The first time when I met in person Ill Nino was in 2011, when I had won a VIP ticket for Rockmaraton Festival on a Facebook game.  The guys were really friendly and nice, they took time to talk with everyone. The show went really great, the crowd was going insane when they started to play.

The last time when they played in Hungary was in Dürer kert, in 2012 of June, personally I can’t wait to see them again. In last year they had a tour with the hungarian Ektomorf, their next shows going to start from the end of February in Australia. Laz Pina, the bass player gave Rockbook an interview on Skype, here is the conversation from the New York-Budapest distance.

Laz Pina

Rockbook:  How was your last tour? Did you enjoy to tour with the hungarian Ektomorf on  the "European Epidemic Tour”?

Laz Pina: The last european tour was incredible. I absolutely crazy about the dudes from Ektomorf, we had such a great time. We just hit it off really well with those guys. Zoli (singer of Ektomorf) was amazing, I was just enjoying to be around. We had a really good time, I hope we can do it again with them.

Rockbook: As I heard, there will be a song on the new Ektomorf album featurning Ill Nino. How about the song?

Laz Pina: I can’t really tell you about it. You know, Christian did it really quietly, late at night, when nobody was around. He was very excited about the track, he did it as great as possible.

Rockbook: Which city was the best to play in 2013? Where did you have the biggest crowd?

Laz Pina:The biggest crowd, ohh, shit…I’m not quiet sure actually. Maybe it was in Belarus. It was nice, it was full packed  and it was a great show. The last european tour was great though, we had a great time.

Rockbook: What are your plans for 2014?

Laz Pina: The band is ready to tour again pretty soon, and we are also currently in the process of writing some new material. Christian is having a baby any day now, we are kind of waiting around.We are gonna do some shows in Australia in mid February, it’s pretty massive. We are looking forward to get a fresh start, starting the year of some strong and terrific shows. Hopefully it will set the temper for the rest of the year. After that, we are going to get some South American dates,then we are going to start going into the studio, start trying to put a new record together. We want to make a new sounding record. Sort of like, we don’t have to proof anything what we had already done, like ’Revolution Revolución’ is gonna be always that record. Instead of trying to republica our pass, we are trying to move forward. We are excited to get very creative with the new Ill Nino sound.

Rockbook: Daniel Couto (percussionist) left the band, and you have a new member, Oscar Santiago. Can you tell me a little bit about him?

Laz Pina: He is a long time friend of the band and he has worked with us on Enigma, and he had worked with Daniel on some pre-production. He had played with some of our favourite bands, starting with a band called ’Puya’ which one of the pioneers of blending latin music with metal. He is the most appropriate guy to be in the band. We’ve been friends for so long, so that’s kind of like family, he’s also a friend of Danny. It will be very exciting to make a record with him, he has a lot of great ideas to the table at the percussion side. It’s gonna be really dark and rhytmic, like real roots of Africa, voodoo, rhytms from the times before Christ and many religions. We wanna mix all like that with the new, maybe some more electronic music. I’ve always been a fan of electronical music. I would like to influence the record to have a nice industrial-electro-goth thing.

Ill Niño - Forgive Me Father

Rockbook: As far as I know, the band members are living in different places. How can you do the rehearsals or the new songs?

Laz Pina:It’s very hard to manage, we tempted to get together rehearsals before we tour. We should be rehearse wherever we starting to tour at. We get together, sometimes we are apart  for months at the time, but when we get together, we put us in a room and literally feels like I just saw Dave (drummer) the day before yesterday or something. We have that chemistry, even we are not together, we are connected somehow. We all talk together every week, we have phone meetings. (After our interview they had a conference call   )

Rockbook: You and Christian Machado (singer) has a studio, calls Sound Wars Studios. Can you tell me about it?

Laz Pina: While we were doing the interview, he was in the studio, so I had a chance to see it, he showed me almost all of it.  Live room, piano, pretty cool Banksys on the wall, big hallway, a common area and another 10 rooms. It was really awesome!  (https://www.facebook.com/Soundwars)

Rockbook: What’s your influence when you write a new song?

Laz Pina:The influence is whatever motivates me at the time, however  feel at the time. It’s also as like I’m in the mood for, I’m always in the mood for things. I like to listen to jazz, electronics, blues,dubstep, I like reagge as well. I love hardcore music, I love punk rock, I love so many things, it’s hard to say. I guess it affects what I’m listening to lately.

Rockbook: What’s your favourite Ill Nino song (if you have), and why?

Laz Pina:Oh,I have so many of them! My favourite on the newest record is a song calls ’Eva’. I wanted that song like the character of Eva. It’s also a feeling of pavement, particularly for women. That’s a women song, it really is. The inspiration is that song is really…I should say protest, campagning for more equal rights,more often than now. Still, including here in America, women content to feel now sometimes secondary because might get less paid for doing the same job. It gets worst around the world, when some countries, religious beliefs are so strict. Women don’t realize that they have little human rights. It’s also very inspiring by a little girl from Pakistan name Malala. A little girl who refuse, who wanted to be educated. She stood up and said, I want to get education as well, it’s not fair that the boys can get it and I can’t get it. Some kind of religious fanatics didn’t really like the fact that her parents allowed her  to do that, and they temped to kill her, but they didn’t succeed. It only made her more powerful. She is still a little girl, but she is getting speeches now in the United  Nation. She is stronger than ever and I think that was the kind of the inspiration behind it. I think anyone can feel secondary. Within my travels, which we performed more than 35 countries, you really come to realize that we are all people with the same rights. No one should have more rights than the others, depending on where they live and what their culture is. Equal human rights are something that very very strong and inspiring, which also to this whole band I think. They aren’t many we call latino metal bands, so we are minorities. It’s inspiring and we fight and we feel that desire for all human rights, for everyone to be treated fairly and equally, with no one to be above or below, all on the same level. Hopefully we are getting closer to it, to be in a better place.

Rockbook: If you could give some advice to the new bands and musicians, what would it be?

Laz Pina: If you really choose music, choose it because it’s in your heart. Continue doing so because the true succees in music is to keep it in your life. So if you keep it in your life, I guarantee you won’t have an average life. Life is so much better with it, than without it. Even if it’s part time, even if it’s just like few hours of the week, but it’s still in your life. To me, it’s the true success and do it for that reason and maybe the reason to do it as career that occurs that your lucky. Do it because it’s in your heart, because you love it. Those are it’s not in their heart, they eventually don’t succeed, and it was never for them anyway.

The Skype connection wasn’t the best, but luckily we made the interview and I could „see” the studio as well. I want to say thank you for Laz Pina, who took his time to answer me, I hope we can do it again in the future, maybe in person in Hungary! 

KoRn Fanni