We cancelled our Zoom meetings and fobbed off our TikTok agents to speak with Ronny Moorings the last founding member standing in Clan Of Xymox.
Hello, how are you in these strange times?
Yes, it is absolutely abnormal. It started for us in the in the middle of a sold out USA tour in March 2020 when we had to return home. [President] Trump banned all flights from Europe when we were in Texas and it seemed the best course of action to try and fly from Houston to [Germany.] It was eerie at the airport; The airport was dead. There was no one was working there except from one airliner host who luckily took care of our ticketing so the next day we could, finally, leave the USA.
A few days after we got home we were under a full lock down. No airplanes were allowed in. We were very lucky under the circumstances. Since there were no more shows to do, I concentrated on the next single to be released, made a video for it and wrote some extra B sides for the EPs. I did a remix for Lesson Seven which was released a week ago in July. I spent quality time at home and tried to catch up with a things waiting to be done but had never got the time for. I made sure not to get bored.
Talk to us about the new album. Where does the title Spider On The Wall come from?
The song Spider On The Wall has a line: If The Spider on the wall could only tell my woes. It could have been the proverbial fly on the wall but a spider makes it more dramatic. I like to name an album with some reference to a song. In this case Spider On The Wall.
“For me it is about the community and not the musical direction.”
With song titles like Into “The Unknown” and “Black Mirror” what themes do you explore on the new album?
Into the Unknown is about starting a new life and leaving the old one behind.
Black Mirror is based on the TV series Black Mirror and it was the last song I wrote for Days Of Black. It never made it on [Days of Black] because I was not sure it was finished. I worked on it again and gave it its final touches.
The themes are quite varied and touch things like Afterlife, Eternal love, Being Alone etc.
When you look around then you can see so many people glued to their smartphones. It is like it is an important part of our body. On the net all crave for attention and constantly need to be validated by likes while we come up with new topics to entertain our friends. During the lock down communication was very important and I could never live without all my gadgets because it makes my life way easier. But It does not mean that I need to be using it all the time.
Although Robert Smith would deny it your style can be best described as Goth Rock. What is Goth?
To me [our style] is more Dark Wave but whatever label you want to put on it as most people know what is meant by it.
For me it is about the community and not the musical direction. This community involves so many different directions and styles of music it would be impossible to have all the categories labeled. However I have no problem with the term Goth. I know what is meant by it.
“Musicians were the first to stop performing in clubs and we are the last ones to start perform in public again.”
If Goth was a meal what would be on its plate?
It would be any type of food that has been dyed with activated charcoal, squid ink, black sesame, black truffle, or some other type of black food colouring so that it appears black, or grey. Inky Pasta with black garlic sounds appealing. [Yum! – Ed]
Finally, has the CV-19 episode in our history influenced, inspired or impacted you in any way?
I wrote one instrumental with my eight year old daughter called COVID 19 and another one just after that [called] Dystopia for the third single All I Ever Know. All other songs on the album were written in 2019 pre-corona time.
Dystopia is about our daily lives as we lead it during the lock down. The Covid 19 piece has the televangelist Kenneth Copeland and Trump as these insane leaders praying and uttering sheer nonsense about this pandemic. It is more of a piss take then anything else.
The pandemic has a huge impact on how I live. We cannot play any live shows anymore. Musicians were the first to stop performing in clubs and we are the last ones to start perform in public again.
After so many months I feel as Corona-brainwashed as I felt with the word Brexit. Luckily here in Germany nothing really happened and life appears normal on the surface. It seemed like more of an epidemic than a pandemic. There were so many conflicting studies about CV-19 but looking around the counter-measures are far worse than what the actual figures proved. Now we are almost six months hence and there is no end in sight to the ridiculous policies regarding how we can live our lives in normalcy.
