Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

AYSCOBE is a progressive rock opera band from Germany who formed in 2003.   DJ Blackdiamond from Firebrand Rock Radio has conducted an interview with Michael Tenten, founder of the band, you can read whole of the interview here on METAL SHOCK FINLAND.

1. It seems you have had several line-up changes in the band, how are things for you now?

We have a great line up at the moment! I don’t want to say the line up was bad before or anything like that, the changes of the members in that project was more because of the normal work the other are doing when they
don`t make music, Ullrich Tress does work six days a week at the moment and Bastian Rustedt works nearly every evening and so on. So I think it was the right choice to find a new line up where everyone is practicing music in their “normal” lives.

2. You have 7 band members, which is quite a large number, what is the reason for that?

It is a rock opera! We need three singers, one female and two males, we need a second guitar for the second voice in solos and also for some rythm parts, add one bass and the drums… and we hope to find a keyboard player in future!
Another reason are just the much more options you have, when you’re more musicians to fine tune the sound of the whole band! You can create a much fuller and better arranged tone, know what I mean?

3. The ‘Beside Yourself’ album you describe as a rock opera, can you tell me why you chose to make an album in this way and how the songwriting process worked?

I wrote an rockopera because the work on it is totally another than to write an normal album, you think of the lines for the actors and how to make music, that gets every minute of feeling through and such things. I’ve chosen a very hard theme with an psychose, but that made my idea easier! I tried to write a story that is happening at one moment, but I added some dialogues in memories of the guy named pete! The whole story is about good friend of mine, I want to help him, but that’s not so easy…
So you see when I started thinking about the story more and more ideas come along! For some of the songs I got the music and wrote the text over it as well, on the other hand I got a lot of textes which I needed to write the music for! And the adjust of brakes and changes in music are also a thing I like very much, it keeps it interesting! You never know how a song will end, but all changes are musicaly correct, so I just broke the rules in solutions but overall that was my idea to do it!

4.You list many influences including The Wall, Quadrophenia, Edgar Allan Poe and David Lynch, to what extent do they influence your songwriting?

Not easy to say! The wall is a very hard story to understand and a very intellectual work, with a lot of strong characters, it is a fantastic work!
Quadrophenia is a great work as well and it was the first rockopera with a “youth story” and sad end, so it is for everyone doing such a thing an influence, and I had ridden that the story has a real background!
Edgar Allan Poe is the master of horror in writing, nothing is so scaring then the imagination! It works with his written words and his story. The pictures he uses are so horrible masterpieces, i am thinking about ” the raven “, most I like “the bells”! ” bells bells bells they ring ring ring!” Great stuff and in the story with the bells they ring to his birth his marriage and in the end his death! I got some of them near me and everytime they ring I think of that poem! David Lynch is not the same influence as the other ones, or maybe I just don`t know! I love this guy, because he makes great confusing moves and also writes music and makes albums! So we can say some are just personal influences and some of them are more than this, you can`t escape their magic!

5.You’re touring early next year, can you tell me more about that and do you have plans to tour further afield? Which countries would you like to play in?

Yes we got two concerts in january and february. I hope to get some gigs in France next summer and we are in speech with some agencies, to get the tour started! We got two kinds of going on stage, as a band ( cheaper ) or with the whole show with all the dancers ( art dance ) and actors, lightshow and effects ( this is a full worked out show )! We would like to play everywhere, let’s see what comes out at the end!

6.What do you think to the music scene in Germany today?

I think we got some good Bands, but the press and radio stations aren’t working with all of them! you will never hear a Grave Digger song or any metal or punk on the radio! So we are little low level music listener! But we got great festivals like Wacken and Bang your head, so the scene is defenitly alive over here, these guys are great fans of that kind of music so I think it’s funny that there is no commercial interest! Most of the people are listings the chart music, but I won’t call this a scene!

7. What are the plans for Ayscobe over the next 12 months?

Doing a lot of concerts, playing everywhere we can and getting the new album on the market! It is ready to get record and is just waiting for us!

8. What is your message for the readers and your fans, new and old?

Take the time to listen to us and all the other bands, trying to get there feeds into business! Some of them are very creative! And open your heart for every great musician, sharing his or her experiences with all of us!

Thank you for your time and I wish you a happy, rockin’ Christmas and successfull start in 2012!

*Photos from  Official AYSCOBE page on facebook

Interview by Ali Blackdiamond