Interview с Subway to Sally : DARKSIDE.ru

You are the first time in Russia. What prevented you from coming here before?

Eric: It’s a big adventure for us. It’s our first step on this land and it’s very interesting to come to Moscow. So, see what will happen.

Is it exiting for you to perform before the new audience? What do you expect?

Eric: First, nothing. We just want to rock for all. We don’t know what to expect, you know. And that’s what we have to do and this evening, this show… We should try as best as we can.

The next question is about your new album which has a very expressive title, “Bastard”. What did you want to say by this title and does this album have any concept?

Simon Michael: There’s no connection between the most of the songs and the title. The title came up when we were sitting all together and we were thinking and talking, thinking and talking about the title and Eric (the vocalist – ed.) came up with this title, “Bastard”. And we all decided to take this title, because this record a child of all of us of all seven band members. And that’s the reason why we chose this title.

You come to Moscow before the album “Bastard” is released. Why do you play this concert separately and not within the tour.

Simon: It’s not necessary to do this within a tour, because we have a big production in Switzerland and also in Germany so it’s not necessarily to bring all this stuff to Russ

ia. It’s too expensive.

Eric: In Germany it’s another story, there are two big tracks. So it’s impossible to bring the whole show to Russia.

Simon: We’ll come back to Moscow probably in April or March, so we’ll view this matter. I mean when the album is out.

Who came up with the idea of the cover artwork for your new CD?

Simon: Great, isn’t it? (laughs)

Year, but I was I little bit surprised. There is a human skin with burns on it. What does it symbolize?

Eric: We just saw this cover and all of us thought it’s a great variant for the cover. It’s the right way to reflect the music of the album.

Simon Michael: And I think that it’s also the symbol for the title, too. How can you symbolize or cow can you sign a bastard? And this is something that you carry all your life with you. I mean this scare.

The next question is about the cover artwork of your album. There is a human skin with burns on it. What does it symbolize?

Simon: Great, isn’t it? (laughs)

Yeah, I was a little bit surprised.

Eric: It was just an idea, we saw this and all of us were thinking it was the right of transporting a music in colors.

Simon Michael: I think it’s almost the symbol for the title, because how can you symbolize or how can you paint or photograph or sign a bastard? This is some kind of branding, s

omething you carry with you all your life. If you’re a bastard and you don’t know actually where is your mom and where are your parents then you carry all this stuff through the whole life with you.

This time you recorded in many studious. For example drums, bass and guitars were recorded in Horus Studio in Hannover. Eric recorded vocals in Lundgaard Studios in Denmark. Other members worked at acoustic parts in different studious in Berlin. How did all these changes influence the music?

Eric: So much, so much! It was a completely different way of working. We were sitting and jamming all together long before the production. That’s the thing that the didn’t do on the previous albums. It’s another approach – to make music together. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re going to the studio and jamming. And after one week, maybe two weeks the songs were coming in. So some time later we got a complete picture of music and lyrics together. And that’s the main thing. So it’s different from the last album, of course.

Many concerts of your acoustic tours took place in churches. Who came up with an idea of performing there and was it difficult to persuade the priests to let you do it?

Eric: Yeah, sometimes it was difficult. Acoustic in churches is one problem, and another problem is that our plan was to play all the concerts in church, but that turned out to be impossible, because not every priest wants a gothic band to play in church.

Simon: Priest Satan! (everybody laughs)

Simon Michael: We’re not actually an occult band or something. And that’s the main problem about playing in churches, because people see pictures of us and the listen to the music and normally they don’t understand the lyrics, they may only understand some words, but not the meaning behind it. And then they put us into the corner where we don’t want to be, they put us into the corner of occult, satanic music. So they don’t know the meaning behind the lyrics.

How do the priests react on this?

(everybody laughs) Differently!

And by the way do you belong to any confession?

Eric: Really not.

Simon Michael: Yes, sure – I’m a catholic. There’s always different reaction from the priests and stuff around the churches, so there was great reaction in Bochum which is more on the North West-of Germany. And especially when we were in the South, in Bavaria for example, which is more religious, we had some little problems. It wasn’t more difficult, but you felt that people were unfriendly. When you arrive in a new city, you’re a foreigner there and mostly the people of the club and the people of the concert hall who give you a big welcome and make you feel at home for this day. And that was definitely not so when we played in Bavaria in a church.

Eric: But we were looking for the atmosphere of the churches and this works all the time.

One of the strongest songs on the album “Nord Nord Ost” is “Sieben” and you are seven in the band… (at this moment Eric begins to count in Russian: “raz, dva, tri, chetiyre, pjat’, shest’, sem’!” (everybody laughs) Do you think it’s a lucky number?

Simon: Seven is a lucky number??

Simon Michael: In Germany 13 and 7 are most mystical numbers.

