War From a Harlots Mouth: ‘MMX’ Has ‘Blackened, Gloomy and Evil Vibe’

War From a Harlots Mouth isn't a typo. The lack of an apostrophe is on purpose. "Our name is actually referring to a lying person," WFAHM's Simon told Noisecreep, breaking it down. "So the war from the mouth is the lie itself, while the harlot stands for the liar. We just didn't put the apostrophe there, because we didn't like the look of our band's name with that. Let's say it's artistic freedom."

The German band has been defined by their all-over-the-place, technically intricate, semi-mathy sound, with a dose of jazziness throughout their career. There are no classically-trained musicians among their ranks, however. "Our 'jazz' influence is not so much of a classical nature," Simon Hawemann explained. "We just like modern and smooth jazzy stuff and thought it would fit well into our music when we started the band. So, we've been sticking to that ever since."

For the band's latest Lifeforce release, 'MMX,' Simon said the writing process was a fluid one. Simon admitted he wrote most of the riffs at home, so "there was always plenty of riffs floating around. Then I would show them to the others in the rehearsal room and we'd start to work them out and make songs out of them." He also admitted that 'MMX' is the band's most extreme record to date and that it's marked by an overall ominous flare. "It stands out through its blackened, gloomy and evil vibe," Simon said.

Simon also said that War From a Harlots Mouth are not a part of the German metal scene, which does include techy death bands like Necrophagist. In fact, hardcore is king in Deutschland.

"We've been growing up as a part of the hardcore scene, with a flavor for extreme stuff like the Dillinger Escape Plan and what not," Simon said. "But we're rooted in the hardcore scene for sure, and it's pretty big in Germany. Kids are way into more classic-rooted hardcore nowadays, while everyone was listening to metalcore some years ago. Everything just seems to come and go. It's hardly possible to stay up to date with all these hypes, but whatever. Who needs them anyways?"

One thing Simon said the band needs on tour is to be like typical Germans -- to be organized, clean and tidy, which is often a challenge, given the rigors and inherent dirty nature of the touring lifestyle. Despite life on the road, which can play out like one long, incessant party with no end in sight, WFAHM stray from the beaten path. Simon said, "We barely party, too. We're not exactly living the rock star life, ha! Sorry for being so boring."

The band is currently playing to between one and three thousand kids a night on their current tour, which Simon recognized as "crazy." He also said that one of the bands they are touring with rarely showers, which really throws a wrench into the "clean and tidy" thing he spoke of. "The smell of their bunks is far out of this world, really. It's hard to take sometimes," Simon said.