James caught up with Cristian Machado from Ill Nino before their headline show at Nottingham Rescue Rooms to talk about being together for 13 years and much more.

You have been together as a band for a good 13 years now, what would you say your main high and low point has been so far?
I would say our high point would be... Interesting I don’t know what our high point would be. I would consider my high point of this band to be when we were just starting. Being a band playing in the local scene, trying to get a record deal and just having a good time with not too much pressure and not too much bullshit to have to deal with. It was just nice and calm times of coming up as a musician trying to get out on the road and get a record deal. I would say our low point is when everyone started downloading music instead of buying it ha ha!

Your latest album ‘Dead New World’ was released back in October, are you happy with how the album has gone down with your fans and the press so far?
We’re very proud of the record, we worked very hard. It was a great experience for us doing the record on our own and to do as much as we could in our studio in Hoboken, Sound Wars Studios. I mean it’s been received really well by our fans and they were all we had in mind whilst making the record. There wasn’t much pressure from our label or really anybody else, it was just about making music that brought us together as musicians and that our fans would enjoy.

‘Dead New World’ is significantly heavier than ‘Enigma’, was there a reason for revisiting this style?
All of our writing was done with me and Ahrue Luster (Lead Guitarist) together. I think in realising that we had to write as a team rather than separately, we realised that heavy music is the one thing we have in common as musicians and that’s just the way the record came out. If you think about it, we all live scattered around the US and it was really important for me at least to have the fluidity in the record that we used to have in the beginning of the band. In realising that I think we tried to bring back a good band member comradery and friendship back into the band. We just needed to remind ourselves what is really important to us as a group instead of individually.

What would you say your favourite track from ‘Dead New World’ is and why?
It’s tough to pick a favourite track because I really like every song on the record but I can tell you what my least favourite track is, the cover of Smashing Pumpkins (“Bullet with Butterfly Wings”). I can’t stand it, I hate it but the rest of the band really liked it so it wound up on the record. But that’s fine that’s the democracy of our band; it’s the way we do things.

Seeing as all of your releases have slightly different styles, do you think the style of ‘Dead New World’ will be what you build on in future?
Absolutely, yeah I think so. I think we were able to finally click; it took years and almost 3 records to be able to click as songwriters with the new guys in the band, because we did go through a shift in band members a while ago. It really took this long for us to click; especially for me and Ahrue to realise we had to write together as a team like “Your the lead guitar player, I’m the singer of the band lets really put our differences aside and find the things that make us common”. So I will say most likely yeah we have to it was a big learning experience for us and we’re very proud of the record so we’d love to just build on what we have now.

You recently toured in Australia including shows at the Soundwave Festival, how long were you in Australia for and how did you find the shows?
The shows were amazing in Australia! It was a really good time and we had a really unique slot, before Slayer and after Dimmu Borgir. It was a really big chance for us to either prove ourselves or not prove ourselves and our fans were turning up in the thousands to watch us and really show us love. I’ve got to give it to our Australian fans for being really dedicated to this band and sticking by us for all this time; we’ve only been there 1 other time and that was 5/6 years ago so they really waited for us and stood up for us. I mean to go on before Slayer and be able to have 5000/6000 screaming kids is a pretty big feat and I think we achieved it well and we couldn’t have done it without our Australian fans. How long were we there? Around 2 weeks.

You are currently embarking on a headline tour across the UK how does it feel to be back in the UK and how have the shows been so far?
It feels great we haven’t been here in a very long time. I think we’re finally ready to come back to the UK, we’ve got some cool bands playing with us. It’s been way too long, we’re very happy to be back and especially playing at Hammerfest tomorrow. The shows have been awesome so far, we’re having a really good time.

You are playing Hammerfest tomorrow, how much are you looking forward to this and will you be checking out other bands at the event?
I’m definitely going to check out some other bands, I’m not too sure what the line up is yet but I’m sure they’re going to have some killer bands playing.

UK Festivals are currently being announced, can we expect Ill Nino to come back to play any festivals?
I can’t say that we will be back, I’m not sure. I know that we will be back in this part of the world sometime after the summer, but I’m not sure that we will be playing any of the UK festivals. If something comes up I’m sure we’ll be here to play it but there’s nothing confirmed.

Where do you hope to see Ill Nino in a year’s time?
In a year’s time we’ll probably be focussing on writing a new record, at least I would hope to think we’ll be writing a new record within a year’s time.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Either a zebra or a giraffe? I think I would be a giraffe, because I’ve never seen a giraffe get eaten by a lion on the discovery channel. But I’ve seen a lot of zebra get eaten by lions on the discovery channel. So if that means anything I would rather be a giraffe ha ha!

Thanks for your time is there a message for your fans reading this?
Just thank you for sticking by us through so many years of making music! Check out our new record it’s a pretty cool record and we hope to see you guys soon!

Interview By James Webb