Michael - 2009 is the second coming.  By the time we get out next year Paul will probably be already 60-70% done with writing our next record!

Paul - No pressure then. (laughs)

Michael - You're welcome!  It’ll be out next summer or next fall.  No, I’m just kidding!.  Never say never. (laughs)  We're busy people, we try to have lives but as much as we try to have lives, Eden’s Curse does take up a lot of time and my god if the band hit the road it's gonna become even busier.  I’m gonna throw down every night on stage so no-ones gonna be safe.

Paul - Nope, there’ll be a few people painting their smiles on that night.

Michael - There ya go!

MM - The band is a little heavier on this album, what do you think?
Paul  - I think there’s a couple of slight changes in terms of the production, I don’t think there’s anything in the writing style.  The heaviest thing we did was probably ‘Games People Play' and 'Masquerade Ball', but I think it sits nicely with what we did with the first record.  Maybe a slightly heavier drum sound.  I’m quite pleased with it. The first two songs I wrote for the record were 'Sail On' and 'Man Against The World' and I remember saying to Mike that they were too light for the band, so initially I ditched them from the list that were gonna make it.  In the end we decided to go for it with them, there are some lighter songs and also some heavier songs, but all in all it's Eden’s Curse.

MM - If you had to pick one track off the new album that for you is pure Eden's Curse, which one would you pick and why?
Michael - 'Masquerade Ball'.  Why? Because it's about people who didn’t believe in us and it's about people who stood there and give me the middle finger.  Basically they were giving me the door before they opened it and shook my hand, so there’s a message to be delivered.  And I thank Mr Logue and his original sensational demo that came to me with the original idea and when I first heard it, I said I’ve got the perfect thing for this.  I think were gonna add some guns shots.  There was a message to be delivered to the people that it's about, maybe they’ll get it, maybe they won't, I really don’t care.  Message delivered I would say, 'Masquerade Ball' that’s Eden’s Curse at their most ballistic. 

I don’t think that it’s the best song though, I think the finest hour for the band are songs like 'Sail On', that type of material.  'West Wind Blows' and if people want heavier stuff it's gonna be 'Games People Play' and 'Just Like Judas', 'Ravens Revenge' and stuff like that.  I like the mid tempo stuff in 'Just Like Judas' and that’s Paul’s favourite stuff as well, the mid tempo stuff, but you know there's nothing like a good ass-kicking song like the 'Games People Play'.

Paul - For me, if I had to sum up one song that really hits home of the kinda style we're doing then it’s 'Lost Soul' for me.  When I’m sitting down writing an Eden’s Curse song, particularly a rocker, it's got to have those kind of crunching Queensryche guitars and the harmony guitars, an interesting arrangement and light and shade here and there, it's got to have huge hooks in it.  I remember when I looked back at that track and the demo and I thought ... Jesus Christ it's six and a half minutes long!  For me that’s not something intentional and I’m not afraid of long songs either, I was just genuinely surprised at how long it was.  It turned out to be a bit of an epic, so I was really pleased with it.

As Mike said all of the tracks that we mentioned are fantastic and one track that really stuck out for me was how well 'Angels and Demons' came out, it was quite an adventurous step for us to take.

Michael - PAMELA MOORE!!!

Paul - The whole vibe of the song for me had that European Melodic Metal kinda vibe and it was a riff that I'd had for so long and yet took the longest to write.  I couldn’t find anything to complement it and remember working on it for four months and I just couldn’t get it to work, then suddenly here we go, I went in a different direction so I put the idea to Pete and Mike, and Carsten Schulz got involved in it.  So many different writers produced that and it really makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up sometimes when I think ... Christ did we really do that?

MM - Going back to the production you used Dennis Ward again, was he the obvious choice for you?
Paul - Yes I think so.  I think considering how good the first the record was received, we consciously made the decision that if it wasn’t broken then why fix it?  We tried to get the exact same team there, the only one person missing was Mr Readman. We approached Dave, we approached Carsten and you can't get any better than the best.

Michael - Oh god, Dennis is not only the obvious choice, he was the only choice!  He brought his skills to the table and Paul and I are both huge supporters of his band and a lot of the productions he does like House of Lords, Silent Force, all the many things he’s done over the years.  He’s pretty much THE guy we turn to when we need something done.

