INTERVIEW WARHAMMER

Here is an old interview with Warhammer that I dug up. I conducted it with singer Volker "Iron Lung" Frerich, who sadly passed away unexpectedly three years ago.  To be honest, I couldn't remember exactly when this interview took place, but Volker's mention of his age in particular makes it clear that it must have been in 2006. The upcoming album we are talking about here is "No Beast so fierce", which was released in 2009. I recently read on the internet that there is a previously unreleased album that the band was probably still working on up until the time of Volker's death. It would be very much to be hoped that this will one day see the light of day in some form or other. With this in mind, I dedicate this interview to the memory of Volker (15.02.1970-12-03-2021) -Rest in peace 

INTERVIEW PENTACLE

"All the lyrics of the album point to one direction: death !"

Pentacle released the new album "Spectre of the Eight Ropes" on Iron Pegasus Records some months ago. It's certainly no exaggeration to say that a lot of people in the underground scene, wherever they may live, could hardly wait until its release. A really good cause to do an interview with Wannes Gubbels, vocalist, bass player and lyricist of this battleship of dutch death metal. If you didn't know yet, you will realize in the course of this interview that Wannes is an real old-school maniac and has a lot of interesting things to say.

Hey Wannes, first of all congratulations for the great new album! Can you tell us something about the creative process concerning the creation of the new album? How were the reactions concerning „Spectre of the Eight Ropes“ in general ?

Thank you very much! Glad to hear you enjoy the album. I haven’t read that many reviews (yet), but those which caught my eye, are very much favourable for the band. It’s great to see people like the album. For sure, we create the music for ourselves first, but there’s no need to deny it’s satisfying when “Spectre…” receives positive reactions. We worked very hard to make this album happen. For a long time it wasn’t even sure if we would record a full length ever, but we made it happen and that’s something I feel very proud of. It’s truly a creation of dedication and hard work, not to forget inspiration. The road of creating “Spectre…” is very long one. In the beginning, it was uncertain what path to walk. After the “Five Candles burning red” MCD we weren’t sure what the next step would be. For sure we wanted to compose a new album. I always feel disappointed we weren’t able to create more full length albums for Pentacle, but I know the reasons why it didn’t happen and there’s little use to ponder too much about it. We decided to start writing new material and see how this would develop. A new Pentacle release could have been everything something in between an official rehearsal tape and a new full length album. After a long time rehearsing (I think it was a couple of years) we had written three new songs and at that point I decided to alter course. I was tired of little direction we followed and decided the next release would become a full length album and nothing else. This is what I wanted achieve and it turned into our focus point. I booked the studio with the knowledge I had to write five additional songs and all the lyrics. Not only that, we had to rehearse them as well to be able to record the material. This was a very big challenge for me personally as I am no fast songwriter. It can take ages to come up with decent stuff and now I had a deadline to catch. And a heavy one is was! So, I put on a very tight working schedule for myself. I wanted to create a new song every month: two weeks to come up with the riffs and arrangements and two weeks to rehearse it as a band. Then forward to the next one. And next one. And next one etc.  

REZENSION "IN EWIGKEIT" VON IAN CUSHING

Vor längerer Zeit entdeckte ich mehr oder weniger zufällig die Facebook-Seite des Berliner Autors Ian Cushing, damals hatte er gerade sein Debütwerk "Fünf Minuten" veröffentlicht. Einige Monate später sandte mir der Autor sein mittlerweile neuestes Werk namens "In Ewigkeit" zu. Dieses enthält zusätzlich das Debüt, hier allerdings unter dem Namen "In Ewigkeit -Zweiter Teil". Ihr ahnt es also schon - die beiden Werke bauen aufeinander auf. Teil II ist der Nummerierung nach logischerwise im hinteren Teil des Buches platziert, so dass man im Sinne des Aufbaus von hinten nach vorne lesen sollte. Die schlichte, aber dennoch (oder gerade deswegen) äußerst gelungene Coverillustration stammt übrigens von Karmazid, dem oder der einen oder anderen eventuell bekannt von Arbeiten für  Bands wie Urfaust oder Demonical. Auch ansonsten tauchen im Verlauf der Handlung immer wieder Querverweise und Reminiszenzen an Bands aus dem extremeren Bereich auf, dazu aber später noch mehr.  

INTERVIEW APOKALYPTIC RAIDS

APOKALYPTIC RAIDS from Brazil is a band that gained cult status in some parts of the scene. Now they released their new album called „The Pentagram“. Reason enough to do an interview with vocalist and guitarrist Leon Manssur.

This year APOKALYPTIC RAIDS celebrate the 20th birthday of the band‘s existence. When you look back, what has been the best experiences that happened during this this time, an what has been the worst ? Do you prefer todays scene or the earlier days ? And please introduce the current band members and their side-projects.

Man, 20 years are really transforming. Best experiences were certainly travelling around the world and meeting and playing to new people. Worst experiences might be about a shit part of the „music business“. Hopefully I can stay away more and more from that shit.

I have no nostalgia of the old days. It was great then, it is great now. I make it. Great is where I am now, I will make it great whenever. Of course it is different with regards to technology. Things are much faster now. But the things that are human, like greed, passion, so on, these never change.

Current line-up is stable with me, Leon Manssur on the guitar and vocals, Vinicius Canabarro on the bass, since 2003, and Pedro Rocha in the drums from 2001-2007 and 2013-now. Vinicius is also singer in Atomic Roar, a band already on their third album now. Pedro is from Farscape and Whipstriker. He is a professional drummer/teacher and has a lot of bands and projects aside of metal.