Smile And Burn

Maybe not the best but certainly one of the most refreshing records of the year. Berlin’s Smile And Burn debuts with ‘Flight attempt of the Kiwi’, 11 songs that stay within the parameters of punk rock but never sound the same. I love how they take stuff from bands like The Loved Ones, Title Fight and Strike Anywhere and mash it up to create their own sound. The personal lyrics and subtle artwork go well with music.
One of those records that you can play to the girl that you have a crush on without scaring her too much with your love for punk rock.
Dudes and dudettes that dig the above-mentioned bands should definitely give this record a spin. - asice.net

Posted: Sat Apr 2 2011 by Neil Richardson

Our Band of the Month for April are a quintet hailing from Germany, Smile And Burn. This is the first time a band from the Germany has been given the converted award, it may have happened earlier but since they beat England in the World Cup some of us have been sulking.

Smile And Burn released their debut album at the end of 2010 and received some pretty great reviews including from our own Kate Rees who gave it a whopping 12 out of 13 saying "Serving up a succulent selection of pop-punk tunes, Berlin-based Smile And Burn are set to give their musical peers a run for their money with their delicious debut effort 'Flight Attempt Of The Kiwi'." If it is good enough for Kate, it is good enough for the rest of us too.

The boys from Berlin are just about to head to these shores, with a tour of the UK, details are below and you would be crazy to miss them if you had the chance!

Finally, Christoph from the band was kind enough to answer our questions and introduce themselves:

Bio:
We are Smile And Burn from Berlin/Germany. We know each other for ages and made music in different bands before. We took the chance to join forces with both hands in late 2008. After writing and recording some songs we put out a demo on ourselves which was released by Lost Tape Collective a few weeks later. The start as a band went well so we played more shows and wrote new stuff. In 2010 we were able to release our first album on Fond Of Life Records.

Members:
Smile And Burn are Philipp (Vocals), Wolli (Drums), Soren (Guitar and Vocals), Sascha (Guitar and Vocals) and Christoph (Bass and Vocals).

Influences:
Obviously Punk Rock had a huge impact on us. Latterman, Belvedere, NoFX or newer stuff like The Riot Before are bands we all dig and shaped us somehow. But we don't put restrictions on ourselves and listen to every stuff we like and want. Wolli sometimes listen to crazy Jazz stuff were Philipp prefers a fine breeze of Motown Soul. You can't grow as band only listen to the same stuff over and over again. You have to broaden your horizon.

Sounds Like:
Ha, you couldn't know this but we are a casualty of extreme name dropping in reviews. We were blessed getting some really god ones from fanzines we love but according to the reviewing writers it seems we sound like the whole "Pop Punk Rock Top 100". From A Day To Remember to Zebrahead. We actually made a sticker about that topic. But to answer that question, I think all people who like good Punk Rock would like what they hear.

Current release and where it's available:
Our debut album "Flight Attempt Of The Kiwi" is out since autumn 2010. I think you can buy it almost everywhere on the internet, at the FOND OF LIFE website or directly from us at shows or online.

Up and coming artists you would recommend:
We definitely fell in love with All Aboard from Monchengladbach, Germany during the last months. This band is just great and definitely worth checking out.
The same could be said for The Driftwood Fairytales from our home town Berlin. They will release a new album this summer which is just stunning.

From England I personally love Mike TV and All Or Nothing. Two great bands from the millions and thousands of awesome bands from the UK.

Future Plans:
We all are very exited about our UK Tour starting this weekend. We just can't wait to hop in the van and play those shows. After that we'll keep on working as hard as possible in case of playing concerts and writing new material. In July we'll tour with The Driftwood Fairytales through Germany which will be a blast, too.

Tour Dates:
Our UK Tour is starting this weekend! Come to the shows and say "hi"!

02. April Cologne (GER) - Aetherblissement
03. April Eindhoven (NL) - Cafe Aloys
04. April Brighton (UK) - The Jam
05. April Reading (UK) - The Facebar
06. April Swindon (UK) - The 12 Bar
07. April Liverpool (UK) - Bumper
08. April Macclesfield (UK) - The Swan With Two Necks
09. April Petersfield (UK) - Foggy's Bar
10. April Sheerness (UK) - The Ivy Leaf Club

If you were Chancellor Merkel for one day, what would you do:
Nude pictures or a hidden porn video named "yes she can". Of course, no one would like to see this but it would force her to recede and everyone else would have a blast.

