Hi there Lahannya! Thank you for speaking with Underground Industries! 

Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me, Laura!

First up, you've been on the UK tour since the 21st May, in fact you’re just finished right? What kind of response have you been getting and are you enjoying it so far?

The tour has been great so far. We really enjoyed the first show, in Birmingham, where we played with two great support bands and saw lots of familiar faces in the crowd – fans who’ve been supporting us for several years now. The next day turned out to be quite adventurous too, when we found out that the venue did not have a 16 channel mixing desk, as they’d told us, but only a 4 channel mixing desk with dodgy wiring and no equalizer…. But the venue owner managed to beg, borrow and possibly steal bits of equipment over the following hours, and that meant we ended up with enough to be able to play the gig. I owe our sound engineer copious amounts of Jelly Babies now to make up for this! The crowd was amazing though and it turned out to be a fantastic gig despite the initial complications…

Newport was completely different and definitely a bit surreal. Many people were gathered outside the venue rather than inside where a fire artist was performing… an odd piece of performance art was going on inside too; a face painter sat near the front of the stage and painted people’s faces entirely red and the whole place exuded a strong punk atmosphere. But we witnessed an incredible Macarena-like choreography to our song “Bleed For Me” as well as plenty of headbanging and our first moshpit, so I’d definitely do it again…!

The London show broke the record in terms of sheer number of bands on the bill and we again had lots of dancing and headbanging at the front (!), so there was an incredible amount of energy in the air…. it came to an end far too soon, if I’m honest!

How would you best describe the music of Lahannya?

This is always a very tricky question. If I was forced to give our music a label, I’d call it industrial rock, but don’t expect us to sound anything like Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson. We play rock music with electronic elements, gothic sensibility and plenty of metal attitude; maybe Lacuna Coil meets The Birthday Massacre meets Snake River Conspiracy?

How did your line-up come together? 

It all started with Lutz (our bass player) and myself meeting backstage at M’Era Luna a couple of years ago. We stayed in touch and soon realised that we shared a similar attitude and vision. Since it’s rare to find people you click with so well musically and personally, we decided to give working together a go and neither one of us has looked back since. It was never the plan that Lutz would also play live with me, but I’m very glad that fate intervened as he’s not only great on stage but also takes ownership of our technical set-up and tour bus.

Belle (our drummer), I’ve known for many years and he’s jumped to my rescue on several occasions, which is exactly what he did again when things didn’t work out with the first drummer I tried out. Although I was gutted at the time, it turned out to be for the best and I’ve left quite a few bands green with envy that I managed to snap up one of the most sought-after drummers in London. Chris (guitar) joined us after our previous guitarist was forced to stop touring because of a psychotic female in his life. We weren’t keen on the idea of auditioning strangers and since Lutz knew Chris already from touring together and he’d been to all our London shows, it was natural to ask him.

We’ve ended up as an unusual mix of different characters, which makes our tours quite exciting and certainly leaves us with many stories to tell or to keep silent about, that’s for sure…

You first had your name appear in the underground scene when you had a DJ residency at the legendary Slimelight, do you still DJ and what are your top tracks to play?

I’ve been a resident at Slimelight for years, although at the moment I DJ a little less frequently as I’ve been very busy with the album release and touring. I’ve never been into just one genre and my musical taste is very broad. At Slimelight, I therefore DJ on two different floors and play two very different kinds of sets. The industek floor is dedicated to harder electronic music and there I tend to play noise, power electronics and hard electro. My favourite bands for that kind of dance floor are the likes of Xotox, People’s Republic of Europe, Ultraviolence, Mono No Aware, Twinkle, Terrorfakt and Feindflug. On the other main floor, I play a quite diverse, generally more industrial rock and metal set that includes bands such as Nine Inch Nails, Rob Zombie, Ministry, Kidneythieves, Dope Stars Inc, Rammstein, System of A Down, Prodigy, Frontline Assembly, Snake River Conspiracy, and KMFDM….

The artwork for 'Welcome To The Underground' EP was designed by graphic novelist David Bircham, how did this collaboration happen?

I have been an avid comic reader for years with some of my favourite series being Transmetropolitan, Preacher, Sandman and Blade Of The Immortal. It’s therefore not much of a surprise that I got to know David when he was running his own stall in Camden Market where he was selling his self-published book, "Brodie’s Law". I really liked the artwork and story and since I’d always wanted to have a comic art look for “Welcome To The Underground” it was natural to ask him. He really liked the world in which “Welcome …..” and our new album is set and was very enthusiastic about creating the visual look for our EP.

Do you think outlets such as Myspace help the 'Underground' music scene, or as it is now more accessible it risks diluting it with a host of 'bedroom' bands?

I think that any social network helps with networking and making contacts, but I’ve long given up using it to discover new music as there is far, far more music on there that I don’t like even if you look within a particular genre. I much prefer Last.fm to discover new bands when I’m online and am very happy that it introduced me to people like Mankind Is Obsolete, a far too underrated US industrial rock band. My preferred way of discovering new music, however, is still hearing new bands live at a festival or as support to another band that I do know.

Do you think there are certain expectations that you have to live up to in order to be considered a part of the gothic scene?

I have absolutely no idea, as I’ve never tried to please any particular scene or crowd to be accepted by it. I believe that the most important thing for any person is to be true to themselves and to be genuine…, and if a particular scene does not like you because of it you’re better off without it anyway.

What was the first band that had a real impact on you and why?

I’m actually no longer sure what they were called, but they were an unknown girl band from Brighton. Their lead guitarist and singer, Annie, said something to me once that gave me the confidence to do my own thing. She said that she couldn’t play the guitar very well, she just put her fingers on a few strings and strummed and if it sounded good, then she’d do it again, and if it didn’t, then she wouldn’t….

After being in a bunch of testosterone-fuelled bands that kept telling me that I wasn’t a good enough guitarist, I was finally inspired to just write my own songs on guitar, record them and release them. And today, the testosterone bunch are working in some call centre or are on the dole and I’m the one who is playing European festivals with my band...

You've done a few collaborations in the past such as Combichrist, Greenhaus & ASP, is there any particular artist that you'd love to do a collaboration with if you had the chance?

I’ve never really planned any collaboration, they always happened spontaneously, out of the moment, because the chemistry or the circumstances were right…., but, I like the idea of recording a duet with David Draiman of Disturbed because he has got one of the most amazing male voices I’ve ever heard and I’d love to perform a track live with Dimmu Borgir because their music is so bombastic, that it would be brilliant to experience that once, first hand…. Then, if The Prodigy were looking for a female guest vocalist, I certainly wouldn’t say no…. that would be rude!

Is there anything else you'd like to say to our readers?

Just a huge thank you to everyone who came to see us on the last tour and has been supporting us so far! I hope you like our new album “Defiance”, which will be out in October and then, we’ll see some of you on our next UK tour in November! Rock on!

Many thanks for taking the time to speak with us!