What are you waiting from the new album? You’re on the Nuclear Blast and the latest album was the most successful…

Simon: The last one? I think the three last albums were the most successful.

Simon Michael: But I think it’s not the label that makes the album successful, it’s the band that makes any record successful or not. If we switched the label again we would be as successful as we are now.

Simon: But I think Nuclear Blast is a big label and the people who work there like this music very much themselves. They do a very good job.

And what do you expect from the new album?

Simon Michael: We’ll see. I personally expect to have the most impossible fun performing these new songs.

Simon: I know what you mean – drug, money… (everybody laughs)

You use a lot of folk unique instruments on stage…

Simon: No, we don’t! (everybody laughs)

Yes, you do! Where did you get them? Did you manufacture them yourselves or did you buy it?

Eric: You know most of these instruments are bastards, so to say. Yeah, some of them are antique. As for me I made my pipes by myself. With the help of master of course.

I know that you’re going to shoot a video from one of the songs off the new album? Which song will it be?

Eric: That’s a good question! There’s one song called “Auf Kiel” and…

Simon: No! The song will be “Umbra”!

Eric: This is called democracy in our band, you see? (everybody laughs) The song “Umbra” is a rather gothic song. Well, I don’t know what to say more about it so far. We haven’t decided yet.

Do you agree with the critics who say that at the beginning of your career you were influenced by the British band Scyclad?

(everybody) No!

Eric: We played with them, but as for the influence… Actually our first album was released before we met them.
And you also took part in the recording of the album “Answer Machine”. How did it happen and whose idea was that?

Eric: Year, I told you we did a tour together. They supported us in some cities. So knew them better, we became friends, so there followed the invitation for production this album. And Budensky and me and Frau Schmidt went to England first time. It was really nice to work with them, lots of beers! (laughs) And the biggest “zavtrak” I’ve ever seen! Am I right – do you call this “zavtrak”?

Yeah! Right! And returning to your concerts. You usually play a special tour during Christmas. And in what way do they differ from the usual tour concerts?

Simon Michael: They do not differ from the usual tour concerts, cause we do this tour every year, so this is a kind of a usual tour for us. No Christmas tree on the stage, no Santa-Claus in a costume. No! (laughs) But we’ll think of that, maybe we’ll do it the next time in Moscow. (everybody laughs)

Eric: And you’ll be a leader Santa-Claus!

And one more question about the live shows. How did you image and stage costumes develop? Do you have a professional stylist or do you come up with all your style yourselves?

Eric: Sometimes I do, yeah. Sometimes we have ideas of our own, sometimes we have the people, stylist who work that out for us, or we do it together.

On your previous album you worked with the orchestra. Did you work with any orchestra on this record?

Simon: No, it’s too complicated.

Simon Michael: It’s too complicated, it lasts too long, to record all the tracks and to work with them.

Eric: But of course there some orchestra parts on this album, it’s not a problem to create an orchestra by computer.

Simon Michael: There are some people nowadays who do nothing but orchestrate or produce a sound of the orchestra on computer. But we used a lot of natural things, we

used a lot of cellos and violins of course. It really sounds organic, so we decided to make the orchestra via computer.

And musically wise. What will your new album sound like? Will it be a kind of returning to the roots or something brand new?

Eric: It rocks really. It’s like blood and earth.

Simon Michael: But there is also a great development which you will feel on this album, because the fact that we played the basic tracks live.

Eric: And it’s our first album with him on drums.

Simon Michael: We have the most live sound there, it’s like standing in the middle of the studio and having the band playing around you. It’s more the live feeling.

Speaking about the sound. You like experiments with the sound. For example on the album “Engelskrieger” (2003) you used a lot of electronics. Why did electronic interest you? Do you think that it’s a kind of new style in folk music? Like Tanzwut do, or In Extremo…

Eric: I wouldn’t say we use so much electronics. Of course we use some loops, but it doesn’t have so much of electronic sound. It’s more like a sound of a hammer.

You also played in a lot of summer festivals. How comfortable do you feel on stage with bands whose music has nothing in common with yours?

Eric: The same as in every festival. Every time it’s great to perform on big gothic festivals, metal festivals. You are equal on stage

with all the other bands. All these folk festivals, gothic festivals and metal festivals are all the time the same. As for hanging around with other musicians… It’s different all the time, for example when we played a festival in Holland, the headliner was Metallica, the second headliner was Manson, it wasn’t a problem to drink beer with James Hatfield. But with Manson it was impossible. (laughs) People are different, bands are different – sometimes there’s contact and some nice hours and sometimes nothing of that.

