Let’s not be mistaken with an apparently stupid name (seriously, who would give such a name to their band?!), We Butter The Bread With Butter hides this patronymic particularity under a nice coat of fat-free compositions. And we shouldn’t either let their typical metalcore haircuts lead us to believe that these Germans only are yet another version of a trendy musical movement without bringing anything new to differentiate them from the lot. First, there is great humour explaining this name which aimed at mocking the trend for bands to have very long names within the past few years. There is also a true boldness mixing electronic music to metal, in this time and age when such experiments smashes itself against the critical wall of the most conservative part of the metal community. But it doesn’t really matter what the reaction is, as long as a reaction there is.

And in the end, more than to the metalcore branch itself, it is almost to another tradition of German musicians that we could attach them: electro-metal/industrial played by bands such as Rammstein and Oomph! with whom they share another artistic choice: not sacrificing their native language to the English language which rules the world of rock. For WBTBWB, the German language is an instrument of its own.

We tackle these topics with Maximilian Pauly Saux, the band’s bassist who tells us that he, indeed, likes a bit of bread and butter for his breakfast…

Radio Metal: As I read in the band’s biography, at the beginning, the band was supposed to be a joke, but progressed into being a more serious musical duo. Have you thought of changing the band’s name which is kind of pretty funny?

Maximilian Pauly Saux (bass): Yeah well, Marcel, he started the band, and back then, like five years ago, it was like a trend to have very long band names that basically didn’t mean anything. Mostly it was something very brutal, something very bad, and well, we were just normal guys and we just said “Ok, let’s put something normal, something that we can relate to” and it’s the long name We butter The Bread With Butter. [Laughs]

You guys play a mixture of metalcore, deathcore and electronic music. We know that metal fans can be very conservative. Did you experience some very bad reactions from mixing metal music with electronic sounds?

All the reactions have always been very split about it. We have always had some opinions on people loving the mixture of different genres of this kind of music, but we also had of course people that are totally annoyed and they’re shocked by the fact that we try to mess around with different genres. But I’ve got to say that we are pretty happy that the reactions have been like that so far, because in the end, everyone has a certain opinion and there’s nothing like you would forget quickly. [Laughs] And in fact we really enjoy it, and no matter how you react to this record, you just do so.

You joined We Butter The Bread With Butter when it was only a duo and when Marcel and Tobias were the only writers. Tobias has left since, and the band is not a duo anymore but a real band so can you tell us how the working process has evolved through the years?

Well it has changed a lot, not just because it is a full band now, but we as a band have had a lot of experience together, like touring for many years now. When I say many years, I mean 3-4 years. And we have been inspired by a lot of great bands whom we had the chance to tour with, for example Slipknot or Trivium, and with all these stuff, the friendships got closer and it motivated us on ourselves. We’re all part of the process that’s been changing our music, and I think this is very different from the kind of music the guys did before, when they were just a two men group. Because there are more opinions in the band, obviously, but also a lot of different pros and cons that are always discussed before we really get into something.

Kenneth has left the band, yet no other replacement has been announced. Don’t you want to hire a new rhythm guitar player?

No. [Laughs] When we threw our last rhythm guitar player out we were – I’ve got to say – very happy just to be a four piece band now because we have a cooler stage presence, in our opinion, without a second guitar. Sound wise, it works pretty well, the instruments really complement each other real good, we think. Or at least that’s what the sound engineer tells us; maybe he’s lying to us. [Laughs]

You guys are going to be doing a US tour, that’s pretty huge for a young band like you. How did you achieve this?

I don’t know! I mean that’s basically what the last record has done for us. There has always been a big reaction and many people listening to our music in the United States. We could have been touring the states some years ago but we always decided not to do it because we were still in a lot of developing process with the band itself. So when we finally got a chance to go there, I think it was possible for us that we had the confidence to do it because we just released a record as a four piece band and it’s working.

The songs are written in German, is it important for you to show where you guys are from?

Yes, it is very important to us. Not only to show where we are from, but the German language is such a tool as an instrument that is used in our music. We really like the idea of underlining the heavy songs with the German language; in such it’s very direct and very heavy. We have tried to make a song in English once, but it was just a complete different thing so we’ll always stick to the German language because it’s just part of the concept. We really see the German tongue as an instrument for our music.

The album is entitled Goldkinder, can you tell us more about the theme and the concept behind the album?

Of course, we kind of had the idea to form stories about songs. We always have instrumental songs before we write lyrics and we write the lyrics together, when we lock ourselves up in a studio. We listen to our instrumental songs and try to get out what kind of emotions or what kind of feelings it transports us to. So we found out that we discussed what it could sound like, we start forming a story, it should always be on the topic of a dark fairy tale, like something that has the same character as the old songs with the story tale aspect, but to make him darker. It’s the story of a personality, there’s always a different protagonist that is basically living through a story transporting to the music. We like to enforce them with synth parts, and with strings and guitar arrangements as highlights in the music, to enforce the lyrics that are finally done.

The album has a second part where we can hear some covers or remixes of the album songs. Why is that?

We really like to show, and to bring other artists in and often that ends up as electro remixes. To see how an artist reacts to your music and how he will transform or what he’s making out of it. So that’s when we asked a friend who’s a DJ to make those remixes and we were really amused to have him do these versions of our songs. [Laughs] On the instrumental versions on the special edition that’s also on the CD, we kind of had the idea that we wanted to transmit our own music, just to take out the vocals, and just listen to the music by itself, just to focus more on the arrangements we thought of when we were composing the music. So it’s cool for us to show it all without vocals and without the German tongue, which as I said has a really big impact on our music. And in the mix on the Goldkinder record in comparison to the first two records, the vocals are much more in front of the music and the backings, and that’s why we preferred presenting those songs without vocals, just to get a distinguished taste.

Ok, this will be my last question and that’s the silly question of the interview: since you guys are called We Butter The Bread With Butter, I have to ask: what do you guys eat for breakfast?

Eh [pauses] that is a good question! It depends, if we’re on tour we don’t have that much breakfast, but at home I usually eat some cereals with fruits and bread with butter, of course! [Laughs] Eh and… I don’t know, I love eating warm like soups, in the morning. [Laughs]

Interview conducted on the phone on October, 1st 2013 by Metal’O Phil.
Transcription: Natacha.
Introduction: Animal.

We Butter The Bread With Butter official website: www.wbtbwb.com

Album Goldkinder, out since August, 9th 2013 via BMG / Relativity.