When I saw them at the Venue last November they were burning with challenge, passion and magic. The songs were hard and powerful, raging flames of emotion. Their presence radiated a strange, indefinable charisma which acted as a kind of shock invite to an alluring world of darkness and danger.

The effect was haunting. A physical, rhythmic flirtation with the colossal that captured a raw energy... a resonance that throbbed and shuddered with an acute, refreshing sense of being alive.

'Fetisch', the LP, harnessed enough of that resonance to be vital vinyl – one of the few records that actually has some semblance of purpose, meaning and belonging to the present day.

The 'mystery' which others have referred to in writing about them stretches further than the simple exotica of their being foreign. Preparing to meet and interview them, a queasy uncertain feeling grows in the stomach. Some 'mysteries' are best left unsolved and there is a temptation to continue the savouring of the subject from a safe distance. But it is that allure again, that having to know which draws one on.

Cognisant of the fury in their music, you could expect X-Mal Deutschland to be brutish individuals, prone to charging through doorways brandishing axes and communicating only through a code of fierce screams.

But breath easy. X-Mal Deutschland are almost disappointingly pleasant. Their conversation is coated with a level of self-criticism that is oddly close to humility and they drip with an honestly untainted by delusions of, or allusions to, grandeur.

For a relatively unknown band X-Mal Deutschland have been attracting staggering numbers of people (not to mention numbers of staggering people) to their recent gigs here. How do they account for this?

Anja: "Maybe it is just because we are a German band and we have been successful in the sense that people have written about us so people come to see what we are like."

Fiona: "There is a feeling behind the whole thing that sort of gets transmitted from the stage to the audience. I hope the people that come especially to see us have come for that."

Can you define this feeling?

Fiona: "It changes and changes. When we're on stage it's usually, well, the aggression and then, of course, there are all the feelings in the songs. So it's the emotion expressed in the songs plus aggression."

Anja: "But that's not all. I mean, it's really hard to talk about the feeling between the band and the audience. The Ace gig was the first one since the last one in London. So a lot of people who haven't seen us before are just curious because we don't play that often."

Fiona: "Nobody's really given us an analysis of a concert. People say they like it or they didn't like it but they never say why."

But I'm interested in why you think people go. Do you think they pick up and respond to a feeling which is there?

Anja: "Maybe. First of all they can't understand the lyrics so they have to feel the music or the whole thing. Normally you can see a band and understand the lyrics and then decide whether you like, them or not. When people come to see us it is completely different. They come to see the whole thing, not only to listen to the lyrics – they have to hear the vocals like an instrument."

What kind of effect do you want to have on an audience? Inspiring?

Entertaining?

Fiona: "Not really just to entertain, it's neither/nor."

Anja: "We do only a few gigs, we never play in Germany for example, so it is hard to say what we want. Firstly we make music for ourselves and the people who really like it."

Fiona: "But it all starts off with us. With a new song in the rehearsal room it's do we like it or do we not like it. If the audience likes it as well then okay but it starts off with us.

Anja: "It's great when people do like it. At the Ace when we came onstage everybody was clapping. We were really surprised, we didn't expect that, and very nervous."

Can you say where your initial motivation comes from?

Fiona: ':'Us. It's just the kind of music we like."

Anja: "How we feel. The music we do is how we feel and how we are."

Is the music a way of expressing anger or frustration or what?

Anja: "No, not really frustration but everything. Lots of feelings, fortune and sadness. You can put anything into a song."

Manuela (Rickers): "It is not that we first think about it then do a song. You are just in a mood and something comes out of that."

Anja: "We don't go into the rehearsal room thinking we have to do a new song because we can't do that, it's impossible. Sometimes we try for weeks, going there everyday, for us it is not easy to make new songs in a very short time.

"We take a long time because we want to make songs that we can sing after two years. I hate lyrics that maybe I can only sing for maybe two months and then really hate them. All the songs we have done I think we can play in three years."

Fiona: "Sometimes it'll only take a couple of days or a couple of hours even, for a new song to come out. It all depends on how you feel."

Do you think 'Fetisch' is a lasting document, containing songs that won't become dated?

Fiona: "Possibly, although we might personally get fed up with them and not want to play them."

But will the LP sound as strong in five years?

Fiona: "I would hope so because that would mean we've captured some of our feeling on the LP. And that is timeless, it's a feeling that will always be there."

Anja: "But the songs change just in playing live."

Fiona: "Because we change. Our interests change."

I've heard people call you Teutonic. That seems to get slung at every German band, however different, that plays here. It's not always intended in a derogatory manner but it is a common form of thoughtless racial stereotyping implying, maybe, a deliberate preciseness and a cold efficiency.

Anja: "Really!?"

Fiona: "'Oh Christ. I'd say the opposite."

Anja: "That's the first time I've heard that. Nobody has said that to us before."

They say it to me all the time, it's very common. All part of the mentality that considers pop music to be the last bastion of the British Empire.

Manuela (Rickers): "In comparison with other German bands we are not all that Teutonic. Kraftwerk for example. . ."

Fiona: "I would call Kraftwerk Teutonic. They go over the top with their image, very, very, precise with everything. It's the typical prejudice, like saying Scots are mean.

Anja: "It makes me really angry because these people are so stupid (hisses). . . if you go to see a band then you go to see them. I think it is stupid if you start saying 'this is a typical Scottish band or this is a typical English band'. It is very narrow minded."

What was the thinking behind the release of the 12-inch remixed version of 'Qual' (an LP cut that gets a lengthened treatment, delving into contrasting moods and textures, dominated by percussion passages)?

Manuela (Zwingman): "Just to have a song produced in a different way."

Fiona: "Ivo (of 4AD) really wanted to do a 12-inch of 'Qual' although we liked all the songs on the LP."

Manuela (Zwingman): "It's successful, it is a good record to dance to. It's wild and noisy and powerful. . . it's not soft."

Anja: "We did it together with Ivo and it was really strange because we'd never done anything like that before. But we just thought, why not? You have to do different things and try things out. The B-side is quite different – the people who buy the record will see there is a completely different side."

Do you think you are playing overtly 80s music?

Anja: "I think so, yeah. In the way we use instruments and everything."

Some records obviously dredge the past while others are too self-consciously 'modern' to strike any meaningful chord in the listener.

Fiona: "Well, if you put it like that, then we are definitely 80s music!"

How would you determine whether or not you were being successful?

Anja: "I don't understand bands who say they're fantastic and everyone will like them. None of us could say that because we all really hate those bands so much."

What level would you like to reach, commercially speaking?

Manuela (Zwingman): "It is okay to reach people with the music that we want to play but we wouldn't go and make a specially commercial record to reach more people – it's not what we want, we want to make just the music that we like."

Anja: "At the moment, especially in Germany, we are an underground band. For me, I would really like X-Mal Deutschland to be a popular underground band. There are quite a lot of popular underground bands in England and that's the way to do it, to be with an indie label is great. A popular underground band needn't be on an indie label but that's what we want, to be a popular underground band and be on an indie label."

Manuela (Rickers): "We could have gone to a major label in Germany when Zick Zack didn't have any money left but we didn't want that so instead we came to England."

What do you think people have to gain from listening to X-Mal Deutschland?

Fiona: "They have to decide that for themselves."

Anja: "They have to enjoy it really. Or hate it."