamps, stickers, patches and books, and he still regularly checks Ebay. If anyone reads this and wants to get rid of an Alf phone, email us at !!!!. He’s also the one who came up with the name.
It’s kind of funny because we don’t actually have any songs dedicated to the show, but people often ask us about him. It’s more the “sound” of the word and the vibe that comes with it than anything else. Funnily enough, we are often asked by the younger generation, “Who or what is Melmac?” What does that mean?” which always makes us seem a bit old and outdated, haha. I mean… you don’t know Alf from the planet Melmac?! Seriously?! Duuuuuude! But don’t worry, we’re here to tell you everything you need to know about this cutie.
There’s a healthy dose of live and positive energy in your new album “Good Advice”, could you tell us about the recording?
The album was recorded in several sessions that spanned from winter 2020 to winter 2021, and most of the songs were written in 2018 and 2019. Max is a sound engineer and has a small studio, so we could take as much time as we wanted to record the songs. We always recorded the drums first, then overdubbed the bass and guitars, added the organ and keys and then added the vocals. Once that was all done, Max would go back to the guitars and add layer after layer until Remo said to him, “Dude…. that’s enough!”. Max is a big fan of Mutt Lange’s big 80s productions and would know no end if the rest of the band didn’t stop him. Max also admits that it’s good to be held in check because otherwise you certainly wouldn’t feel that “live” energy that was mentioned here.
As for the positive energy: we think that’s our trademark. We all have bad times, but we still believe in ourselves and the power of the times to come. Although our music sounds like good, clean fun, the lyrics deal with a lot of deep issues. We are currently working on the second album and there will be a lot of melancholic themes woven into our melmacian cosy. We think people can get a first taste of that in our last two singles “Alive” and “Balls”.
We can hear touches of powerpop, ’77 punk, 80s new wave and more in the album. Did you have a precise idea of how you wanted it to sound before recording it?
It took a few steps to find “our sound” and we see it as an everlasting process. Most of the songs are written in tandem between Bimmi and Max, both tossing ideas back and forth until they are happy with what they have. Then Max always does a pre-production of all the tracks, which includes programming the drums, recording a rough bass guitar, electric guitars and at the end a rough recording of Bimmi’s vocals. This is the time when the first “what will it sound like in the end” thoughts arise. In this day and age, you can experiment a lot because all the crazy effects you want are just a click away! Are the guitars going to be rocking? Should they be more surfy? How do you want the drums to sound? Drenched in reverb? Overdriven? And so on.
We usually write a lot more tracks than we will end up recording, and discard a lot of ideas as soon as we get them into the rehearsal room. This allows us to make a versatile album in the end. As soon as we enter the rehearsal room, Remo and Connie come up with their ideas and improve our pre-productions and give the songs their own spin. That’s the moment when we invent the next “sound building block”. This is also where some songs are created directly, on “Good Advice” for example “Cant you see”, “Low Life” and “Saturday Night”.
With all that in mind, Max tries to think ahead and make decisions as he records the songs. So yes, we have some ideas how it should sound in the end. And like you said, you can hear that clearly on our album. It’s packed with different sounds and bits that remind some people of PowerPop, others hear some wave in it and still others think it’s the child of 2000s skatepunks. Haha. We just do what the song needs and don’t limit ourselves with any rules.
This freedom also made it easy to choose the people who mixed and mastered our songs.
The mixing was done by Dan Dixion from Atlanta, he is the one who recorded and mixed most of the US bands we love today. (Biters, Wyldlife, Fast Eddie, etc.) He is a great engineer and a lot of fun to work with.
The mastering was done by Magnus Lindberg from Sweden. He is an insanely good mastering engineer who always puts the finishing touches on our songs. He knows that he works with all the crazy Swedish bands we love (Hellacopters, The Dahmers, etc.).
I got to hear your album thanks to Spaghetty Town Records. On which label has it been released in Europe?
Yeah, Spaghetty Town! We are very happy to release on this label because they feature most of the US bands we love! Also, Teddy is such a nice guy and we’ve had a couple of great conversations with him! We would love to come to the US one day to chat with him in person!
When we were looking for labels for our first pressing, we got a good answer from Spagetty Town and Beluga Records from Sweden, but at that time, in 2022, they were too busy and had a lot to do, but they asked us to approach them again as soon as we want to press something again. In the end, the album was released in September 2022 on Bakraufafita Records and Wanda Records from Germany. After our first pressing sold out, we decided to press another 500 vinyls and remembered the positive feedback from Beluga and Spaghetty Town. A few emails were sent out and woooooosh – we have now released our album on these two labels. We also have Queen Mum Records with us with a very limited special edition with a different artwork. To our labels: Thank you for your trust and your work! ❤
Can you tell us about your two most recent singles? “Balls” sounds amazing!
