On the occasion of the Made In Hell Festival on 4th & 5th May, at AN Club, Athens, Greece, Last Day Deaf grabbed the opportunity to “interrogate” the people behind this Fest (& Studio of course), Stella Tsolakou & David Prudent..
To start with, please tell our readers what’s the concept behind Made In Hell Festival? Also, provide us with a brief history of it….
Made In Hell Festival was first put together 5 years ago, inviting some good and different with each other bands to play, that we have worked with and have become friends over the years, in order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the studio’s existence, like families do…! We have a rock ‘n’ roll mentality so there was no second thought that there would be no better way to party than with awesome live music! We also wanted to showcase that it is possible to make a successful gig without always matching the music styles exactly, and that people and fans from different genres can all have fun and enjoy themselves together in one place for one night! This is also part of the way we work in MIH Studio. We may specialize in rock, metal & extreme but there are so many different styles within them, that there is never the same set-up for anyone, we make art! And now that our 15th anniversary is approaching we could think of no better way to celebrate once again, just made it double…!
What made you choose these bands (out of 300!) for the upcoming MIH Fest on May 4th & 5th at AN Club?
The number blows our mind too! Over the course of all these years we’ve become friends with many of the bands we have worked with and we have been amazed by their music several times on top! It was not an easy pick, but we tried to include as many different genres as possible once again, by dear bands that had very good recent releases to present the crowd and that we would enjoy like hell watching them play live during this party! Simple as that…! We also see all this thing as a good opportunity for the bands as well, and this is the reason why we chose 2 basically new and “unknown” ones with no discography yet to open both nights, so that they could get a good taste of it all! It doesn’t mean we prefer them than others, we would make it a 24 hour week-special if it was possible!
The previous festival’s edition happened 5 years ago. Should we expect the next one in 5 years then?
If we are still standing…! Maybe we should make it more often but it needs tons of organization and energy each time and it’s true we are pretty busy with the studio already. You don’t get 300 bands by playing your… ahem, mandolin if you know what I mean! Plus it makes it even more special; we think 5 years can be a good amount of time to present fresh stuff to the world and anticipate the moment!
Won’t avoid this one about the studio. 15 years of Made in Hell studio. If you had to pick your 3 most memorable moments, which ones would they be?
There are so many amazing moments we’ve shared, this seems to be the most difficult question…! Well, I’ll try to make it simple… If I absolutely had to pick 3 I would say the time myself and the studio moved to Greece, for obvious reasons, the epic flood in Kallithea which made us move to this amazing location in Moschato and led us open our first rehearsal room focusing on the studio 24/7 and third… I don’t know, I would say everytime a band hands me a CD of the work we did together… it feels good.
Future plans regarding the MIH Festival?
We go with the flow, if we can make it bigger or greater we shall try! What’s for sure is we want to keep the quality on a high level, accessible for the people and fun all the way; same policy we run MIH studio all this time as well. We hope you will embrace this and future efforts as much as you did 5 years ago and only time will tell!! See you in Hell!
Christos Doukakis
