Ravens Brain

Present yourself to the readers

We are MitGift – playing female-fronted Dark-Rock / NDH. Located in Augsburg 60 km away from Munich
We started in winter 2013.
Actually Vroni on lead-vocals, Stefan on guitar, programming, backing and additional vocals, Boris guitar, Chrissi bass and Christian on drums.
We all know each other from different other projects and bands, where we worked together.

What’s the story for IN ARTICULO MORTIS ?

To answer this, we have to combine question 2, 4 and 5, because there is a concept behind …
MitGift: We liked the two meanings behind – which is the reason for the capital M and G in the name. First, Mitgift means dowry – but “mit Gift” means “with poison”. And so you see, there is a base for some interesting lyrics and songs about love, force, marriage, death, greed and murder …
Most of the texts are written by Stefan, some are written Vroni and our former bass-player Doris.
So, “In Articulo Mortis” describs things you do when dying – and so in former ages it happend quite often, that there were marriages “in articulo mortis” just in order to get the dowry … you see? Death, greed and (not really) love.

Who composes ?...How does it work in the band ?

All songs were written by Stefan except some lyrics. This means preproduced ideas and arrangements will be discussed and completed together.

Who writes the texts ?..What are they talking about ?..How does inspiration come ?

Most lyrics are written by Stefan, who also composes the music. Main topics are the fundamental emotions like love, hate, fear, greed … And doe to the MitGift-Concept mentioned above all this fits together Inspiration starts sometimes with a guitar riff, some crazy synthesizer sounds and with it the words come. Sometimes inspiration comes by some personal experiences – movies, books, life.
Then the next step is inquiry – I do this very thoroughly, so it takes a lot of time.
An interesting example is “Blaubeer-Marie”: It started with a Guitar-picking pattern, to which we added a cello (Doris our former bass-player also played cello). Then I read an article about a woman, who killed her husbands with poison. In order to hide the blue color of the poison, she baked blueberry-cake. During investigations on this topic, I found out that she suffered from dementia in prison. During this time I watched “The iron lady” about Margret Thatcher, where dementia is also treated as subject. And so I started to think about, how this would look like, if the memories come back and then disappear again.

Why the name MITGIFT ?

See #2: MitGift: We liked the two meanings behind – which is the reason for the capital M and G in the name. First, Mitgift means dowry – but “mit Gift” means “with poison”. And so you see, there is a base for some interesting lyrics and songs about love, force, marriage, death, greed and murder …

What are your personal musical tastes and your influences ?

We have a very wide range of musical tastes in our band. From 80s electronic stuff over old school hard rock, up to death metal. I think, that makes it interesting and exciting – mixing it up, and stay open minded.
Of course, when coming from Germany and doing dark, metal-like music with german lyrics you will always get in touch and will be influenced by bands like Rammstein, Megaherz, Eisbrecher … so this lead in the meantime to hundreds of Rrrrrrammstein-Sound-alikes … so in our case I am glad to have a female singer and to have further and wider influences, which makes it more interesting.

What's your best live memory ? And why ?

Puh, that’s difficult … I cannot decide between two shows:
the show in Erfurt supporting Erdling – because, the audience was amazing. And that’s the thing why you work hard, write songs, rehearse – just for these minutes on stage, when you get the feedback from the crowd. Erdling and Manntra which played this tour are such nice guys, all the people at the club and of course the audience… and at this evening Michael (from In Extremo) joined Manntra and we met him backstage, talked a little bit and drank some beers … great evening.
Or our release-show in a tiny club in our hometown – I think only 80 people there, the stage was so small, we had to stand in the audience … long-time fans and friends …

In studio, what was the ambiance for the album IN ARTICULO MORTIS ?...etc.…

The album was recorded and produced by Stefan. Drums where recorded at the Mental Season Studios, because they have more experience with drum-recording.
Due to the fact that we have all our daytime-jobs, recording happened mostly in the evening or on weekends. It took several weeks. But this is an advantage, because you can concentrate and focus on a single part and do not have to compress 10 songs in two days. We had the time to think about small parts, so it became more intense and alive.

How does it work for the design of the CD ? and why this title ?

The design was created by our drummer Christian who works in the media business. Green and black are part of our concept.
With the title “In articulo mortis” which means “in contemplation of death” we again picked up the topics of death, marriage and greed.
Strange ancient customs and traditions where you try to change your past life and arrange the past and coming time.

With Management and booking, how do you work ? And with whom ?

We do this all by ourselves – no booking company or management. The offers we had have not been too attractive for us. It’s always a question of benefit – can you do it by yourself? What would be the benefit by paying money …

What are your projects ?

Of course writing new songs for the next CD. And preparing some shows for winter and spring.

What's your motto ?

« Gekuschelt wird woanders » - cuddling is somewhere else (?)

Website to remember

http://www.manntra.hr/ - Homepage of the band Manntra we met on tour with Erdling – they are so amazing!!!

What would you like to say to the readers ?

Support your local bands! Check out small bands on the web – it had never been easier to discover amazing, interesting, great and weird bands and music aside the boring 10 same songs on the radio. The world is open! Go and discover!

What question, I did not ask you and would you like me to ask you :-) ?

When will you be playing in Belgium? ;-)