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Hello Alvaro, best regards from the Rhineland in
Germany, how are you doing at the moment?
The announcement of a new album by Pentagram Chile, the band around the charismatic cosmopolitan Anton Reisenegger, who should also be known from bands like Criminal, Lock Up or Brujeria, came to me out of nowhere. This is only the second album by the band, which was founded back in 1985 and has been on ice for a long time in the meantime, changing its name because of the namesake doomers from the USA around Bobby Liebling and forming the ominous triumvirate of Chilean death metal together with Atomic Aggressor and Sadism.
Just how influential the Chileans have been in the past can be seen from the fact that bands like Dismember have been seen wearing Pentagram shirts on promo photos or Napalm Death have covered “Demoniac Possession”, a track by the South Americans.
This interview with Rob, one of the two Dead Head guitarists, is really worth reading. Quite apart from the fact that Dead Head from the Netherlands are one of the greatest thrash metal bands on this planet and have once again recorded an extremely strong piece of extreme music with their new EP "Shadow Soul", the answers are captivating in their entertaining honesty, self-reflection and above all the fact that someone here simply emphasizes that he is pleased with what he and the band have achieved instead of lamenting what has not been achieved. A very healthy attitude to life that would probably make our planet a better place if everyone thought like this. But enough talk, read for yourself...
Suffersystem from the beautiful half-timbered town of Hattingen in the Ruhr area will release their sixth album "Disintegration of the Individual" in mid-March, like its predecessor from 2021, once again via Black Blood Records. The two band members Dirk and Daniel, who are active in other bands such as Defected Decay (read a detailed interview in English here, in German here), False Mutation (who are also releasing a new album in March this year) and - relatively recently - Seeds of Torment, have added a new, fantastic chapter to the history of Suffersystem. The music on the ten tracks, which have a total playing time of 45 minutes, always moves between death and thrash metal, with a clear edge towards death metal.
Messiah's third album "Choir of Horrors" from 1991, released on the legendary Noise Records label, represented a quantum leap for the band after the two predecessors "Hymn to Abramelin" and "Extremely cold weather" and also can be considered as a milestone in extreme music in general. The album, which features a cover artwork that is as atmospheric as it is terrifying, starts with monk chants before the death/thrash sounds kick in. Singer Andy Kaina, who sadly passed away last year, impresses with aggressive yet accentuated and intelligible vocals, while the band varies well between different tempos, especially the dragged out parts work well.
When the Frankfurt thrashers Tankard visited the Groove Bar in Cologne-Wahn for the second time towards the end of March, it was a good opportunity for an interview with frontman Gerre. Due to an unforeseen delay, and the fact that both Gerre and myself didn't feel like doing an interview under time pressure, we decided to make a second attempt a few days later via video link. Read here what the likeable frontman has to say about the lyrics of the last album "Pavlov's Dawgs", the Corona pandemic, the social skills of metal fans and his, even after all these decades unbroken enthusiasm for metal and new albums.
Als gegen Ende März die Frankfurter Thrasher von Tankard bereits zum zweiten Mal die Groove Bar in Köln-Wahn beehrten, bot sich dies als gute Gelegenheit für ein Interview mit Frontmann Gerre an. Aufgrund einer nicht vorhergesehenen Verzögerung, und der Tatsache, dass sowohl Gerre als auch meine Wenigkeit keine Lust auf ein unter Zeitdruck geführtes Interview verspürten, entschlossen wir uns, das Ganze einige Tage später per Videoschaltung nachzuholen. Lest hier, was der sympathische Frontmann über die Texte des letzten Albums "Pavlov's Dawgs", die Corona-Pandemie, die soziale Kompetenzen von Metal-Fans und seine, auch nach all den Jahrzehnten ungebrochene Begeisterung für Metal und neue Alben, zu sagen hat.
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After I had already conducted an interview with Mille more than five years ago in the run-up to the release of "Gods of violence", the new strong "Hate über alles" album, which this time managed to land at number 2 in the German album charts, offered itself as a good reason to repeat the matter. Since then, a lot has happened in Germany, Europe and globally, just think of the Corona pandemic, the increasingly apparent climate change, the war in Ukraine and also the, at least in the social networks seemingly clearer division of society. I talked about these and other topics with the band leader, who now lives in Berlin.
