INFECTED RAIN // Our Perpetual Saviours of Souls

Moldovan electrified nu-metal transplants Infected Rain opening for Cradle of Filth is like a glove opening for a hand—it just feels right. Diabolically right.

Though they’ve pushed past their 15th anniversary as a band, Aussie fans have yet to experience the mayhem and insanity that is an Infected Rain show. Part ghoulish theatre, part psychodrama, and part visceral rave, Infected Rain’s unique embrace of the extreme is a sight to behold. Speaking to bloodcurdling vocalist and lyricist Lena Scissorhands from her new home in Las Vegas, NV, we got to crawl inside the mind of these Moldovan wunderkinds ahead of their Australian Invasion tour with none other than Cradle of Filth – patients zero for this kind of weirdness. Armed with six albums including the recently released and critically acclaimed TIME, it’s time we peeled back the curtains and got caught in the Infected Rain.

Hysteria: This is the first time Infected Rain will have come to Australia. What’s the feeling there?

Lena: Oh, we are beyond excited. First of all, it’s our very first time visiting Australia for many reasons. It’s a very difficult thing to do, especially for citizens of Moldova, but also we are going to do it with the amazing Cradle of Filth. So that is very exciting. It is very challenging, but we have only good energy going and yeah, we are super excited.

You guys have played with Dimmu Borgir, Katatonia, Behemoth, so many big names. How was the call from Dani asking ‘Would you lot loike ta come on down ta Ow-stray-lya wiv me?’

[laughs] It’s funny how people think it works like that.

Well, the much less interesting booking agent or touring company call, I suppose.

Well, yes, absolutely. However, we do have one thing to confess. In the beginning of this year, we actually started working with a very strong management company, management company that apparently wanted to work with us in the past, but many things changed. Then COVID happened, then one thing after the other, and it wasn’t possible up until now. And this management company is the same management company for Cradle of Filth. So it was their idea to put us together, and I’m very grateful, very grateful that they made it happen. It was their idea. They thought it’s a good package and we will try to give the best of us to show them that they made a good choice.

Your music is so intense and has a bit of everything extreme; hardstyle electronica, nu-metal, industrial. Is Infected Rain an ‘anything goes’ type of band?

Yes. We only have one specific thing that we try to avoid doing with Infected Rain specifically, and it is comedy. We love a lot of bands that are ‘fun metal’ or ‘party metal’ that people call it or whatever. We love them, but [that’s them] from the start. This project was not about that. This project was about raw motions, sometimes ugly and dark thoughts or events. And this band is about hopefully changes, serious changes that [need] to be done [for] the humanity on a global level. And that is the only one thing where we never go with Infected Rain is comedy. Not because we don’t love it, it’s just the approach here for us is not going to fit the purpose if we do it through comedy in our opinion. But again, there are people that manage to bring a lot of drama through comedies, but other than that, we just love being creative and we just put ideas down and then if they work together and if they make you feel something, then it’s right in our opinion.

Where does that all come from? Personal experience? History? Stories? How do you find yourself putting pen to paper?

When I write ideas down, I mainly like to write them and create them in poem form. The reason for that is because way before joining a band and becoming a musician, I was writing ideas down and I was writing actual poems since the age of 14. Wow, cool. And they were expressions of ourselves. It was me and my best friend. We would be the only people to exchange and read each other’s poem. We were very emotional teenagers…

Music really taught me a lot in this life because I always called music for rescue.
[Lena Scissorhands, Infected Rain]

I could only imagine, Lena.

[laughs] We were very emotional teenagers, but I have the most beautiful memories from there. Back then, there was no internet. All we had is books, music, and nature. We would sometimes combine them, like go into nature and write or read or listen to music and stuff like that. So music really taught me a lot in this life because I always called music for rescue. No matter what I was going through in my life as a child, as a teenager, as an adult, way before I became a musician, I had a completely different path. I didn’t plan to be a musician. It just happened and I loved it, and I just rolled my sleeves [up] and worked hard, but I never planned it. I was not working in that direction in my life, in my career.

So what I’m trying to say is that I learned in early age to, it’s very important to have an outlet, and my outlet was writing and writing it down, putting it down. No matter how good, bad, ugly, funny, doesn’t matter, it comes out. And in a way it was very cleansing and with music, it is purifying with music. When I became a musician later on and I started writing for music and composing vocal melodies for those lyrics, that is on a completely different level of cleansing. So that’s why I mainly write about my own life experience. That’s why I mainly write about my own fears, doubts, situations, frustrations.

That’s why it really helps me. Might sound a little bit selfish, but it is like a therapy for me and always has been even before music. So that helps me a lot because loving emotional metal growing up as well. When I say emotional metal, I don’t mean specifically emo music or anything like that. It was not even popular when I was growing up. It was more like the nu-metal grunge music. Nirvana became big in that time. Nirvana was my first love, but I could understand that every single word means a lot and it has a weight [to it]. If people can even relate to it, it’s great. It’s a great bonus.

You say it’s a selfish therapeutic thing, but I would also like to think people come up to you and say “Hey, that song really helped me express what I couldn’t say myself. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone.” In that regard, you are making someone’s life that little bit better.

Thank you so much for bringing that up. That’s a great point here. I know they are, and I knew they were even before I became a musician, before I was speaking to an audience. We are all human beings and we all go through ups and downs in life, some on different degrees, some absolutely same situations. We tend to make mistakes and we tend to make mistakes over and over again. So I myself find so much in music I listen to and I can relate to it, and it makes me emotional. It makes me cry, it makes me complete. It depends on the song and on my state of mind. So I feel that through the music I listen to. So when someone actually tells me that in a written form or after a show, like you said, I feel insanely honoured. I feel honoured that people actually opened up for this song. That’s why the song touched them. A song can never touch you if you don’t let it, and I’m so grateful that whoever is listening to Infected Rain let that happen.

What can Australian fans who may not be familiar with you guys expect from an Infected Rain show?

We are strong believers that it doesn’t matter the number of people that are in front of you, what matters is how you present your own music. We always said that if it’s a room with ten people or 50, we will do the same show as we will do at a big festival or big arena of thousands of people. We will definitely do the same, especially if the logistics allow it, if the ceilings are not too low or something. [laughs] Every underground venue can be very different and unique and sometimes, ‘oh, you can’t go to the left too much because there’s something there. There’s a pole in the middle, something.’ Every venue is very unique, so we work with what we have, but energy wise and delivering, we don’t make exceptions really. We hope to see everyone at our show and to see Cradle of Filth!

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CRADLE OF FILTH and INFECTED RAIN – Australian Invasion Tour

September 2024

Tuesday 24th – PERTH, Metropolis Fremantle
Wednesday 25th – ADELAIDE, The Gov
Friday 27th – MELBOURNE, Northcote Theatre
Saturday 28th – SYDNEY, The Metro
Sunday 29th – BRISBANE, The Triffid

Tickets available from Metropolis Touring