Simon Michael: It depends surely on the bands we are playing with and if the band is the whole day on the festival. The bigger the band is – the less time they spend on the festival, because they have their flights, then they have the charter to the hotels and they have charter to the festival to the stage, and then they have charter to the hotel again. We prefer to travel with a tour-bus. We arrive in the early morning when we sleep and we’re the whole day on the festival. As for me I prefer single concerts or tour, because when you’re on a festival you got to participate anyway with the other bands, you have to share toilets for example. And all the stuff so sometimes it’s really hard to keep your own privacy. And on tours you’ve got your own backstage, you’ve got your own bathrooms. There is more privacy for everybody.

Let’s speak now about the acoustic part of you tour, “Nacht”. Why did you decide to make such a tour?

Simon Michael: We didn’t hav

e enough electricity and enough power so our producer suggested an acoustic tour. We have a bicycle for the electricity. (everybody laughs)

Eric: Actually for the ten years the people were asking us to do the thing like this.

But how do you manage to sit calmly while playing such energetic music?

Eric: Sometimes it’s rather difficult, yeah! But it’s a completely other feeling. You play and you hear every sound you band mates play. We worked at this material all together, so it’s something special.

Simon: And there’s one more positive thing – we made the young people go to the churches. (laughs) It was the first time for me that i was in the church! (laughs) If they hadn’t come to our consert they would have never seen how is the church from inside, either.

Oh, you’re missioners!

Simon Michael: Right! That’s what we are! Didn’t you recognize this shining above our heads? (everybody laughs)

But on such acoustic tour you have very carefully watch your music, because if you make a mistake at the concert – nobody will notice, but when you play acoustics…

Simon: We never make mistakes! (laughs) What is a mistake? I don’t know.

Simon Michael: Moreover we wanted for ourselves to show people that we are a good band and we can do without that wall of sound and loudness, light and explosions and pyrotechnics. And

it was a great fun for us.

Eric: I really prefer shows in a tour. When there three weeks when you’re playing non-stop. And there two thousand people coming to our concerts in Germany, and they come for us, and not for somebody else.

Simon Michael: And I like to convince the audience at the festival. For example if we are playing not on a gothic or a metal festival, but on some pop-rock festival and there are 25 thousand people and maybe only 5 thousand know the band. I like to catch the other once. And if you get that it’s a very very great feeling.

Eric: To catch someone after the show, yeah? (everybody cracks)

Many musicians who sing in German say that they do this, because they want to be understood in their home-country. And other say that since they play folk music – it’s logical to choose another language. What about you? Why do you sing in German?

Eric: It isn’t folk music. It’s our own style. I think in German in my head, so I have to sing in German, it’s the only way of transporting my thoughts.

Simon: Actually no one asks why we don’t sing in English. Actually we did on one album, but it’s nothing as to compare of what we’re doing now. For example Bodensky, who is writing most of the lyrics together with Eric – they studied German and if you study German and can write good songs in German – why should they write in bad English instead?

And what universities did all of you graduate

from?

Simon Michael: I have too educations, actually. High school and driving lessons! (everybody laughs) But I think transporting feelings via music is something that you can’t learn anywhere. If you feel something and need to share it with somebody else, you don’t necessarily need a piece of paper for it. But I should say that studying of music in Russia is much harder than in Germany. All these guys and girls who studied music in Russia… well, it’s a big difference from what we have in Germany.

Eric: But of course it’s not bad to have some basis, you have to know everything about your instrument before going on stage.

But I know many musicians who played guitar for example since 5 year old and they didn’t get any special education, but still they do it perfectly well…

Simon Michael: It’s another thing. There are such things as basic knowledge, the history of music. We’ve all gone through it, but in some private schools. So we don’t have this diploma that we can hang in the toilet (laughs). So I think we’re rather educated people if compared to other bands.

You play rather unique instruments. Did somebody teach to play them or did it come to you with you mother’s milk?

Simon: It came to us with beer. (laughs)

There is the song called “Voodoo” on your new album. Why did you decide to sing about such a thing?

Eric: Well, do you know what a voodoo

is? For example I hate you and i begin to pin some doll, and you feel pain or something. I thing every person in his or her life had such a feeling or a desire to pin smb’s voodoo. Me too (laughs) When I sang this song in the studio I saw a picture of… of… I won’t tell you whom I imagined (laughs)

And which songs do you consider to be the best? In terms of lyrics, music – whatever…

Eric: Song 1, 2, 13 (laughs)

Simon Michael: We’ve been just speaking about which song to perform today live, and we can’t decide what song is the best.

Eric: I’ve listened to this album maybe a hundred times and that’s the thing that never happens with other albums. I love all the songs.

And the last question, I suppose…

Eric: The last question is always the same, “Can I get your number?” (laughs)

How do you see the band in 10 or 15 years?

Simon Michael: In 15 years we all will loose our driver license. (everybody laughs) That’s for sure!

Interview by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
28 сен 2007 the End

Subway to Sally

The Magnificent Seven