Question&Anwsers met Coalition of the Wicked

''The lyrics are 99% true!''

Jiery van Roon, ,

Coalition of the Wicked speelde vorig weekend bij een rustig Atlantis in Alkmaar, maar wist de aanwezigen wel allemaal in vervoering te brengen. De groep deed dat met hun mix van stijlen, die nog het meest weg heeft van een combinatie van reggae en hiphop met invloeden van wereldmuziek. Rond middernacht was de zaal toch redelijk vol en in beweging. De aanstekelijke ritmes en de lenige beweeglijkheid van zanger Ironlaw hadden het publiek voor zich gewonnen. 3voor12 zocht de bandleden op in de kleedkamer.

''The lyrics are 99% true!''

***Lawrence, during the show you dance like wicked. How did you get so flexible?*** Lawrence: 'My body is not flexible, my energy is flexible! That's because I really believe in what I say in the lyrics, they are 99% true!' Spankmaster: 'We all believe in what we do and that provides us such a lot of energy. No matter what the audience is like, we always give everything during a show because it's the thing we want to do and say.' ***Your music has influences by a lot of music styles. Is that because of your different cultural backgrounds or because of your own creativity?*** Greg: 'Creativity!' Lawrence: 'Our background provides us the energy to be creative, the two are linked to each other.' ***You are a company of four different cultural backgrounds. Why do you point your arrows at the Netherlands?*** Greg (laughs): 'Well, we somehow ended up here and got stuck, by some situations...' ***You are playing at a lot of important festivals where a lot of important people from the music industry are present, like Noorderslag, Oerol, and this year you will be playing at the festival surrounding North Sea Jazz. That should be a good step to more gigs, but you only seem to pick the large audiences?!*** Greg: 'You know, we have all played in a lot of bands. We don't want to play for nothing on all the small stages in this country anymore. We see COW as the core of our business, it provides us identity, but it's only part of what we do. We want to bring new things, we make new material constantly. We are sick of doing the same thing over and over again and hang around in all the dirty places.' Spankmaster: 'We just got a studio in Rotterdam in Locus 010, which is a collective of people like graphic designers, video designers and theater designers, that's really inspiring. By adding visual or theatrical effects to our show, we try to do something special with COW, which makes us different from the rest. It's a life project.' ***You have played together with Ro Krom, is he still involved?*** Spankmaster: 'He is still involved behind the curtains. He provides us dj-material and makes guest appearances now and then.' ***You have all switched bands a lot of times. What's coming up for 2007?*** Lawrence: 'We have the adrenaline pumping. We would like to make the music more worked out. Now, half of the show is an improvisation, which gives us new ideas. Afterwards we say to each other 'Wow man, that was great!' and we work it out further.' Smiley: 'We use the audience as a mirror'. Greg: 'And expect us to come up with a complete show, for example with dancers'. Spankmaster: 'There are some nice shows coming up, like the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam, and you can expect a realease in fall.' ***Is there something the audience should really know about you? *** Greg: 'My mom's here!' Spankmaster: 'Yes, but what do we believe in?' Smiley (to Spankmaster): 'I believe in you!' Lawrence: 'Playing on Lowlands would be the ultimate outburst of energy. Talking about dreams. It takes time for a band to develop, at least two years, and we've only started a year ago. We've got so many ideas, and now we have a studio we can start working them out.' Greg: 'We just need one small thing to make us big, one small thing that can point the attention at us.' Lawrence: 'To give the audience a hint: you can download our songs for free at MySpace.'