German modern metal act Caliban have been at the forefront of the genre for the bulk of their ten year career. It has been no easy feat though – the band has had a relentless touring schedule and nine studio releases. Showing no sign of slowing down, Caliban are set to return to Australia with a new album to headline their own tour after visiting with the prestigious Gigantour in 2006.

“I’m very excited, but I have no big expectations, because we were a support act on the Gigantour last time,” drummer Patrick Grun said. “We played in front of a lot of kids, but I don’t know what’s going on or what will happen with our first headline tour. I’m just very excited and hope it will be great!”

Like most popular metal bands today, Caliban spend most of their time touring. They’ve had their fair share of good shows. “One of our best shows was 2006 at the Wacken festival and on the Machine Head tour in 2004 …We play a lot of good shows!” But they have had a few bad shows too.”One of the worst shows was in Tel Aviv, Israel. Mark our guitarist had to stay home because we were recording The Awakening. We had a lot of technical problems. It was one hour of a pain in the arse!” He chuckled. “The people were still great, moshing and stuff, but on-stage it was a different story!”

With a hectic tour regime, they decided to write on the run-in the tour bus – to get the job done. “We had a pretty busy schedule, so we wrote it on the tour bus and never really had the chance to rehearse it.” he said. “We practiced the songs maybe three times before we hit the studio, then we had a month to record it before our European run. It was pretty rough but I think we work good under pressure.”

Their new album sees the sounds of Caliban pushed to the utmost extreme, showcasing all the best aspects of their unique take on modern metal.”We wanted to do something not completely different, but an evolution from The Undying Darkness and go harder again, so we decided to listen to the earlier Caliban recordings and tried to get the best things together and put them into The Awakening. We are very happy with it and the response has been good!”

When asked on the current state of metal today, with the inevitability of stagnation and MySpace metalcore bands a dime a dozen, Caliban seem to be standing the test of time. “Everybody’s talking about it stagnating right now, but I can’t really say that it’s affecting us, as every time we play we have a lot of kids in Europe coming to shows. The Awakening did very good in the Billboard charts in Germany so I guess we’ll find out with the next album how things are going.”

And what can the Australian public expect with this first headline tour? Patrick summed it up. “Wall of death, circle pits and a brutal live show!” ‘Nuff said.

The Caliban tour covers the east coast of our great nation with Melbourne Hardcore lads Her Nightmare.

WEDNESDAY 13 AUGUST – PRINCESS THEATRE, BRISBANE, QLD (AA)

THURSDAY 14 AUGUST – CLUB 299, BRISBANE, QLD (18+)

FRIDAY 15 AUGUST – MANNING BAR, SYDNEY, NSW

SATURDAY 16 AUGUST – THE CORNER HOTEL, MELBOURNE, VIC (AA Afternoon show)

SATURDAY 16 AUGUST – THE CORNER HOTEL, MELBOURNE, VIC (18+)

SUNDAY 17 AUGUST – FOWLERS, ADELAIDE, SA (Lic/AA)