JANIZ has delivered their new album, Taking Back Horizons, along with the official music video for their single Breathe.

Buckle up for an energetic, passionate, melodically rich wall of alt-pop-rockin’ sounds. The easily memorable hooks found on Taking Back Horizons will have you singing and humming the various songs off the album long after the music ends.

In this interview spotlight, I chat with the band about the new release, challenges, technology and more.

Full Q&A along with links and music below.

Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)

We ́re from Germany and what we do is changing a bit with every record. Its always rock music and its always female fronted. We were going through Indie and Alternative Rock and right now we ́re pretty Pop Punk I guess. But to fit a specific genre is nothing we strive for. We also like to call it Post Pop cause we figured no one popular is using that right now. It also indicates we are using Pop Music and make it better, an advancement to everything that sounded just the same for years and years. Its your turn to decide if we reached that goal… In the end its just music created to make us happy.

What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?

Most of us grew up in the late 90s and the following 2000s, so the inspiration is pretty obvious. We ́re just in love with rock music, catchy hooks and melodies. Of cause its 2019 right now and all of the ground breaking artists moved on. We are not judging all the new styles and opportunities these bands are using today but often I feel like the song itself is not what its all about anymore. You can add all the keyboards, samples and stuff in the world if you like but if the song is not right, all of that will only make it worse. Often I feel like our childhood heroes are a little stubborn, like they force their selfs to do something new. At least with this recordwe tried to make old school pop punk sound modern. Like it was invented just last year.

How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?

The obvious thing about it is that we choose an EP over a whole Album. We did this cause its always taking us two to three years to write and record enough tracks for an LP. In the end we always like the newest songs the most. There are a few records in history we can listen through all the way and enjoy every song onit. But the truth is, mostly albums are about 50 percent good songs and 50 percent filler. Recording an EP feels like getting rid of the filler. Everything comes out fresh and new.

Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?

Well the good thing is, everyone one the whole wide world has access to our music. And we ́re also using this the other way around. We enjoy discovering great new bands that we never would have heard of if it wasn ́t for spotify or all the other platforms. The other thing is, I believe it is keeping people away from live shows. When we were young we discovered new music that way. We listened to fancy new support acts, met people at shows and listened carefully when there was a new act in town. Today you see a tour poster or a Facebook event and you can check out every band in just seconds. And often that is all the time we taketo decide if we like them or not. Bands don ́t get much opportunity anymore to win fans during a live show.

What was the last song you listened to?

Don ́t Stop Believing by JourneyAlways There by Greta Van FleetOnly Human by Jonas BrothersDoen by Red FangWe leave you with that so everyone needs to guess who listened to what.

Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?

We like Vinyl very much cause you get forced to listen to everything. There is no skipping through tracks, listen for 15 seconds and moving on. Its a romantic way to consume music. But since this is taking a lot of time we don ́t always have, we ́re also glad someone invented mp3. We think both vinyl and streaming will survive. There ́s not much hope for CDs anymore.

How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?

Most of us use Apple Music but we really don ́t know why. I guess all the kids like Spotify cause of the free option. Also Spotify is better for learning about new music and artists cause it never stops playing.

Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?

You can find our music on every platform there is. If you like to get to know our music or like to reach out, Instagram is the one. Its all in one place, easy to use, you don ́t get lost in endless websites and posts and its always a little more private than all the others. We get a lot of messages and we try to answer them all but you need to be a little creative. We read everything but we don ́t reply to hey, hi, hello or a waving hand anymore. Just be nice and show a little effort.

Anything else before we sign off?

We need to be more kind to each other. As common as sex, drugs and rock music is… its really about love, peace and rock ́n ́ roll