If you could go back to any time in history, where would you go and why:
I would go back to the summer of 2005 when I tried to play an audition for Philipps old band and find the lower tone "E" on my bass guitar right away. That would erase a long lasting running gag. - roomthirteen.com

OOS: “Smile And Burn is a five piece pop punk band from Berlin (DE). Please introduce the band and how did ‘Smile And Burn’ came to its existence?”

SAB: “Hello, this is Wolli and Christoph from Smile And Burn. First of all, thank you so much for doing this interview with us! Smile And Burn. The band was founded in 2008. We all have been friends before, went to shows together and supported each others old bands. At some point we took the chance to play music together, wrote the first songs and whooop, here we are. Sometimes it’s that easy.”

OOS: What influence ‘Smile And Burn musically and or lyrically? I guess, looking at the song titles, that humour is important to the band?”

SAB: “Our musical background is strongly grounded on bands like NoFX, Latterman and Belvedere. They shaped us, leaded us to start playing instruments and showed us what’s possible. But we all listen to other stuff as well. We love punk rock but know that there’s plenty of other stuff worth to check out.

Philipps lyrics aren’t that funny as our music might suggest. We love to have fun and joke around but the topics which Philipp sings about are more serious and touch us all in the band. For example the first song on our album ‘Dear Sheppard’ is about how fucked up religion is and how people are mislead by mostly money and power greedy people.”

OOS: “Your debut record ‘Flight Attempt Of The Kiwi’ has been released in 2010 on a small German label called ‘Fond Of Life Records’. This label also released records from Antillectual, High Five Drive, This is a Standoff, … Can you tell me how this cooperation was realized?”

SAB: “Fond of Life Records is a blueprint for a hard working and energetic label with an DIY kind of attitude which is missing in current times so often. He has put out almost 50 records and never jumped on the hype wagon. You can’t find a band on this label which is not fitting and Joe, the founder, has a strong personal contact to each of them.

This label is by far the best thing that happened to us so far. I knew Joe for a long time before and when we had our first musical output the interests was there to cooperate. Joe is the best thing that can to bands like us which have no real experience releasing albums. His label is not that small as you might think. He has already put out a lot and has a strong distribution in the UK and even worldwide!”

OOS: “Will the record also be available/released in the Benelux?”

SAB: “Yes. You can get it via www.sonicrendezvous.com. You can order it online there or go to the shops which are listed on that website. You can order merch directly from us or our website as well. We would love to send something to the Benelux.”

OOS: “You are on a tour in the UK now. Why did you decided to release ‘Flight Attempt Of The Kiwi’ as a limited edition 12? vinyl, just for this tour?”

SAB: “No, we didn’t made the 12“ just for the tour. I think we planned this release for a long time now. The tour was maybe some kind of an accelerator to finally force us to chase this plan. Since we recorded ‘Flight Attempt of the Kiwi’ we were sure that we want a 12“. We talked with Joe from Fond Of Life about that and he was in and were happy. Really happy.”

OOS: “You are already planning a new record later this year. Can you tell us more about it?”

SAB: “We don’t have any exact schedule or plans for new stuff to be released in the near future. We are not that band which sits 4 weeks only in the rehearsal room or in the studio and writes a record which is recorded afterwards. Our song writing process is more complex and we write new stuff constantly while rehearsing. Sometimes we even don’t like the songs after maybe a month and we completely rearrange them or forget them.

We want to write music which we would like to hear and play and this is sometimes quite difficult. You don’t want songs to be too simple because you don’t want to repeat all that stupid bullshit everyone is doing to get some attention. Bands which try something new will stuck in heads and minds. Luckily a hook line plus a sing along isn’t a hit right away and that’s why we force or challenge ourselves to take time to write new stuff.”

OOS: “Any other plans for the future and some final shout outs?”

SAB: “We are working on some plans for supporting our biggest idols from Germany. Famous bands like ‘Schmatzen’ or ‘Muffensausen’ are willing to have us as their support act and we are honoured to play with them. I hope those things will work out and we can announce some shit soon.”

Thank you, Wolli & Christoph, SMILE AND BURN

www.smileandburn.com - Out Of Step