What was the worst interview you’ve ever given?
To be honest, I don’t remember which one was the worst, but it’s basically these interviews, where it starts with the fact that we should introduce ourselves and everything just stays on this superficial level. I always think to myself, this is information, you don’t have to ask me, you can just go to Metal Archives and it will tell you when we were founded and who plays in the band. For example, what the main inspiration for the album is. Well, you can answer that superficially, but you can maybe go a little deeper into it. We had something like that quite often, especially with our second record, that I already said a lot in private or described a lot to people in conversations like now. Then it always came up that it sounds totally like this or that Death Metal band. But what I’ve always said is that a lot of the riffs were created while Daniel, our old drummer, and I listened to tons of CANDLEMASS. That was the main inspiration for the album. Of course, that’s not the first connection you would make when you put it next to each other. That doesn’t necessarily sound like CANDLEMASS, it shouldn’t, but that was just the inspiration for one or the other riff. But if you never go into an interview on such a level, then I would have found it more exciting as a reader to hear something like that. And not „Oh yes, another AUTOPSY record. I find these kinds of interviews annoying.

 

 
The best inspiration is when you are inspired, but then you don’t just copy it, but you create something completely new from it.
Yes, definitely. Since the last album I’ve become a big fan of the BEATLES. Sure, I already knew a few songs as a young adult, but I never really listened to them intensively. It was more like I thought they had more of a historical value, but in the last few years I’ve really descended deep into the rabbithole. I don’t want to say that the next record sounds at all like the BEATLES, but if you think a bit about how much the guys have experimented and what kind of topics they have dealt with, also on a spiritual level. We’re currently making our fourth album and that’s when I personally realized that I have an inspiration to just try something different. I think you have to break away from these terms like old school death metal. I still like and love them, but I don’t want people to say about the next release „Sounds like DISMEMBER and ENTOMBED“ again.

 
Especially if you look at how ENTOMBED have developed from the first to the fourth album, or even the BEATLES, they didn’t repeat their first album over and over again. On the contrary.

Yes, there are enough bands that do exactly that, that’s okay and I don’t have the feeling that we have to reinvent the wheel. But I’m just looking forward to a little more experimentation now.

I’m looking forward to it and I’m very excited. I would also encourage you to go all in. Just do it.

I talked to a good buddy about it a few months ago and he said so. We had talked about which studio we would go to, because there were two studios to choose from that we would like to go to. One would be a very classic studio and that would have been a total safeplay for us. That would have been a fat Death Metal production. But now we have decided differently and are going to Michael Zech [among others THE RUINS OF BEVERAST, SECRETS OF THE MOON, DOLCH). Sure, this is of course also a name within Metal, but for us, a band that is an oldschool death metal band on paper, maybe not the most obvious choice. He also said in the conversations that he would like to test around a bit. We didn’t do that on our last recordings. It was very clear, this is the song, there is not much experimentation with the guitar sound here. Now we’re going to get involved and that’s what I mean by this inspiration, which has been significantly shaped in my mindset lately by the four boys from Liverpool. I’m very excited to see what the result is and how something like this will be received.

 
There are also some bands that are very successful with it, for example BLOOD INCANTATION. They mix Death Metal with 70s synths and play in big venues now. So if you have a bit of courage, it can pay off.
That’s right. Sure, you can always be unlucky that some fans say that we don’t sound like we used to. But I honestly don’t know how the bands that do the same thing over and over again manage to do it. At some point I run out of ideas if I were to take the same road over and over again.

Old School Death Metal is also a relatively narrow genre, there is not so much room for variety and at some point the last original riff is written.
Yes, once that, and I also notice it from the lyrics. At some point I have described in every possible way how the zombie crawls out of the grave. By now the story has been told often enough. I still remember how I said at the very beginning that I don’t want to be too sophisticated. There are bands that do it well, but I still had a little „blunt is trump“ vein. What I didn’t address before, for example, are personal impressions or personal struggles. Well, I’m not going to tell you that I had a bad day, but I’m already letting personal experiences or observations flow in the lyrics. You can also alienate that and somehow bring it into the corset of metal. For example, what’s going on in the world right now. We just had an extreme summer here, everything is drying up, or other topics like animal welfare and nutrition. I take that with me as inspiration, because otherwise I have the feeling that I have already told everything.

 

 
It’s not just zombies that are brutal, climate change is also quite brutal. It will probably be really brutal in 10 or 30 years. So it’s not like you’re slipping into something soft when you bring up such topics.
Exactly. We will still do Death Metal and I still like to do that and Death should be in there somewhere. But I think that lyrically it also fits if we should manage to push the planet into ruin, not only us as humanity, but also all other living beings. So, as you said, it doesn’t get any more brutal than destroying your own livelihood.

When you talk about personal things, it’s not necessarily lofty. Personal topics are also things that people can usually connect with. I think you can always reach people well with music, but also if they can connect a bit through the lyrics. Then you always have a wider reach and people are a bit more enthusiastic. That was also part of the BEATLES‘ secret recipe I think. They started with songs like ‚She Loves You‘ and in the end they are on ‚She’s So Heavy‘, which opens up a completely new genre.
Yes, that’s right. It’s so blatant in what a short time it actually happened. By the way, there at the front of the statue, that’s where we took our first photos ten years ago. I would never have dreamed that I would now be sitting with you here under this tree and be talking about the BEATLES.

What is your assessment of those last ten years from the band perspective?
Hm, first of all, that persistence pays off incredibly. There were also phases where we did little to nothing and still stayed there. That definitely pays off. It’s also the case that sooner or later you reach the realistic goals you set for yourself at some point. When I started, at some point I wanted to record properly and have a drummer. We only started with me and our bass player. We recorded the first demo with me with the simplest of means, more bad than good. But then at some point we had a complete lineup and at some point we recorded an album. Then I always wanted to play at Party.San and three years later we actually played there. Then unfortunately Corona came, which made such a dent in the whole curve, I’ll say. But even there it was worth sticking with it. I have the feeling that especially in the last two or three years everything has returned to normal, as far as you can talk about it.

In 2017 we flew with the band for the first time and it was like „Wow, now we’re flying somewhere to play our stuff somewhere!“ and now it’s just a bit part of it. Of course, it’s not that you don’t appreciate it anymore, but it’s just part of it now. But in the moments when you pause for a moment and are aware that you’re already on your way somewhere again and that it’s something you do on a regular basis and that’s nice. 
 So I actually draw a very positive conclusion from it. Although you also put an endless amount of energy, time, money and love into it somehow. And then you have to appreciate what you get out. Of course, it’s always a decision for the matter, none of the guys who were there with me ten years ago are there anymore. Only me, because the others also had other priorities and I decided that I wanted to keep the band. That comes with a certain price, for example in terms of relationships. You will have a discussion with your partner at some point, when the concert request for xy comes and you actually wanted to have a nice weekend somewhere and then you have to ask, but we can’t do it a week later. Things like that.

Persistence.
That’s exactly what it is. Persistence means that you have to choose the band again and again and then you have to cut back here and there or work hard for it.

 

 
It’s generally said that the framework conditions for bands have deteriorated a lot in recent years. Would you say the same from the perspective of your band and where you are right now?
Of course, I look at it totally subjectively. We just made the first demo 12 years ago and then really got going ten years ago. Well, we have a different status now and accordingly a few things are easier for us right now. We finance the next album completely from the band’s coffers, because we were on tour before. Accordingly, you can’t compare it one-to-one with the past. But I think that the framework conditions are different, i.e. it’s more expensive to organize concerts. We were also very late, because we just missed this heyday at the beginning of the teens. There was this revival in Germany in oldschool death metal, for example F.D.A. Rekotz and things like that. That was pretty big and there were a lot of bands that were at the start at that time. And that has gone down a bit in the meantime, I have the feeling. Recently, the guys from SLAUGHTERDAY talked to a few people from the German Death Metal scene in a podcast. One of the questions I remember a lot was the question of what German Death Metal is and why we as a German scene never managed to develop our own sound. The Swedes got their sound right, the Americans got their sound right, the Finns got their sound right, but we here in Germany didn’t. Or have you ever heard of German Death Metal?

No, there were only a handful of successful German bands back then, MORGOTH, ATROCITY, maybe OBSCENITY, but otherwise I would have to think about it longer. But there was no German Death Metal sound in the 90s, just as there was a Stockholm Sound, or a Florida Sound.
Yes, that didn’t exist and I think it still doesn’t exist, there is no Berlin Death Metal, there is no Bavarian or whatever Death Metal. Of course, you can also ask yourself if you have to slap a geographical label on it in 2026. I don’t know either.
 

I don’t think it’s the right time for that either. To get a label for a sound, you also need something like a movement. You can’t turn a single band into „German Death Metal“. There has to be a real wave, like all the Swedish bands or the bands from Florida back then. There were waves of a whole series of bands that sounded similar. Or in the 60s the British Invasion with the BEATLES and the STONES. I don’t see that in Germany right now.
Exactly, once that and I have the feeling that everything is very decentralized in Germany. It doesn’t all come together in one point. As I said, F. D. A. was on this level for a short time and I don’t know why it was, why it failed. Maybe because the bands that had potential or that then got bigger all migrated. For example SKELETAL REMAINS and DESERTED FEAR, they all went to Century Media or other big labels.  
But we just played with UNDERGANG again at the weekend and David Mikkelsen is behind it with his label. I have the feeling that a lot of things come together there and that it also cross-fertilizes each other very much. A lot of new bands are being created. It’s a melting pot of the scene, both on the internet, but also physically. They have a strong band, UNDERGANG, then there’s the store he has and also he’s doing a festival now. There are so many young bands that come out on the label. And something like that is still missing in Germany.
 

Yes, I think the Germans somehow don’t manage to pull on one string and get something going together. Everyone does their own thing, there are so many festivals, so many labels, but that everyone gets together somehow, that doesn’t happen very often.

I also had a conversation at the weekend about the fact that many of the German bands are not really keen to tour abroad. The Finnish bands come here, the Danish bands come here, but German bands don’t do big tours very much.  
With everything that’s going on right now, everyone is listening to Spotify, everyone has very little in their pockets right now, because of war and inflation, I have the feeling that it’s not a good time for bands right now.
But let’s see what happens. I was very pleased to see that during Corona a newer generation of bands had established itself here, at least in Berlin. We also had a bit to do with them, bands like PLOUTONIUM, BILLIGERENCE or SIGNIFICANCE — they’re all very young people. They have already set up their own concerts. I remember our first concert, we didn’t get it on our own, we needed the people from Morbid Catacombs to get on stage. There is now a youth club in Charlottenburg, the Spirale, they have a large concert hall. A lot of the bands also rehearse there and that’s actually what it takes. But even there I have the feeling that it could take off a lot more. A few years ago, Ezio and Wolf City were the number one address in Berlin and if any tour came through, it was them who did the concerts. Unfortunately it’s not like that anymore.
 

We have just looked back to the last ten years. If we look ten years forward, where would you like to see your band being at? 

That’s a good question, because no one has asked it yet. Well, I hope that we have developed further, that in ten years we will release an album that doesn’t sound like the one that we are going to release next year. That a further development takes place, regarding our style, but maybe also regarding our skills. That’s something that I’m taking up the cause of myself right now and that’s where we’re pushing ourselves a lot right now. I hope that in ten years we can push ourselves even further. 
I really hope that we are still active, that we can play the shows we want to do and that they are of course bigger than now. And that we can maybe be role models for younger bands, just as bands like NECROS CHRISTOS are for us. Not in the sense that you are adored, but that we inspire somehow and pass on the torch. I also hope that we can make some things possible for younger bands. We were always happy when someone said, „Hey, you want to be support with us?“ and that’s exactly how I want to be able to act.
At the moment it actually happens quite often that we play together with our idols. A few weeks ago we were in Dortmund and chatted with the guys from IMMOLATION. I wouldn’t have dreamed of that ten years ago. In this respect, I hope that we can continue to do cool tours. Also, it would be nice to make a small contribution to this term „German Death Metal“. That would peak achievement, if you can leave a stamp on the genre with persistence and a few good albums. When you talk about German Death Metal, that not only names like MORGOTH or ATROCITY come up, but also ours or whoever else there is in Germany, like bands such as SULPHUR AEON or THE RUINS OF BEVERAST.
Also, in ten years, many bands from the first wave won’t necessarily exist anymore. At some point, CANNBIAL CORPSE and Co. won’t play any more concerts and then BLOOD INCANTANTION will definitely be headliners at Party.San and the other festivals and no longer HYPOCRISY. Someone has to fill out the middle field and I hope that’s where we might be. Or our comrades, I wish them the same. 
 

 
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(C) DEPICTED Magazine September 2026

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