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Nachdem ich vor über fünf Jahren im Vorfeld der Veröffentlichung von "Gods of violence" schon einmal ein Interview mit Mille geführt hatte, bot sich das neue starke "Hate über alles" -Album, welches diesmal auf Platz 2 der deutschen Albencharts landen konnte, als guten Grund an, diese Angelegenheit zu wiederholen. Seitdem hat sich vieles in Deutschland, Europa und global getan, man denke nur an die Corona-Pandemie, den immer stärker zu Tage tretenden Klimawandel, der Krieg in der Ukraine und auch die, zumindest in den sozialen Netzwerken scheinbar deutlich werdendere Spaltung der Gesellschaft. Über diese und weitere Themen sprach ich mit dem mittlerweile in Berlin lebenden Bandkopf.
With "Excessive Outburst Of Depravity" Protector, the German-Swedish band around Martin Missy, the only remaining member of the original line-up, releases the fourth album after the reunion in 2011, this time again via High Roller Records. Since the revival of the band, Protector are now fortunately known to a larger number and especially to a new generation of metal fans, yet Protector unfortunately belong to the club of the most underrated metal bands of all time. In a fair world Protector would have the status of a band like Sodom, but well, that's another story...
After disappearing into oblivion for almost three decades after their foundation, Mefisto have released three albums since then. Especially the last album of 2019, "Octagram" (Bathory had an "Octagon" album, Mefisto and Bathory are, so to speak, the primeval soup of Swedish extreme metal) was appealing, as it was a very dark and heavy work.
Recently I got to know that Nekromantheon release a new album. I like the two predecessors very much, I hereby recommend them again to every lover of thrash metal. The new album "Visions of Trismegistos" takes it up a notch - the band from Kolbotn, Norway never sounded so intense and dark! My questions were answered by Sindre, responsible for bass and backing vocals.
Hi. Doing okay. The situation is fucked up, we have been in lockdown for six months, and it’s the second lockdown. The economic situation is terrible, especially for regular people and small businesses who have been affected by the lockdown. I work in the restaurant / bar industry, that have just been thrown overboard by the government. Everything was closed except pharmacies, food-stores etc. Thanks for nothing. For a long time you were only allowed to have two guests also, but that has chilled out a bit. Looks like we are heading to open up soon, as numbers are much better, and more people are getting vaccinated. Oslo has been hit hardest by the restrictions, which is where I live.
Wie sieht es bei Euch im Moment aus, wie ist die Stimmung ? Viele Gigs mussten ja ausfallen bzw. verschoben werden, wann hofft Ihr wieder spielen zu können ? Und was macht das neue Album, wie weit ist da der Prozess bisher ?
Natürlich sind wir heiß darauf, endlich wieder live spielen zu können! Der letzte Gig war im März des letzten Jahres am 6. März in Schweden! Ich denke, vor Mitte des Jahres wird live wohl nichts passieren. Trotzdem ist die Stimmung gut bei uns. Wir sind ja (zum Glück in der jetzigen Krise) keine professionelle Band, sondern haben alle unsere regulären Jobs, die auch mit ein paar Einschränkungen (Odin musste Kurzarbeit machen, aber das kriegt so´n nordischer Gott auch locker weggesteckt!) mehr oder weniger normal weiter gingen. Leid tun mir da echt alle in der Veranstaltungsbranche, deren Existenzen jetzt bedroht sind, da ist echt jetzt und in der nächsten Zeit Solidarität gefragt. Deshalb: wenn das nächste Desaster-Album im Juni rauskommt, kauft lieber die Alben der Kollegen, die das hauptberuflich machen! Ja, das neue Dingen ist fix und fertig, wird "Churches without saints" heißen.
Of course we are really looking forward to playing live again! The last gig was in March last year on the 6th of March in Sweden! I don't think anything will happen live before the middle of the year. Nevertheless, the mood is good. We are not a professional band (fortunately in the current crisis), but we all have our regular jobs, which went on more or less normally with a few restrictions (Odin had to work reduced hours, but a Nordic god like him can easily cope with that). I really feel sorry for everyone in the event industry whose livelihoods are now threatened, solidarity is really needed now and in the near future. Therefore, when the next Desaster album comes out in June, you'd better buy the albums of the colleagues who do this full-time! Yes, the new thing is ready and will be called "Churches without saints".