After more than ten years since their debut, the finnish band NOWEN are ready to return with their new album called “Essence of Fear” that will be released i the January 2012, via Violent Journey Records.
Hi guys, I’m Sylvi from MSFinland, how are you?
Lappis(Guitarist, vocals): I’m fine, or we’re fine, thanks for asking. Little busy at work but that’s just life.
Jarno(Bass): It seems we’re both fine, thank you for asking!
1. So, soon your new album will be released. How do you feel about it? Are you nervous?
Lappis: I feel very confident about our new album. It’s a strong and powerful record with lots of different kind of emotions and senses. It’s fast, it’s heavy, it’s dark, it’s agressive, it’s diverse and it’s tight as hell. The album also sounds great, very natural sounds on drums. No triggers or samples were used on this records so it’s pretty damn dynamic album. Our drummer also played the whole album live without timer or click, whatever you want to call it, so there is a lot of groove in this album. So no, I am not nervous at all. Hopefully people will like it as much as we do. There must be something wrong with their heads and ears if they won’t like this record!
Jarno: The album is great in my opinion and I believe it will have good responses among listeners. I’m not nervous at all as I am quite confident too with the content of the album. I only have good feelings about it. Continue Reading
It was simply a matter of time before Sven Dirkschneider, son of the notorious metal-legend Udo Dirkschneider, Alex Staschko and Florian Schmitz picked up their instruments in the Summer of 2008. This summer the band recorded their first professionaly produced EP “Road Trip”. The CD provided for much positive feedback, and further more three support shows for U.D.O. in November of 2011, in Germany and Czech Republic. .DAMAGED are: Phil Werbelow (Vocals), Christian Meinke (Guitar, Backing-Vocals), Alex Staschko (Guitar), Flo Schmitz (Bass) and Sven Dirkschneider (Drums, Backing-Vocals). Some days ago MSFinland‘s Kostya had a chance to interview Sven Dirkschneider, please join to their conversation…
1. Hi, Sven. Welcome to metalshokfinland!
1.Hello and thank you for inviting us to the interview.
2. Let’s begin with a warming up question – What did you eat today on breakfast?
I ate nothing, didn’t have time for breakfast I had to hurry up because I slept too long.
3. You are a drummer and a founder of the band .damaged, tell me about its first steps…
Yes i’m the drummer but i didn’t found the band just by myself, it were Alex Staschko (the guitarist), Flow Schmitz (the bassist) and me who founded our band .damaged in 2008. In fact we didn’t have any name in the beginning until my mum fortunately heard the Beatsteaks’ song “Cut off the top” and remarked the word “damaged” in the chorus. 4. Which musicians have influenced on your band style?
Thats hard to say… we are very open-minded to many kinds of music and I listen to everything I like but when its about making music we need this Heavy Rock’n’Roll thing.
5. This summer you released your first EP “Road trip”. Tell us about its creation process.
After we changed our style of music from Punk Rock into Heavy Rock’n’Roll in 2010 we started writing new songs. We handed the demo to Stefan Kaufmann and told him that we wanna record the songs anywhere. He listened to the CD and apparently liked it, because he gave us the opportunity to do it in his own studio called “Roxx Studios”.
6. On the last week you performed with your father and played the song of Accept “I am a rebell”. Tell more about this concert.
That was very spontaneous. A day before the concert my dad called me and said:” Hey Sven, just get ready for “I’m a Rebel” tomorrow and tell Alex that he is also up with us. The song starts on E! I was lucky that I didn’t do it for the first time. I already had played the song twice with the band. For Alex it was a whole new experience. But for both of us it was really gorgeous. 7. The last year .damaged performanced on Ibiza. To be honest I was surprised when I heard that rock-concerts are organized there. Usually I hear about Transe/House parties from that place.
Originally the isle was under the influence of Rock music. In the 90’s the House and Electro music undertook Ibiza. But now they wanna bring back the Rock’n’Roll vibes to ibiza and there’s a lot of rock concerts going on.
8. I know that probably everybody annoys you with this question but anyway, how it is to be a son of a great musician like U.D.O.?
To be honest, for me it’s normal. When I was around 12 it was very special to be on that big festivals and everything, but now I’m working for U.D.O. in the summer as drum tec for the festivals. But it’s still a pleasure to meet all those big musicians.
9. Which plans has .damaged band for 2012?
We hope that our EP furthermore will get a good feedback and we can play a lot of big concerts, and maybe even a little tour as a support band or something.
