Armistice
Armistice comes from Germany
and this year they released their new album by themselves. Read the opinion
of the band about the music industry and read why the lyrics have to do
with the theme of war and also watch out for the new Armistice album next
year!
1. Hi! First of all thanks for your time and
congratulations for your new album! Please tell us the latest news concerning
Amristice.
LIZ: There's new and good reviews for the
"Roots of Evil"-CD coming in almost every other day. And the booking is
going very well, we plan to do a small European Tour sometime next year.
We played two shows the past weekends that were great fun, for us as well
as for the audience that appeared to really enjoy it! That is a great source
of motivation and we have started songwriting (the guitarists Stefan Fischer
and Mannae Hockauf for the most part) to put out a follow up recording
as soon as possible to feed the monster again.
2. If I am not mistaken "Roots Of Evil" is
your fifth album. How do you see now the music industry after ten years
of existence?
MANNAE: Well, the industry is almost entirely
interested in making money. This was always the case, but is worse than
back then. Trends come and go very fast. There are also lots of casted
bands, not grown bands. In the past there were also casted bands, but this
was kept a secret. We do not expect much from the industry. We are quite
happy having a little label and a small distributor. For promotion we rely
on ourselves, our concerts and all the crazy guys like you, who do fanzines
and such.
3. Can you give us some details from your new
album?
MANNAE: The new album got quite versatile
for a thrash album. Many people like that. There are many tempo changes,
between the songs and within the songs. Also the moods of the songs are
different from one track to another. The favourites of the people that
made reviews of the album are often different. So you can expect a classic
thrash metal album that spans the whole range of speed and thrash.
4. Why did you choose "Roots Of Evil" as the
title of the album?
LIZ: The term "Roots of Evil" is pretty much
the bottom line of this album, musically as well as lyrically. The lyrics,
for example, deal with all sorts of "roots of evil", such as war, sex,
aggression, fear, fundamental religion and the loss of control. The artwork
(designed by Stefan Fischer) also corresponds very well with the title:
Take a closer look at the cover and you may discover all sorts of evil
things!
5. Tell us some things concerning the lyrics.
LIZ: Most of the lyrics on this album - as
did those of the previous recordings - deal with war. But war is not glorified
here, it describes the tough reality, for example the situation of child
soldiers in several parts of the world ("Child Soldier") and the horrible
end of a lost war ("Leaving the Battlefield"). The song "Trail of Fear"
is based on a real story of the sniper that terrorised innocent citizens
in the East of the US in 2002. "Nail me to the Cross" criticises the hypocritical
understanding of religion. And the title "Doggy Style" explains itself.
The CD "Roots of Evil" also contains a data track that can be viewed with
a PC or MAC, and the lyrics are found there as .pdf-files. So everyone
can read them and find their own interpretation and what those words mean
to them personally.
6. What do you plan to do in order to support
your new record?
LIZ: We will support this recording by playing
everywhere there's a socket to plug our amplifiers in! We also got mainly
real good reviews from nearly all parts of the world, that are mostly due
to our own major promotion activity.
7. How would you describe your music?
MANNAE: It's basically speed/thrash metal
in the bay area style. Add some doom elements, make it groove like AC/DC,
think of what works best in live concert and you got it. Of course we do
this long enough that we could develop an own sound too.
8. Tell me your thoughts about "Roots of Evil",
after some weeks have passed since the release date.
MANNAE: We are very happy with the recording
and with the reactions we get. We will definitely continue with this style
on the next record. What we all agree on, is to speed things up a bit more
in average. Many people seem to like the variety in the album, so we won't
stop this as well.
9. What will you do in order to support it?
LIZ: Playing live is what we love most. Therefore
we will be on the road as much as possible. We have recently signed a contract
with an Italian booking agency (Headbanging Agency) that plans to send
us on an European Tour sometime next year. We hope to play somewhere near
you, so please check our homepage http://www.armistice.de/
for the dates. See you on the road!
10. How do you see the metal scene of Germany?
LIZ: Lately we see that the youth here is
more into Metal than it has in the previous years. There's more teenagers
running around with Metal-Fan-Shirts. Additionally it seems as if Thrash
Metal is coming back: German "legends" such as Kreator and Destruction
recently released new albums with great success. Since we do what we are
doing for quite some time and we were never corrupted by any trend or fashion,
we are very happy with this development. Finally the underground is very
much alive and the metal community seems to like our new record, you can
tell by the benevolent reviews we got for it (for example in the German
"Rock Hard" Magazine).
11. As we can see your entire website is in
your mother tongue. Do you believe that this deject some fans from digging
this site?
LIZ: Our homepage http://www.armistice.de
is bilingual (German and English), as well as the newsletter you can subscribe
to in order to be informed about the latest news and tour dates. We chose
to make it bilingual so that most people are able to understand it, since
there's people from all parts of the world visiting (Europe, America etc.).
12. What title do you want this interview to
have?
MANNAE: BUY THE NEW ARMISTICE ALBUM OR GO
TO THE CHURCH!
13. Thank you very much and close the interview
as you want!
Antonis Maglaras
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