The quintet's latest release, and debut album for Nuclear Blast, is a hard-stridin' dose of darkened gothic metal. Like many of the older and newer goth/metal bands within Europe, e.g. Paradise Lost, EverEve, and Left Hand Solution (the latter two are both on Nuclear Blast, too), Crematory believes deeply in the art of emotions and story-telling. The music of _Awake_ overflows with strong emotional expression and creative story-telling. "This music we create is an emotional dream world for us. It is not reality for us. It is just us having fun and being creative."

About _Awake_, he says, "We are very happy with what we have done this time around and I hope we still have a lot of creative juices inside of us for future records and songs. Right now we are the #1 gothic/metal band in Germany and we are trying hard to make that happen for us around the world. We just want to be successful and keep Crematory around for a long time." Even though it took the band several months in the studio to record their latest effort and achieve the sound they were looking for, according to Markus, making _Awake_ was an experience. "We had a lot of fun making this record. We also had a lot of time, almost two months in the studio, to work on this record and experiment in the studio. We carefully etched out what we wanted to do within the studio. We re-did vocals and added keyboards and just experimented to create something strong and interesting for people to hear." About their studio work ethics, he says, "When we go into the studio we have about 80% of what we want on the record already done. We let our imaginations run wild and bring forth all these other ideas into the music to make it brighter. Experimentation plays a key role in the studio work and with what the end results are."

Though the band - which is rounded out by singer Felix, keyboardist Katrin, bassist Harald, and guitarist Lotte - enjoys studio work, Markus reveals that like most bands, Crematory finds more enjoyment out on the road. "We are just the type of band that likes to be out on the road performing. It gets so busy and tiring when working on a record in a studio atmosphere, and so playing live is definitely a form of release for us."

Seeing that the band garnered a lot of notoriety and respect from the goth metal (and metal) community with their last effort, _Illusions_, does Markus believe that success affected the way the band created material and worked on the new record? He answers, "I don't think the record's success affected the way we created material for _Awake_. I think we are approaching this record in a different way though in terms of marketing and publicity. _Illusions_ did very well for us but right now with _Awake_, we are on Nuclear Blast and we have really good distribution around the world. We are able to get the record out to more people and what we are hoping to achieve is to surpass what we did with _Illusions_ in terms of notoriety and album sales. We'll see."

So what is success for Markus and Crematory? "It isn't the money... not at all. We just want to be able to tour and play lots of shows and festivals all over the world. Like I said before, we are in this to create music and reaching as many people as we can. It's important for us to be able to take what we have created in the studio and take it out on the road. If that didn't happen what would be the point of making new music for people to hear? It's hard to be able to do this, go out and tour and all that stuff, but when you get up on stage and there are people screaming and shouting while you play, that is all you need to show you why you do this. Money can't buy that experience."