And do I argue with him?, of course I do! (laughs)  I think he’s kinda goofy sometimes, but then I’m kinda goofy too.  I’m set in my ways and he’s very set in his ways and sometimes the two heads bump, but at the end of the day he's done it for a while and he knows what he wants to hear in being the producer of the band.  And believe me if I didn’t want the guy working with us he wouldn’t be. 

Dennis gets paid, obviously we don’t go into what Dennis gets paid, because Dennis simply gets paid.  I don’t, Paul doesn’t, we do things because obviously we get our expenses paid by the record label.  We could choose other people to work with but we choose Dennis Ward because he is the best and I honestly believe that. 

There are people who will say ... “he’s just saying that, he’s a kiss ass” ... I'm not a kiss ass.  I love the music that we have created and the production is every bit as good.  The Bob Rocks and the Michael Wagner’s and those guys that did in the 80’s did it for millions of dollars.  If this was 1990 our new record would have cost half a million dollars or more.  To work with Dennis Ward on what he has done and his track record is a great thing for us and he’ll be back on the next one. 

As you know we are quite approachable people, you’ve talked to both of us, I would like to consider the fact that we are very professional at what we do and we are very organised and we know exactly what we're looking for.  We don’t leave any grey areas for people we work with and they've always been paid.  If anyone asks around the people we've worked with, they would get references and they would find that they're always great references.  They will always say there hasn’t been any issues like that.  We take that kind of stuff extremely seriously because it's our reputation that’s at stake.

It took a little bit of convincing for Tony, it certainly wasn’t something that happened over night.  He instantly liked the music and that was really important for him as well as us and he quickly accepted.  It took a couple of weeks.  We sent him the album and he did comment on that the main reason for doing this was the way we went about things and we were extremely professional.  When you’ve got those sort of things in your locker and you’ve got a decent reputation, when you sell a few records and you have someone like Tony or somebody of his calibre involved, it's not gonna to his career any damage what-so-ever.

MM - I noticed that on the Japanese version of the album there’s a Karaoke version of 'What Are Waiting For'.  How about if when the band went on tour a screen came down as part of the encore and the crowd could sing along.
Paul - That might be an idea! (laughs)

Michael - Hey that would be cute!

Paul - Why don’t we just do that with all the songs and Mike can stay at home?

Michael - I would prefer to stay in the United States and still get the paycheck.

Paul - We could just put up your face.

Michael - I’d sing from my living room and I guarantee it would still be cool.

MM - What is the bands main focus point at the moment is it promoting 'The Second Coming' or looking for touring opportunities?
Michael - I would say the focus now is that we're doing this press thing and the promotion of the new album.  Then the next main priority is to get this band on the road and getting some shows.  One show, two shows, ten shows, whatever.  That is the priority and while all that is going on Paul is working on brand new music and who knows what’s going to happen with that, but there will be more Eden’s Curse stuff going on in the future, although the priority right now without a doubt is going out and playing live and bring it to the people.

MM - How much of a problem has the downloading of illegal sites been for the band?
Michael - I haven’t been asked that in a while but the downloading is a major major problem these days, not just for us it’s the same for every band.  I mean the Metallica record came out in France overseas it comes out a couple of weeks before the release date.  The store breaks the street date and they start selling it.  What happens? It appears on a Torrent site within eight hours and now it has been downloaded thousands and thousands of times.  It is a real problem.  It might not be a problem to James and Lars, they're driving around in $70-$80,000 automobiles, but to bands like us, it's the be all and end all.

I don’t support people ripping the band off and talking about it publicly like some of them have done.  Some of them think that’s ok to do that.  They’ve gone out of there way to basically talk about it and make it known ... “hey we ripped the band off” ... Great! Don’t tell me about it! If you're gonna do it go on and do it, you can't stop downloading but just because you can't stop it doesn't mean you're gonna sit there and welcome it with open arms either!  I think it's something that the music business and labels could have stopped years ago and because of bad thinking and poor foresight into the future, as the saying goes, the said horse is pretty much out of the barn.

Michael - We just appreciate the support you guys give us and the appreciate the support of your readers and the people who come to your site and support real music.  We want to thank more than anything else the Eden’s Curse fans that have stayed with us over the past two years and we get letters from some of these people and some of them are very hardcore.  We get some crazy letters sometimes but thank god for the delete button on MySpace and the Website! (laughs)  There’s a lot of people who mean well but are a little overbearing, but there are also a lot of people that are very supportive of what we do and they want us to get out there and they want us to play.