Hey! Your new album ‘Cataract’ has just been released. What can the people out there expect?

They can expect an album that is 100% CATARACT. Even though we had a lot of changes in the team we managed to maintain our sound but still made a huge step forward by adding a lot of new influences and variations to it. I can say that we're absolutely happy how things have turned out!!!


Why is it self-titled?

Because this album equals a new start for us. We've added a new guitar player and a new bass player, so the song writing team has changed, and we've broadened the horizon and shape of our music. Tom (the new guitarist) has brought a lot of new input into CATARACT. He's an excellent guitarist and he has fantastic skills as a soloist, which you will notice when listening to the album. Nico has just recently joined us so we'll have to wait for his little extras until the next album. He played guitar in two bands, so I'm sure he will take part in the song writing, too. The whole new constellation is quite motivating. We looked back at how we've developed as artists since the very first recordings up to ‘Kingdom’… and we're in the same position again now and that very much is a reason to release this album self titled. It's a re-definition of CATARACT.


’Cataract’ turned out to be more varied than ever. How did it come to that?

We had a different attempt to the song writing, as the attitude towards the music has changed. Even though we've put ourselves under stress to write the whole album, we wanted all the songs to develop their potential and not cut them down after three minutes. We also abstained from putting in fast parts because there wasn't any or a mosh part because there wasn't one, if the song didn't need it, we left it that way. We've put together parts that built a great song, parts that would underline the rest of the song.


You had to face a lot of line-up problems in the past time. How is the situation now?

Well since I've said it before, I guess only time can really tell. I feel we picked the right guys, Tom is with us for a year now and even though it's a completely different world to what he was used to, he's still sticking around, haha! Nico also seems to be the right pick. He's a fast learner and has already undergone drastic demands as he had to dress up as a girl (well a glam rocker) for his first appearance with us when we took part in a cover contest – we covered MÖTLEY CRÜE!


You play a release show in your hometown Zürich. Some special action is planned there. Can you give us some hints?

We want to make it a bit more exciting for everyone. It's not only our record release it's also a ten year birthday show. So for one we'll have some people fighting each other in a crowd surfing contest. We'll basically put them in blow up boats or mattresses and they'll have to fight each other surfing the crowd... the last one remaining wins, It's a no rules match, haha! Then we asked our fans to design their own CATARACT shirts, we'll see where that goes. The winner is either going to be completely ridiculous or a genius


The limited 2CD edition contains a bonus disc with lots of cover versions. Was it hard to pick your favourites?

The hard thing was to cut it down to the tracks that are on the disc now. There's so much more that would have been interesting. SACRED REICH would have been my personal favourite, but it needed to be done quite fast. It also would have been interesting to completely re-do those songs but then again, that would be a bigger task and not something you do with a bunch of songs. We went to the studio and put it down in two days which I think gives them a nice live feeling, spontaneous and natural.


Why is CATARACT stronger now than ever before?

Every member of the band is putting his full effort in it as everyone knows where we're going.


Please put these terms in your own priority order and explain your choice: friends, family, money, music.

Oh that’s an easy one for the end, is it!? I’ll just go for it. It's clearly between music and family, I think I couldn't live without music at all so I'll put music first. I've always been addicted to it especially when in solitude, every phase I went through in my life was accompanied by music and some songs bring back amazing memories, and as a little cheat it also rounds up my closest friends. Family is without question coming right after it. Those will be the people I will rely on when I'm more likely to break my bones instead of a drum stick. Friends come next and money – well I'd say it's the least important of all those, but then again you could put it above it all as nowadays you can even buy family.