By: Ilona Fridman

First off, can you tell me a bit about your name, Madina Lake?
Nathan Leone: We completely made it up. Basically, we decided that instead of just making a record we wanted to create a story and have the songs tell a story, tying it all in with our different philosophies on life and our experiences and things that have happened to us. Madina Lake is a fictitious town that we made up. Its set in the 50’s, because at that time, in America, the country was depression rendered, and the story revolves around American pop culture that didn’t start then, but is now at an all-time ridiculous level.

Your debut EP is called The Disappearance of Adalia, can you tell me the story behind that?
Nathan: The story revolves around a character named Adalia, who is a really famous person in this town, and she goes missing. The record unfolds the scenario and what happened and why. Our full-length record that comes March 27, is called From Them, Through Us, To You. We don’t believe in any organized religion whatsoever, it sounds kind of bizarre, but we believe in energies and good vibrations and those kinds of things. So that album is like the energies telling our story through us, to the people who would potentially listen to our band.

Just last year you signed with Roadrunner Records, who also represent bands like Nickleback, Slipknot, and Killswitch Engage. What’s it been like working with this label?
Nathan: Honestly, it’s been unbelievable! We got signed pretty quickly. We’ve been a band for maybe a year and a half, two years tops, but we got really lucky and were signed after we’d had maybe 3 or 4 songs. So we basically spent a couple months promoting ourselves and playing shows like crazy, and did a lot of writing. When we finished writing, we went to L.A. and spent a few months there recording it. But then we realized that we don’t want it released for a while, because we want to really put in our time, do the circuit, and tour on an indie level as much as possible. That’s what we’ve been doing, and they’ve really been supporting that. It’s an old-school approach, where you actually develop artists; you don’t just grab a song, throw it on the radio and hope that it works. They’ve been supporting it like crazy. We’ve been on tour for 8 months now, and for us this is surreal! We owe a lot to Roadrunner for letting us do this.

You just came off a UK tour with Paramore, and are going back to the UK in February with Gym Class Heroes. Where did you get the best response?
Nathan: It was outrageous! The UK kids are amazing because they go out to shows wanting to have fun and wanting to love the music and have the time of their life. When you’re doing the small punk tours around America you get kids that come and it’s almost like they want to not like you, and you have to prove to them that you’re cool. But over there, the lights turn off and the kids just start jumping and clapping for no reason at all, it’s awesome!

This year you played at the annual Bamboozle festival, which you’ll be playing at again in May, what was that like?
Nathan: That was amazing because our first tour was 5 days leading up to Bamboozle, and we just played some small shows in Chicago with maybe 30 people there, but we were just getting started. So then we went to play at Bamboozle and there was this huge stage outside, with thousands of people there! It was outrageous, it was super fun. That festival is amazing, it’s really well run, everyone that works there is awesome, and they pick awesome bands to play it, and the kids that go there are super cool, it’s just a great vibe being there.

Hopefully I’ll see you there! So your first full length album From Them, Through Us, To You is set to be released early in 2007…
Nathan: Yeah, we finished it 8 months ago! We wanted to hold off as long as possible, but at the same time we want it out, because we want people to know the songs and get to know our band more than just a couple songs on myspace or 4 songs on our EP. We like to think that the record is a lot more diverse and a lot more rich than 4 songs can tell, so we’re kind of dying to get it out, but at the same time it’s kind of necessary to put in this time to build up a fan base if possible. We’re ecstatic! We feel like we’ve got something in our pockets that we’re so excited to share with people.

http://www.myspace.com/madinalake
http://www.madinalake.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 11:25 pm.