Thank you! We’re glad you like it! 🙂 As mentioned before, Balls and Alive are the first new songs that give a glimpse of what’s to come in the future. We feel like our arrangements have gotten a little better and we’ve also grown into better musicians/singers. These two songs deal with some heavier themes and in Balls there is a girl gang chorus that really pushes the message in your face.
In which countries have you played so far? Do you really have stage freight?
So far we have mainly played shows in Germany. Twice we played in London because the nice guys from The Speedways were kind enough to invite us to their record release party and to their “Pump it up – PowerPop Weekender”. It was a cool experience and their bass player Adrian hosted us the last time we were there.
From now on all our shows will be booked by “Muttis Booking” who have faith in our little project and are willing to put in a little work to push our sorry asses around Europe. We are looking forward to everything to come!
Stage fright isn’t about being afraid of getting on stage, it’s more about dealing with the psychological projection when being on stage.
You get rated by the audience consciously or unconsciously and they’re constantly projecting their feelings or emotions onto the band, which is absolutely human on the one hand, but could also be very tough, judgy and unfair on the other. Too fat, too loud, too nice, too reserved, too whatever often has nothing to do with the persons on stage, but with the situation a person in the audience is in. You can’t make it right anyway for everyone and that’s just good to realize to overcome stage fright and keep on focusing on the things that are actually fun to you.
Best live memories so far?
That’s a difficult question, because we love most of the shows we’ve done so far. We have played some bigger shows and also some tiny little shows in the smallest bars you can imagine. Most of them had something special to remember. It’s crazy to meet so many people who love putting on shows, going to shows by small bands like us and hanging out with everyone before and after our shows. As long as the crew is nice and the audience seems to be having fun, we’ll enjoy it!
Oh, and one thing that’s always nice is when something funny happens on stage. We’ve had some funny moments together because after all, we’re all amateurs and failure is part of who we are! Haha
There’s always been a lot of punk bands in Germany. Any cool ones you particularly like these days?
Here’s a short, incomplete list:
The Spartanics – catchy oldschool streetpunk with great melodies. https://youtu.be/XksyyJ5mxVI
The Not Amused – snotty mod/powerpop that is addictive https://youtu.be/Q-BKTNXbijM
Johnny Wolga – funny guys with powerpoppy OiPunk https://youtu.be/LJ0ZpftnyZk
The Pissed Ones – autumn 1976 punk that will blow the hat off your head https://youtu.be/-Dqe0KMrk5s
Berlin Blackouts – great band with catchy punk rock tunes https://youtu.be/HRdrgV7Nuyg
Lobster Bomb – wavy, catchy punk https://youtu.be/DMoT7SFxtFU
Chartreux – if you like emo/skatepunk, you should listen to them https://youtu.be/eUYzCsYSoBo
STRGZ – great band that released the best German song since Nena’s “99 rote Luftballons”. https://youtu.be/Bjyr3A3yICk
Choose 3 albums you’ve enjoyed lately.
Everyone of us choose one so we came up with 4 albums:
Bimmi: Smooch – A Force To Be Rockin‘ With
Of course they are from Australia, cause it sounds absolutely energetic, rousing, super authentic and hooky and definitely not like a blueprint of other bands. Just wanna twist and shake and see one of their shows someday, cause I’m pretty sure they won’t disappoint! Btw my second choice is nearly any album of WYLDLIFE! Come to fucking Europe, guys! We cannot wait any longer!
Connie: Soft Kill – Canary Yellow
To put it in the words of Will McAndrew (Poison Ruin): “Everyone likes The Stone Roses or Oasis” but actually for me it was one of the best concerts last year in Berlin, right after the Cobra Man show.
Max: Caesars – Cherry Kicks
Perfect Sound for a lush summers day. Great Arrangements and sounds that always hide some details you’ll discover after listening to the songs for the 217423627 time.
Remo: Barreracudas – Can do easy
‘Cause it’s simply music for my summer.
What’s next for The Melmacs?
At the moment we are writing and rehearsing songs for the next album, which will hopefully see the light of day in spring 2025. Nevertheless, we’re playing some festivals this summer, going on our first small proper tour through Austria and Switzerland in autumn and doing some weekenders. We are looking forward to all the things the future holds for us and hope to meet many funny animals, people and delicious pizzas along the way.
Thanks for the interview! ❤
Veglam 
Leave a comment