10. And the last one – would you like to tell something to the metalshokfinland’s readers?
Hey guys, if you wanna hear some great stuff just check us out on facebook. And soon you can also visit us on our own homepage. Keep Rock’n’Roll alive!!!
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 arethings 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 thereason 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 tellme why you chose to make an album in this way and how the songwritingprocess 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 AllanPoe 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 doyou have plans to tour further afield? Which countries would you like toplay 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 andsuccessfull start in 2012!
WARDRUM is the newborn art child of the Greek drummer Stergios Kourou (Horizon’s End), who is willing to serve in the best possible way the music he grew up with and still loves deep, Heavy Metal. The line-up completes vocalist Piero Leporale (Uli Jon Roth), guitar virtuoso Kosta Vreto (Horizon’s End, x-Vavel), and the bass master Kostas Scandalis (Horizon’s end). Their debut album “Spadework” was released on April 2011. MSFinland had a chance to interview the drummer and the founder, Stergios (enriched with some comments of the vocalist Piero), please join to our conversation.
Hi Stergios, I’m Tarja. Welcome to Metal Shock Finland! Let’s start by taking about WARDRUM’s first crucial steps… You formed the band in june 2010, so it’s your newborn art child. Tell me about how it all started…
Hi Tarja! First of all I would like to thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to present Wardrum in Metal Shock Finland.
Wardrum started when I, together with guitarist Kosta Vreto, and bassist Kostas Scandalis, decided to start an old school heavy metal band, fulfilling a common childhood dream. That was complete when we shared the idea with vocalist Piero Leporale and he agreed to work together with us. The result was “Spadework”, our debut album. It’s been one and a half year since we started and the fire is getting bigger and bigger.
RED ROSE started in the beginning of 2010, in Israel. It was a mixture of musicians from two different bands, which came to an end of their existence. The musicians had years of experience on stage and experience in song-writing. Together they started a new project, aiming on a debut album “Live The Life You’ve Imagined” which came out on October 2011, via BakerTeam Records. Some days ago I had a chance to interview Red Rose’s keyboardist Deion Kristen, here’s what we talked about…
1. Hi Deion, I’m Tarja. Welcome to Metal Shock Finland! Let’s start from the beginning, which is not so far in the past… you’re very young as a band, but what is the background of your band-members?
Greetings Tarja and Metal Shock Finland readers! First of all let me thank you for your time and interest. It’s a pleasure to be noticed in such a distant country from us as Finland!
I think I will begin the story with introduction of the band’s members: Leve Laiter – vocals, Elnur Aliev – guitars, Eli Reeve – bass, and me, Deion Kristen, on keyboards (and Sam Davidoff – session drums).
Before we gathered as Red Rose, we all had several years of experience playing in hard rock/metal bands. In fact Leve, Eli and I played in the same band that performed covers and just started making first steps in writing of original material. That band didn’t work out so well eventually, and our dissatisfaction was one of the reasons to create Red Rose.
Elnur played in a more “advanced” band then, whose sound was much heavier. They recorded and self-produced an album, but experienced rough times too at approximately the same period we did. And the two parted bands formed one new. Although Elnur’s musical background is much heavier than ours, his love for melody and harmony made the connection with us easy and natural. He was the best match for Red Rose’s guitars.
We are here today with ABOVE THIS, a Metal Core/Death Core band born in Norfolk/Virginia Beach. Their last album “7L7”, released in August, is enjoying a great success. Even in the web, the reviews and comments from listeners of this music genre seem to be positive. But now we try to know ABOVE THIS more closely, and let’s see what band’s vocalist, Shawn O’Brien, has to say…
1. Hello Shawn! I’m Sylvi from Metal Shock Finland. Happy to do this interview with you .. lets start from the origins: How did you meet and how you decided to form a band?
I met Thomas Buser onlone about a year ago, it was on youtube after i had been viewing some of his instrumental tracks that he has posted up. I hit him up and he agreed to work with me on a sample project so that i could try my vocals out with his music. Little before we knew it, we had a band going.
2. Do you guys get along well?
Me and Thomas have a relationship that is hard to explain. We know how to work to get things done and get our music out there in a record time. But the fact that i live in the U.S and he lives in Germany, changes the relationship factor because i have never met him in person. But as for conversation and friendship i feel that if we ever did meet in person, i’m sure we would get along like brothers. Continue Reading
THE ROCK ALCHEMIST – Italian Rock Band from Turin with a strong sonic identity that blends modern rock with progressive, hard, alternative, and pop elements!
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
After more than ten years since their debut, the finnish band NOWEN are ready to return with their new album called “Essence of Fear” that will be released i the January 2012, via Violent Journey Records.
