PINK CREAM 69 bassist/producer Dennis Ward (UNISONIC) is featured in a new interview with Matt Phelps at Über Röck. An excerpt is available below:

Q: Do you feel having different backgrounds goes towards setting yourselves apart from other German bands to any great extent, with yourself being American and Dave English?

Ward: "Well, considering I've lived here in Germany for so long and Dave (Readman) is also pretty much completely integrated I don't think it makes all that much of a difference because we all live here. I just think as a band and as people in general that happens naturally and makes us stand out if you will. We were never ones to really follow trends. Although I will admit that in the mid-nineties we did try to hop on a bandwagon, which definitely did not work out for us. In this day and age we've got the attitude that we'll write the songs and do the stuff that we feel good about and that's it. We're not gonna pay attention to trends or what have you, what's popular or not. That doesn't matter to me anyway to be honest, in Pink Cream 69 we really just write what we like and don't consider stuff like that. We don't let it influence us put it that way."

Q: I suppose that's one of the benefits these days of having labels like Frontiers where they're prepared to just support the artists to do whatever they want as opposed to maybe the mid nineties when labels were pushing bands to change to fit in with trends and tap in to particular markets.

Ward: "Yeah that was the case, it really was. It is true now that we really do have the freedom. Back then though the expectations too were so much higher for a lot of obvious reasons. I remember that selling 80,000 copies would have been considered a flop, but today you sell 80,000 albums and you're probably gonna go platinum in a lot of countries. Times have definitely changed. Now we're happy for the freedom but on the other side, and I hope this doesn't sound too arrogant, we pretty much figure we're gonna do whatever we want to do anyway and if nobody likes it then we really don't care. We don't have anything to lose to be honest. We've really come full circle now to the point where we say when we make music we're gonna make it with heart and soul, we're gonna be dead serious about it, we're gonna do our very best and do what we think is really good. We're gonna be critical, we're not just gonna write a generic album and say that's it, we've done it, but we're also not gonna be influenced by anything else that's going on or what other people say. We're not like the most popular band in the world and we don't have a lot of success at risk so we can do what we want to do, we have nothing to lose and that really makes life easier for us. If everybody enjoys it as much as we do and enjoys listening to it that's a big big bonus for us. But if nobody's really into it then we can't change it anyway. We only do what we can do and that's it. A band is the chemistry of everybody involved, and I just made the example earlier today that if you ever went to a pub and saw a cover band performing one of your favourite bands and the musicians are playing it almost to a T, the notes are right, the lyrics are right, the style is right but you think it sounds nothing like the band you know. The band chemistry brings the song over. We wanna be true to ourselves so we only do stuff that we think we can do really well. We're not gonna try and do stuff that we think other people want to hear because it's in or because it's kind of a trend. We're just not influenced by any of that and we have nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Pink Cream 69 released Ceremonial on January 22nd in North America and January 25th in Europe. The cover artwork was created by Kai Brockschmidt (PRETTY MAIDS, ROYAL HUNT), and can be seen below:

Ceremonial tracklisting:

'Land Of Confusion'

'Wasted Years'

'Special'

'Find Your Soul'

'The Tide'

'Big Machine'

'Let The Thunder Roll'

'Right From Wrong'

'Passage Of Time'

'I Came To Rock'

'King For One Day'

'Superman'

Check out audio samples from the album below: