#nov1999

ANGEL DUST

Interview with Bernd Aufermann by Daniel Hinds

(conducted November 1999)

Back in the 1980s, thrash fans were bombarded with new bands every day from every corner of the world.  Germany had its share of star players, mainly Kreator, Sodom and Destruction.  The second wave German thrashers didn't get as a high a profile internationally, but it certainly wasn't for lack of talent.  Assassin, Darkness, and Exumer all released some killer material, but Angel Dust is the only one of the bunch still alive in 1999.  Okay, so they actually split up in '89 and didn't get back together until 1997, but they have quickly re-established their presence with an updated power metal approach.

The band's second opus since their rebirth is called Bleed and it was just recently issued here in the States.  Guitarist Bernd Aufermann tells us more about the critically acclaimed album and the band behind it…

Are you happy with Bleed and how has the response to it been? Yes, of course we are.  Here in Europe, we have sold very well.  It took us three weeks to get the selling rates of the previous album.  And right now, we seem to be getting much more popular in the States.  I just surfed the Internet a little and we've got lots of response from progressive metal freaks, and I've got here 457 e-mails from just fans from the States.  It will take me a lot of time and work to answer them all! (laughs)

Well, that's a good thing. (laughs) Yes, it is, definitely, we really love it.  We didn't expect that because Bleed was released here in I think it was May of this year and it sold very well.  We were a little bit sad about not playing that much this time here in Europe and we thought, okay, let's go onto the next album.  So it was a little surprising for us to get the reaction we did from the States and from the Far East as well.

How would you compare Bleed to Border of Reality? Oh, I think it has a much darker approach and we've improved as a band in playing and song-writing.  It is much more aggressive, it has a much more powerful sound than the Border of Reality album.  We've got a little lack of that speed approach that maybe we had on the first albums, and we focused much more on the groove.  The lyrics as well I think are much more intense.  We use to think a lot about what we were writing about and I think this is the main difference from the previous album.

Tell me about some of the lyrical themes on the new album. It's about bad experiences you have in your life, especially here in the music business.  We have so many tours with other bands - we went on tour with Overkill, we went on tour with Jag Panzer in Europe and Nevermore in Greece.  It was pretty fun but not all the time.  We had a little trouble with Overkill at first, but they turned out to be some guys that were really okay.  We've got one red line crossing the lyrics on the Bleed album and that is what can happen to you when you lose your path through your life.  We had a few friends who died because of drug abuse and a few songs deal with that theme.  So, I think Bleed is a very thoughtful, intense and emotional album.

Why the title 'Bleed'?   We sat down in the rehearsal studio and though, man, what do we want to stress with an album title?  It was like, finally, when all is said and done and everything turns out to be the way it is right now, all that's left is that you have to bleed for something.  We always have the feeling that somebody wants to bother us - the record company tells us things to do, the record company says this, says that, the manager says this, says that, the fans say something different, and we've got another approach.  So what is left in this business is that you have to bleed to be successful. (laughs)

I liked the cover art.  Can you tell me a bit about the artist who did the cover? (pause)  You liked the cover artwork?

Umm, yeah… It's a funny story behind that.  We had this idea that we would like to have this kind of angel back again on the cover, but we would like to have a photograph, not a painted picture.  Century Media said, 'No, we can't do this.  It's kind of your image, you've got to appeal to the metal people, you can't use any pictures.'  So what they did was they put the idea we had for the cover into that painting.  They said, 'Oh, we have that painting - you should come have a look.'  We went there and said, 'Oh, fuck!!  What's that??  No!  We don't want that!!'  And they're like, 'Oh, sorry folks, it's already being printed.'  And we were just like, no, it can't be true.  You've probably seen the United States version, which is much better than the European version.  The European cover is much worse, I really hate the cover.  I hate the posters, I hate everything.  I think for the next album, the rights are for us to say, 'No, we don't want to have this anymore.'  Right now, our bass player is having a conference with the record company bosses.  The thing is that we were really unsatisfied with the cover here in Europe and Steve our keyboard player is also very able to do graphic design.  So, he said, 'I'll do it for the States and the Far East version' and he sat down and changed a few things, a few colors, a bit of the layout, so for the United States version we were like, okay, we can accept that, that's not too bad. (laughs)  I've got it here right now, the United States version, and I really like it, it's okay.

What exactly inspired you guys to reform Angel Dust in the 90s? It's not really a reunion.  The original members are just the bass player and the drummer.  We knew each other for a very long time and when they started in the 80s, they did that very speed metal influenced stuff, which wasn't really my kind of music.  They tried over and over again to build a new line-up, but the original members weren't available because one member had tinitis and another wasn't able to play his guitar, as he didn't practice for ten years, I don't know.  I used to be a studio musician, as a guitarist, and they said, hey how about it?  At that time, I had a solo deal for an instrumental record, but hey, nobody needs a guitar instrumental record. (laughs)  Especially from Germany, so I didn’t give anything about that.  We played a few songs together and it fit well.  Steven Banx was in my band at that time and I'm not the kind of guy who likes to play with another guitarist, so I said, hey, let's check out keyboards.  So we did that, we found Dirk who was a good singer, and that was it - Angel Dust was back in 1997.

Was there a point when you were considering using a new name rather than Angel Dust? To be honest, there was this point when the original members said, okay, we've got the right to use the names.  They thought it would open many doors and they were right.  As soon as we released a demo tape, we had the press right here going, 'Yeah, all right!  Good to see you together again!' and my fax was almost blown away by record companies offering us deals.

Are the first two albums available on CD? No, not yet.  We are really into re-releasing them, but the old record company has no interest to do that.  Century Media offered them lots of money to get the rights back, but they didn't react in any way.  It was like, 'we don't care, no, I don't want to talk about it.'  But we heard that the laws say that after ten years, we are allowed to re-release the stuff on our own.  Hopefully we will re-release the material, although… I don't like the old stuff so much. (laughs)  It's pretty funny to play the stuff on stage, but it's not my kind of music.

How did you decide on going with Century Media? When we released that demo tape, I got I think 56 record companies with offers in my e-mail and fax and we just compared them to each other.  The Century Media boss was an old friend of our bass player, he was the first in line.  He said, here's a contract, here are the conditions, do you accept, what do you think?  And we were like, ah, let us wait, we've got so many offers, so we'll see.  It turned out that Century Media definitely did have the best offer.  Century Media is only 5 minutes away by car from me right now, so it's easy for me to go in the office and say hello, what's wrong, what's right, and that's okay.

Do you still do any of the old material live?   Yes, we do.  When we do headlining shows, we're going to play maybe 4 or 5 of the old songs and the other stuff is new material.  When we do support shows where we only have 45 minutes or even less, we only play one song or even none.

Do you find that most of the audience is only familiar with the new music? Yes, of course.

Do you have any tour plans coming up? We have a few plans but I can't guarantee them.  We might play a few Christmas shows maybe with Motorhead here in Europe - Paris, maybe Madrid or even Rome - we don't know yet.  We got an offer from Crimson Glory, asking us if we'd like to play the States or even Europe with them.  It would be great, but I don't know if we can get it scheduled because in January, we will be back in the studio to record the next album.

My next question was going to be if there is any chance of playing the States… Yes, we would love to do that.  I can tell every promoter we don't want to earn much money! (laughs)  Give us a hotel room, give us something to drink, and we would love to play, really.  We don't know how the selling rates will be in the States right now.  We can ask Century Media if they would like to have us there, but the United States is so big it would take maybe six months to tour the whole country.  We don't know if it is possible, but we'd love to do it.  Depends a lot on the selling rates.  When you've got just 2000 copies out there, it's, I don't know…to be in clubs with just 50 people all the time…

Any plans for the next album yet? I think I'm allowed to tell you that this album could be a concept album.  We're not quite sure yet, but we have a good story.  We have six or seven songs right now and we're going to write about six more.  It sounds a little bit harder than Bleed, definitely, but it has also a strong amount of melody.  It's 100% Angel Dust.  Better melodies and a harder approach then Bleed, maybe.  We don't know how it will turn out, but we hope so.

What are your plans in terms of a studio and producer? The producer will be once again Siggi Bemm, he's famous for doing Tiamat and a lot of other things, and we'll choose the same studio as for Bleed (Woodhouse) because he knows exactly what he's doing there.  He's got good outboard gear and we like each other a lot.  He really helped us get a good sound and this is the first time that he will be involved in the song writing.  We tape everything we have in our rehearsal room for him and he will pick out some ideas and tell us, 'this is good, this is bad, change this, change that.'  It's interesting because we didn't work like this before.  We just got the songs, went into the studio and said, come on, give us a good sound, the arrangement is ours.  Now we've got another band member (laughs).  I don't know how it will turn out, but I think it will be positive because Siggi is absolutely a sound guru.

What do you think of the current metal scene? I don't know how it is in America, I just know the opinion of the Nevermore guys, for example, or the Iced Earth or Jag Panzer guys.  They all say, 'Oh, metal is dead in the States, forget about it!'  They used to say that, but when I look on the Internet, it doesn't seem that way.  But, how many Americans do you have?  250 million?  When you have sales of 20,000 with that many inhabitants, it means nothing.  Here in Europe, it's a weird thing.  We've got this true metal wave and it bores me to death.  I mean, we've got bands that are very popular who would have seemed shitty in the 80s.  From Scandinavia, everybody comes up with those true metal riffs like Saxon and Iron Maiden.  HammerFall, do you know them?  Oh my god….  They're a mixture of, I don't know, a little bit of Maiden, a little bit of Saxon, and they're selling millions of copies here in Europe - it's unbelievable.  I don't know… everyone seems to have to think in those [categories]:  this is true metal, this is power metal, this is poser metal, I don't know.  I think it's just music and everyone should view it as such.

MORTIIS

Interview with Mortiis by Daniel Hinds

(conducted November 1999)

Mortiis is the elusive musician that started his career as bassist for the notorious black metal outfit known as Emperor, before going solo and heading off into uncharted territory.  Using synths, he has created some stirring, epic-length pieces that blend dark ambient with medieval folk and even some classical music elements.

Released through Sweden's Cold Meat Industry and his own Dark Dungeon Music, the drow elf produced four full-length albums before signing with Earache for his latest, The Stargate.  Using the vocal talents of Sarah Jezebel Deva (ex of Cradle of Filth) and Kalle Metz, this album shows Mortiis developing a much broader and deeper sound than ever before.

After a string of dates here in the U.S. with Christian Death, Mortiis and crew were just about to cross the border into Canada when I got a chance to chat with him via cell phone…

Could you tell me a bit about the storyline of The Stargate and what inspired it? I guess musically I was inspired by Basil Poledouris - he did the soundtrack to the first Conan movie, for example.  Musically, that's about the only thing I can put my finger on.  As far as concepts and stuff, there's a myth in certain cultures that you can travel between different dimensions using stars - use them as gates.  I just found that concept very fascinating and it inspired me to do something along the same lines and incorporate that into the whole Mortiis thing.

The CD booklet says "to be continued..." at the end - will it be continued on the next album? Probably not the next album, but at some point in the future I would like to make a second one.  It's not actually finished.  I have the rest of the concept worked out, the storyline so to speak.

Did you come up with the concept before writing any of the music? Sort of.  I think I had some basic musical ideas, maybe a few raw demos or whatever lying around, but I think the storyline was pretty much figured out before I did the music.

In the past, your image has always been very mysterious and in the shadows, but on the Stargate, there are very clear pictures of you on the cover and back cover and tray card.  Why the decision to make yourself more visible this time out? I think I always wanted to do that.  The fact that it turned out the way that it did [in the past] gave people a certain impression - it's not like that was intentional.  We didn't have any professional photo shoots back then, so basically it was me and my girlfriend with an amateur camera, taking photos in the marshes.  That kind of thing, which tends to give things an obscure angle.  So when I had the chance to work with more professional people as far a photo shoot, it turned out differently.  That's how I wanted it from the beginning anyway.

Are you pleased with Earache so far?   Yeah, I guess.  You know the way it is with labels, they can be bastards, but what can I do?  What can I say?  We have a contract.  But I think they're doing a pretty good job, though.  I'm getting to do a lot more shit now that I would have never done with another label.

Do you still have a connection with Cold Meat Industry?   Yeah, sure.  Not at this point, because I'm doing the U.S. support and stuff, but when I'm back home, we do talk.  I'll check in and see what's going on and stuff like that.

How about Debbie at Blackmetal.com? Yeah, how about her?  (laughs)  We were kind of not talking for a long time.  I did a San Francisco show a couple weeks ago and she turned out at the show, she and her guy Elden, they do this thing together [blackmetal.com], and we talked and things were okay.  We exchanged new phone numbers and stuff, so I think that dispute is probably in the past.

How is the tour going? Not very good.  I mean, someone has not taken responsibility for promotion - the promotion is horrible.  I don't know who to blame anymore and I don't want to mention names, but it just seems like no one is doing their job, basically.  We had these posters printed up and we've done like 23 or 24 shows so far and I've seen those posters up at about 3 of the shows.  That's very annoying.  Plus the fact that my album should have been out in the U.S. and Canada at least a month ago, before the tour started.  That got screwed up, so I'm pretty much doing a tour for a record that's not actually out.  If you look away from that, we are getting a good response, which is very good.  People show up at a show that is pretty much not being promoted, they get to hear music they've never heard before, and still at some of the shows we're getting an amazing response.  I'm pretty happy with it, despite everything that's fucked-up about the tour.

Have you done any major touring in the past? No, this is my first tour basically.  I'm being introduced to a pretty rough world right now (laughs).  Is it supposed to be this fucked-up all the time?  But I'm getting the impression that it's not supposed to be this bad.  I've talked to the other people we're touring with who have done this a lot of times and they're like, 'This is a fucked-up tour!'  So, I guess I'll try it again.  Maybe.  (laughs)

I understand that Dark Dungeon Music is closing down.  Is that true?  Why? Yeah.  I was the only guy working at that label.  I was doing everything and it just took up all my time.  I saw my music fall to shit - I could mention a couple of records that I've done that I should have never done or should have taken a lot more time doing.  But I didn't have the time because Dark Dungeon took up all my fucking time.  So, it just came to a point where I realized, okay, this is not working out.  I don't want to do the label anymore.  I hated going down and doing it every day, I hated every minute of it.  I don't want to deal with all these people, I don't want to have all these worries, 'Is he gonna pay me?,' 'Are they gonna pay me?,' 'When are they gonna pay me?' and blah blah blah.  I hated it and I still hate it.  So I put it down.  I want to make music; I don't want to be in the business side of it.

You've always released your music on vinyl.  Is there a vinyl version of The Stargate?  Is that important to you? The Stargate is available on vinyl.  We have a bunch of it in the van.  Vinyl forever!  It is something that I used to be a lot more fanatic about in the past.  I've come to accept CDs.  I mean, you have to accept the day and age that you live in.  If you didn’t do that, you'd be in big trouble.  Time will not wait.  But there's nothing wrong with being a bit nostalgic; I just try not to take it too far.

What is the status of your other projects? I put them down.  Just like with Dark Dungeon Music, I pretty much put everything down the same day, except Mortiis.  This is what I'm going to do now, fuck everything else.  I want to do one great thing instead of a bunch of mediocre stuff.

Is there anyone you would like to collaborate with musically in the future? I don't know.  I could probably come up with a few names, but I don't want to say, "I want to work with this person,' as it might create problems or something.  I'm sure there's a whole bunch of people I'd love to work with, but I'm so used to working alone it's hard to come up with names.  I've never really bothered with other people, never paid attention to anyone else.  I'm starting to change that, I'm starting to look into what other people do and it's pretty healthy, actually.  It's good to be on top of things.

Was it kind of a different experience working with vocalists on this album? Yeah, I was nervous.  Before they came out, I was really nervous.  Like, oh my god, I haven't worked with anybody since Emperor back in '92 and that's like six years at that point.  I don't even know how to collaborate.  But it worked out really good.  It took a little longer than we expected, but just a couple days, no big deal.  But it definitely worked out really good and I definitely plan to continue to work with other people.  It can only make things better.

Would you like to score films at some point? Everybody asks that and I always say that I don't think I'm good enough.  Definitely not good enough.  I mean, I know what I do and I can compare it to movie soundtracks and I'm like, okay, damn.  I'm a long way away from being that good.  That's how I feel anyway.  I mean, I'd love to do it, but I don't consider myself good enough.  That's just me being my worst critic.  At some point, I would like to try something like that out, but maybe not this week.  (laughs)

When you write songs, do you hear the whole work in your head or do you start with one instrument and build it up from there? Kind of both, I guess.  I think I know kind of how I want the song to sound, but it never really turns out like that.  I start realizing, okay this didn't work out, that didn't work out - maybe 50% of what you had in mind stays with you.  The rest is just something that popped up during the writing process.

I read that you are working on a book… That is something that I've been working on for several years.  It's pretty much like the young days of Mortiis up until the day he decides to leave the world he was born into.  It's all very symbolic and reflective of what goes on this world and my own state of mind.  It'll be out next month, as far as I know.

Who is publishing it? Oh, Earache I guess.  They're doing like a limited edition thing, a box with The Stargate CD and the book.  Sometime in November.

Are you happy with how the book came out? Well, basically, if I were to do it today, 90% of that I would have never done.  It's like a diary almost of the last few years and it's the oddest thing to see the changes in the attitude.  In that sense, it's very interesting.  As far as me being very naïve and evil and shit like that, but as you grow and develop, your mind matures a little bit and becomes more realistic.

CELTIC FROST

Interview with Tom G. Warrior by Daniel Hinds

(conducted November 1999)

Switzerland isn't a large country, but it has certainly produced some of the most singular musical entities, whether you point to the esoteric funk stylings of Yello, the psychedelic industrial ruminations of The Young Gods or the jazz-thrash technicality of Coroner.   One of the most influential (and my personal favorite) however was Celtic Frost.  In the mid 80s, the classic line-up of Tom G. Warrior (guitar, vocals), Martin Eric Ain (bass) and Reed St. Mark (drums) recorded one of metal's landmark albums, Into the Pandemonium.  The inclusion of everything from gothic moods and textures, female operatic vocals, and orchestral instrumentation, to a hip-hop song, a new wave cover tune and the band's already established brand of heavy metal made this album an incredible listening experience.  The rest of the band's catalog was certainly none too shabby either, with albums like Morbid Tales and To Mega Therion laying down some of the heaviest and most memorable grooves of all time.

Although the band constantly struggled with the business side of things and eventually went their separate ways in the early 90s, the Frost legacy is as strong as ever.  Bands as diverse as Emperor, My Dying Bride and Nirvana(!) have claimed influences from the Swiss outfit.  Sadly, the band's label didn't put much thought into the initial CD releases of their classic efforts, but Tom (now Thomas Fischer of the band Apollyon Sun) has taken the time to collect all the original art, lyrics, proper mixes and release remastered versions of the first three albums.  He also took some time to talk about the releases and reflect on the majesty that was (is…?) Celtic Frost.

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to get all the albums re-released properly!  What prompted you to get involved and get this done?

It was the absolute dismal job that Noise did in the first place; the mutilation of our original artwork and the dropping of lyrics, the exchanging of photos and all that stuff that happened since the albums were originally on the market.  We could not stand that.

And are you pretty happy with the new versions? We are necessarily happy because the band was 100% involved with it.  Noise simply provided us with the resources to do it, but it was the band who put this together.

Out of all the Frost releases, what has been the biggest seller so far? I would say it was probably Into the Pandemonium.

Who was your favorite producer to work with?   It is definitely Roli Mosimann because he has a vision and is very unconventional, just like the band.  He's not afraid of taking risks, sometimes absurd risks, and this is all totally in the vein of Celtic Frost as band themselves.

What kind of risks do you mean? Well, to try out ideas that other people would say, 'They never sell,' or to try out ideas that are totally off-the-wall.  Risky stuff in that not every band does it and it is less than certain that it's going to work.  But for the benefit of creating new music, you still try it - you still have the integrity to stick behind it and you do it, even if it's maybe not a certain success.

Is there any more Frost or Hellhammer material in the vaults that might see the light of day someday? Well, as far as Hellhammer, I really don't care.  As for Frost, there are demos from Vanity/Nemesis and there are two demos from the last album that was never released.  I'm really not quite sure if that will ever be released or not - I don't know if we should release every little fart the band ever did. (laughs)  But, perhaps.  We've been talking about it loosely, who knows.

Any chance for a live video or a live album from one of the classic tours? No, there are no official live recordings.  We never wanted to do a live album - we really didn't like live recordings.  There are some mixing desk tapes that are in the possession of the band, but I don't think they are fit for release and everything else is just bootlegs.

Is there any live footage on video maybe? Again, it's just bootlegs.  We were going to do quite a big show in New York with an orchestra, where we would have played "Rex Irae (Requiem)" and some other tracks in classical arrangements, but that never came together.  That show was going to have been filmed and released as a home video, but it's one of many unreleased projects of the band.

Was that just a money-thing? No, it was connected to other things.  For business reasons, it just never came together and then later on, we had other plans and so on.  It's a shame, though, because we really wanted to do that.

Do you have one particular frost show that really stands out as being a particularly memorable show? Definitely when we played the Beacon Theater in New York City at the end of 1987, that was an outrageous show, just from the crowd reaction.  One of the most memorable shows was the Halloween show at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, after Pandemonium.  That must have been one of the peak shows the band ever played.

Any contact with H.R. Giger since his involvement on To Mega Therion? No, we actually haven't.  Just recently, though, he gave an interview to a German music paper where they asked him about Frost and he had very kind words about us.  I will probably provide him with copies of the re-issues, though.

How did you come across the artist Les Edwards for the inner sleeve of Into the Pandemonium? The first time I saw his work was in a book of fantasy paintings.  I had this period in the mid-80s where I was interested in fantasy for a while and I had this book of really great fantasy paintings, but out of all of them, Les Edwards' work stuck out because it was more serious than the other ones.  It had more depth to it.  So, we were very eager to secure his work for our album because we knew we needed an inside sleeve.

When you finally found Ron Marks to join as a second guitarist, it seemed like you had been searching for a long time. How long had you been looking for someone? For perhaps one-and-a-half or two years, for a very long time.  It was just very difficult for us to find the perfect person.  We knew we could find somebody competent, but we didn't want just a hired gun - we wanted somebody who was original and who was as obsessed as we were, so we took a long time.  That's why we found Ron Marks very late in our career.  He had actually been to a show of ours in '86, but he didn't know we were looking for a guitar-player and we didn't know he was there. (laughs)

How did you actually hook up with him finally? Well, we had an ad all over America because we had such a great experience with Reed.  Ron Marks was a Celtic Frost fan and he put together an amazing tape and sent it to our management.  It was literally the last tape we received, but our manager called us into the studio and he said, 'We found the guy!  He's exactly the guy you want.'

How did you develop the singing style that you used on songs like "Mesmerized" and "Sorrows of the Moon"?  The first time I listened to that album (Into the Pandemonium), I thought you were sharing vocal duties with someone else! It's a bit complex to explain that.  On the first U.S. tour in '86, Reed and me were very disappointed by the hardcore faction in our audience, the people who came just for the most primitive elements in our music.  These fans were so violent, they started riots and fights in the audience, they came on-stage and destroyed part of the equipment, they made it almost impossible for the other fans to enjoy the show.  So the band made a conscious decision to alter our musical output.  We wanted to make it more accessible, we wanted to make it more melodic, in order to separate ourselves from that hardcore element.  And a very important part of that was to find a different vocal style, but since I didn't have any formal training, we resorted to experiments.  We were trying to determine what else there was in vocal styles that would match with our music, and these experiments are very reflected on Pandemonium.

Where did you get the title for Cold Lake? Well, it's very much a manifestation of our frame of mind at that time, meaning our extreme frustration with the recording industry.  After fighting for fourteen months in the most radical and extreme way possible against the record company, and them fighting us the same way, just because of Pandemonium, and the resulting destruction of the line-up of Pandemonium and the financial problems and the canceled video clips and everything…  We were just in a totally distraught frame of mind at that time and I think the title reflects that.

I'm wondering who some of your influences were in the earlier days that led to the more experimental tracks like "Danse Macabre" and "Tears in a Prophet's Dream." It was simply an attempt of painting a picture without the visual aid, like a movie without the pictures or a theater play without the actors - we just delivered a soundtrack that gives you a picture.

Did you ever think about doing a whole album along those lines? No, actually the second track "Tears in a Prophet's Dream" went almost too far for us.  We kind of had exhausted that concept and we were already starving for new stuff.

Are you surprised by the enduring influence and interest in Celtic Frost? Very much so.  It is something that we hoped for, though maybe not on that scale.  We always hoped the band wouldn't be forgotten when we would finally dissolve.  We always knew it was unavoidable that the band would end prematurely, but we always hoped that at least some elements of our music would stick around.  What has happened since then has totally surpassed any of our hopes or expectations.  It's unbelievable and we are extremely humbled by it.

What do you make of the scenes that have been clearly influenced by Frost, such as the black metal and death metal scenes? I don't care for the black metal scene, that has nothing to do with Celtic Frost.  We took a clear stance from the very first day against black metal and we really don't understand what black metal bands say when they claim they were influenced by us.  We feel that is very absurd.  We feel you have some responsibility when you are a musician and you release lyrics and stuff to an audience that is largely in their puberty and that is why already on Morbid Tales we took a strict stance against Satanism and everything.  So, this is really none of our concern and we don't associate with that.  The other bands that are claiming to be influenced by us…at times it is interesting and at times it's frustrating.  Some of those bands simply copy us and that's not really an influence.  Celtic Frost was all about innovation and trying new things and, to me, a band is satisfying when they do the same thing, when they try to explore new things.

Do you feel like the Celtic Frost story is still unfinished? At first, I felt so, but by now, I think it had to end like this.  On the other hand, we are all very close friends, we see each other as often as possible and because of that, we of course often talk about playing music together.  By now, within a year or two, it seems that it might actually happen, that we are going to do something else.  So perhaps, the last chapter hasn't been written yet, or perhaps there are several chapters - nobody knows right now.  I'm pretty undecided right now.  I think we could still do something, but it has to be modern and it has to be contemporary, otherwise we won't do it.

It seems like every release has been so radically different from the previous ones that, if you made a new album that wasn't innovative and different, it wouldn't be Celtic Frost. It would destroy the reputation of the band and we don't want to do that.  You're totally right, though.  The new album would have to be like Frost, it would have to be dark and heavy, but it would have to be radically different at the same time.

What are your immediate plans for Apollyon Sun? Well, we finished the full-length album three weeks ago, and now we're determining what label it's going to be on.  The release date is set for February or March of next year.  It's a very dark album.  It's a very modern album, but also dark and as experimental at times as Celtic Frost, so I'm very excited about it.  So that is the immediate plan - to get this album out on the market and to tour on the strength of it.

How does the album compare with the earlier EP? It is more integrated.  It's more of a true unit between modern instruments and traditional heavy instruments.  Even though we use drum loops and bass loops, we also use live drums and live bass, and we don't sample all the guitars, we have live guitars.  All of that makes it much much warmer than the material on the EP or just regular industrial material.  It is just a much more integrated mixture and this really the way we want to go.  We want to have a certain warmth and groove in our music.  We don't want to be somebody who presses a button and has a cool computer playing.

Did you produce the album? We produced it with Roli Mosimann and did a number of remixes with other people, like John Fryer, and we did some of our own remixes, just to explore different avenues.  But most of the material is produced by Roli Mosimann again, who did Vanity/Nemesis for Frost.

Cool, he's an awesome producer. Yeah, I like him very much, too.  He's a close friend, too, even though it's not always that easy to work with him. (laughs)  But I guess the same goes for us. (laughs)