Interview с Oomph! : DARKSIDE.ru

Hallow! How are you doing?

Dero: Oh! We are fine thanks! We enjoy being here for the first time. It’s really overwhelming big and full sighting city. We like it greatly.

What do you expect from this concert?

Dero: Hhu… well…I’ve learnt that when you expect something, you can get disappointed very soon. So I expect for me, that I…I do my best, so…and my expectation concerning to the band, we’ll do our best and the other thing we can not force. We have to spread our energy that comes from the stage and we hope that the energy come back from the audience.

Flux: And we heard from the other band which played here in Moscow that the audience is always crazy here and they also told that it was so much fun to play here.

How do you imagine the Russian fans?

Dero: We know a couple of guys, and our light technician is a Russian guy, but they live in Germany. But they are crazy guys; they are friendly open-minded and very pretty out crazy

Flux: We also know that some Russian fans come to our concerts in Germany and we found them cute…and now we are here and we will come back, we promise…

What do you think more important records or concerts?

Flux: Well…both are very important, I mean working in a studio as we do, and we do all producing, we write everything ourselves which is sometimes not understood, you know. Nowadays so many casting acts are just interpretative no matter who sings or performs or that other people write for them and we do everything alone. And it’s very good to be in a studio, after a long tour for example, to settle down, and to create new ideas, to collect the emotions from the tour and bring them up to a studio. And we are doing a new good album now, over all this year we were writing the new songs for the tenth album.

What kind of emotions do you need for writing a new song?

Flux: Well we just try to reflect the life as itself, you know. What is going on within my soul. If you are as honest as possible while writing then you feel this in a song. We are persons who develop as human being and this development we also want to show within our music, we want to reflect through our songs. I mean so many bands try to tell you that they are only aggressive or only sad or what ever…and human being is much more then one emotion and we are very kind of emotions and we want reflect them all. We are not afraid of being sad, calm or powerless. And that moment we try to reflect those emotions of those moments. And when I am aggressive I reflect this aggression within my music. I mean it’s important for us to…not just be one dimensional band. I mean so many bands…when you heard one song you would know the whole band, the whole CD. But Oomph! is different I think, when you heard one song you wouldn’t know the whole CD.

How do you work at new material?

Crap: First we try to compose the songs ourselves in our own demo studios, we all have own demo studios for composing and after that me meet and join it all in a song and we compose together.
(This moment Flux paid his attention to the first ten fans which came to the hall and tried to occupy the place near the stage.)
Flux: There are only ten people in and they try to be the first one…be in the first row…but only ten people in…
Dero: as he said we wrote all alone in our studios and after that we also composed together. And it’s very interesting to compose in this way.

Who has the last word?
The last word has the democracy (laughing) and also people…No… you know we vote (everyone laughing) so there are three of us and very soon one is over vote, if there were more there will be more fight.

You record a lot of remixes…What is the reason for that?

Flux: It should be another approach of the song, you know…there is no just one approach of the song, and I know some very good versions of the songs of some other bands that I like and they are nearly better than the original. These remixes should be another approach of the song, like when the song is in a very rocky version of the song and you do it in the electronic way and you can feel the contrast. And it’s a challenge, it’s fun (laughing)

Do you have the remix that you like best of all?

Flux: Well, I don’t have such a remix which I like even more than the original one. I think that we do the best original versions of the song. And making remixes is very interesting for me, because its another view of the song and for me it will never go over this level of interest. Our original versions I like more. For example the remix of “Traumst du” the last record we have done and we add there the sound of the piano and I like it so much…

Dero: I also like the remix of the song “Supperneuva” and its really great, completely different version. It reminds me Depech Mode or something and I like it very much.

At the beginning your style was EBM then hard industrial, now it sounds more melodic. What is the reason for changing the style?

Flux: Well, we always change the style as a person, because we started eighteen years ago and we developed in our mind and in the things we like, the things we listen to and also the way we live. So our music also has changed, because we have changed everything over these eighteen years. And it would be boring to do the same kind of music all these years. And Oomph! was found only for one reason, always to create something new and making something which haven’t been done before, to try something new, to develop , to make any progression. And we can express ourselves every minute we work, and sometimes we work more than 24 hours a day and have one song in one month. So you can develop and change.

Crap: And the point from the guitar, how we start with it… it was a new thing for us and we try to create the new sound of it, and after that we combined the things we liked much and the things we had learnt. And the things, we did before, were more with guitars.

Dero: and when we played in the EMB style there was more interesting and good electronic aspect, in the style of “Depech mode” or “Craftwerk” and so on… and also there were also some hard rock and heavy things, like ac/dc… and back to the EBM everyone was coming from the rock side, hated the electronic sound. And we hated that because both things were interesting and we found Oomph! to combine both styles and create something new, to mix electronic music with guitars. And that has worked; it’s nice to hear after the concert when people come to us and say that through Oomph! they got open-minded for rock music and for electronic too. And that is very nice to hear and over the years hear that such a band like “Rammstein” without Oomph! wouldn’t have been “Rammstein”. And it’s nice to hear that we influence such huge bands, and “Rammstein” influence none of us (laughing)

You have a lot of electronic sound…How do you prepare the material for the concert? Do you have to reduce something?

