Freshly arrived in the UK and in the midst of a world tour, ill Nino were getting amped up to headline London's rock/metal festival Kick Out the Jams. Frontman Cristian Machado took some time out of prep to have a chat about making their latest album 'Dead New World', touring and the fun of festivals.

JW: Welcome back to London! How's the tour going?
CM: It's going amazing, we're very jetlagged that's why RED BULLS (screams) REEEEED BUUUUULLS
JW Ah the cure for jetlag everwhere!
CM: You know it!

JW: You've been out at Soundwave in Australia, have you come straight here?
CM: We had like one day off at home, one day, but it was just enough to kinda go ok well I'll take a shower sleep for 6 hours and then...

JW: How was Soundwave
CM:Soundwave was amazing! We got to party with a whole bunch of killer bands and drink their beer and they drank our vodka. We just had a good time, stayed at the same hotels, you know just had a great time with some of the best metal bands that are out there right now.
Our slot was crazy, we were after Dimmu [Dimmu Borgir] and before Slayer.
JW: Good slot!
CM: Yeah killer slot, we're very very blessed and pleased with the response overall.

JW: Are you a fan of the touring festival?
CM: Yeah touring festivals are great especially that one cause all the bands actually flew together; so you never really quite find a festival where all the bands are travelling on the same bus, but on this occasion we were staying all in the same hotels, travelling all on the same planes and you can just imagine what that turned in to!

JW: You're in in London to start your UK tour, is there a particular reason you chose Kick Out the Jams?
CM: I think it just seemed like a cool thing to do to be honest. You know a couple of cool bands are on the festival; [we're] really good friends with Breed 77, great band and also Spyritus are good friends of ours, and it just seemed like a cool things to do. Sometimes you do things because you're like yeah it sounds cool.

JW: And you're about to take Breed 77 over to Europe with you, have you toured with them before?
CM: Yeah we've done a tour with them before oh about 4 or 5 years ago we did a run with them. Great guys, great music, just good times you know.

JW: Looking into your history a little bit, there's been a lot of ups and downs and quite a bit of turbulence with releases and labels but things seem settled now - are you happy with where you've landed?
CM: We're very happy; well first and foremost we're very proud of the new record. It definitely took a long time to kinda get us to become friends again you know, and to have a band sense. We live all over the country so it's a littble bit tough to sometimes feel like we're a band. So I think it took us a little bit to get back on our feet, but you know we're very thankful and blessed that our fans stuck by us; it's a lot to learn during that time and a lot of personal things that came out of it - a lot of great personal things and a lot of negative personal things; but we're here and couldn't be more thankful. Just happy to be back rocking and rolling!

JW: What's the response to the album been like?
CM: The response has been actually amazing. Surprisingly amazing maybe, not from the fans, but most of the critics like our record! I'm used to them bashing us. But our fans love our record and to be honest with you our fans were the only people we had in our thoughts when we were making the record. Making the record was really just about us becoming friends and band members again and finding the common ground as musicians and making a record for our fans you know. They're the reason we're here.
Music is the reason why we became musicians and our fans are the reason why we're still making music. I'm just happy and very thankful
JW: Sounds like you're really proud of it
CM: Yeah it's just a very cool record. It's actually one of the only ill Nino records that I can actually listen to. Some of the other ones I listen to and am like 'that's garbage'.
JW: You learn and grow don't you?
CM: There you go!!

JW:So you're out on the world tour, currently in the UK, then Europe... then what?
CM: After this we're going to go to South America; um I think we might do a Russian show, a show in Greece, and then go to South America - and then hopefully take a couple of weeks off, we'll have been on tour for like 4 or 5 months. I think we should be coming back to Europe for some summer festivals and I think doing some American summer festivals. I'm not 100% sure as to which ones cause it's still a litle bit ahead but yeah we're definitely coming back around this way. I think we're going to go to Asia after the summer and I believe we're going to go back down to Australia to do a headlining tour and we'll see where we're at then.
JW: 2011 all about the touring?
CM: All about the touring, all about bringing the music to the fans.

JW: While all this touring is going on, are you guys making new music as well?
CM: Not at all, we're way too all over the place I mean it's tough to write on the road you know, I doubt we'll actually be writing but you know as soon as we get some time off we'll all go back to our homes and start putting ideas together. The thing is I don't think we're going to be finalising any songs individually like we used to; because it turned out really great on this record being able to write as a team so...

JW: In the past did you write much more individually?
CM: Yeah, we did. On our first record; well it's changed throughout every record. The first record was mostly me and Dave [Chavarri, drummer] that wrote every song, second record it was like Dave and I and a little bit of Marc [Rizzo, former member] the third record it was mostly it was mostly Ahrue [Luster, lead guitars], Jardel [Martins Paisante, former member] with Dave and the fourth record it was just kinda everybody wrote one song or something like that, I might have written 3 or 4, and everyobody kinda wrote individually. On this record it was us coming together you know really trying to gel.

JW:The crowd's really building up out there - are you looking forward to tonight?
CM: Absolutely, first show in the UK in a long time so I'm ready to rip their heads off.
That's why I keep drinking Red Bull, add a little bit of vodka about 30 minutes before the show I'm ready to go!
JW: Sounds like a plan. thanks for sitting down with me, have fun out there!
CM: Hell yeah!!

A few hours later ill Nino rocked the London crowd, closing the live element of Kick Out the Jams with a bang!
They're touring the UK & Europe now, and their album 'Dead New World' is available from all the usual outlets.