Dero: Well… yes we reduce some stuff but some we put into our live sound, you know, like drummer stuff. We play with the additional drummer and also there are five people on stage that play alive and we want to play alive. Yes, we left something away but there is some sound which we don’t want to left away and this stuff is unplayable, no human being can play this sound, so we get that sound from the lump machine

Crap: And besides we want to try an opportunity to play all material alive and all the live material from the CD

Dero: And also there is an electronic drum and you can trigger the entire drummer sound which we made in a studio. And it’s really good because you can hear not only one drum sound on the stage; we can have as different drum sounds as possible. And it’s really cool…

Your album is named “ Glaubeliebetod” … Did you have any other names for this album?

Dero: Of course we had a couple of names for this baby but after all we have decided to choose this title for the album because this is the main topic that concerns the lyrics. And when I recognize the tree main topics on the CD, I was thinking about the main question that people ask themselves as long as their self-consciousness within human being: Where do I come from? And does it all have sense where I will go to? And if you believe in something or yourself and what you do. And you have to believe in your music when you are a musician and this is “Glaube” and you should love what you do and if you don’t love what you do it becomes shit. So “Liebe” and “Love” is very important also when you are a musician. And death, well you know, life ends with death, and this is the main thing, we don’t know where we go to. Many people are afraid of death and they try to deny this thing, they don’t want to talk about death, they just want to have fun. But it’s very important to deal with death because death reminds us that life is very important , very special, very unique. And for me death is not an enemy. And I don’t understand the people who say that death is my enemy because they have to die and that’s so sad. This thing makes them angry. But if you can’t die you get bored of life. If you read the books about people who cant die, for example, vampires. They want to die and this is the only thing they want. And I think it’s very important to keep it in mind that we will die and without death we wouldn’t even know what life means.

Why have you decided to take the song “Got ist ein Popstar” as a single?

Dero: Well, this is a very dance floor song, its very dancing. I think its very ironical approach, we deal with a new pop god from TV- shows, and these pop stars became gods for many people. And we make fun of this. And another aspect was the german pop was elected, many teenagers have posters of pop stars on the walls, and there are articles in the magazines about them. But it is the reality.

Did you expect the situation with this song?
Dero: No, we didn’t expect such a situation, that we would be prohibited. And it was very sad to see that all after we were invited to play at some music show in Germany and all that caricatures and all that stuff which went on with this song. And people got afraid of terrorism and didn’t like those caricatures. And the promoters of the TV-shows said that maybe our song would offence people in their religious feelings and we don’t want that. And they didn’t get the humor of the song. And the decision to prohibit our song was sad.

A bit about you second single “Die Schlinge”. The guys from Apocalyptica worked with you. Tell some about this collaboration?

Dero: It was great, they added what was missing. It was great to see how they play these cellos. And they did a really good job and you can see it on a video and it was great to work with them. They are very nice and really put the song to the top. It’s great.

How do you like your collaboration with Lame Immortelle?

Flux: Oh, we know Sonia from Lame Immortelle many years and we play at festivals together and we had the idea to make a song together for a long time, and than we did this love ballade … we thought that her voice would perfectly fix to it. And we tried because we never thought before what we would have if the two voices to unite. And it worked very well. It just puts the song to another higher level.

Dero: And the lyrics are about the dark side of love, you know… and it’s good that we did it.

You sang with Marta Jandova from “Die Happy” at Bundesvision Song Contest. Who wrote the song?

We wrote this song and we chose her as a partner because we know her for a very long time and we met at many festivals. And when this song was finish we thought that it would be really great to sing it with her and perform it on this concert. And she did a very good job. And the sound of the song was perfect on the stage because she is a good performer and a good singer. Yes, it was just perfect.

What about the show “Stefan Raab Wok WM” in 09.03.07…

Well as the winners of this concert we were invited to play there. And after that we tried this ice chanel, where you just sit on your ass and run down like in a bobsleighing. And after that a hospital and it’s really dangerous to do it. Well I didn’t feel any pain it was like lay out… lay on (laughing) well and I didn’t have any problems I have really strong head.

Working on Virgin and on one of subdivision (GUN) Where do you feel better?

We like to work more at GUN records. And we changed two GUN records and we made it because it couldn’t work with rock music and Virgin is a very big company and they also have pop artists and they know how to sell records but they are not so much in the rock& roll business in Germany, but GUN records has only rock bands and they perfectly know how to work with rock bands.

Do you always agree with the decisions of the label?

Yes, we agree with them always…and we are the only masters if you want to know. And you know we have freedom in our decisions when we are in a studio. And we create everything all alone. The only thing which GUN says that some song they want to record as a single. And I think it’s ok, when the record company can choose the singles. We wrote these songs and in our eyes each song can be a single. And if they can choose, why not...

Thank you very very much for listening to our shit!!! And for supporting our band here in Russia and we are happy being here. We hope we will come back very soon because we like it very much, the audience is just great here. They are open-minded, and the thing that they like the german rock music makes me happy. And that we have fans here and we will return…

Interview by Viktoria "Ewigkeit" Bagautdinova
9 июн 2007 the End