Interview with death metal band from Germany - ANASARCA.
Answered Mike.
Translated by Markéta, thank you!
Ave ANASARCA! I have been listening to your new album “Survival Mode” for some time now and I still discover something new in it, some new pieces of darkness. I have to say that I thought that your album will be great but this completely killed me. The album is great. How are your reactions from your fans and what about reviews?
Hey Jakub, thank you very much. Great to read that you guys are satisfied with “Survival Mode” – as we are of course! Our old fans – who realized, that we are back again – are mostly very, very happy with the album as well, as it is a logic continue of our previous work. Reviews: depends on who wrote it. Younger writers, who are more into that common modern brutal technical death metal don’t rate it that high as people who are based in the old-school death metal scene. Reviews in bigger German mags like Rock Hard (8/10), Deaf Forever (8,5/10), Legacy (14/15) were great, some webmags told us to be boring. But the awesome reviews really are the majority.😉 But latest it is not very important what they write, because we wouldn’t change anything because of that. I love it, when death metal maniacs like our music, but if they don’t – we are still surviving it. 😉
The album has a classic dark sound. It really kicks, let me tell you! However, I cannot help myself but compare it to your first demo albums where the sound was dirtier. Did you change the way you compose? Everything including technical options is different than in the 90s.
Do you think so? I think, Survival Mode is some kind of mixture of this Godmachine style that was more melodic, and the Dying brutal US-style. The production kicks ass, that is right, we are very satisfied with it! Composing was like ever: playing and recording what we like most. It is all about writing real songs with a structure. That is very important to me. What do you think is different? 😊 Many ppl. That know us from the past told us, we are still sounding like ever. That is an absolute honour, as that is what I want to do. I think we have some special kind of riffing. Old-school, catchy and brutal death metal was ever a thing ANSARCA was supposed to be. I am proud of the fact, that you can always pick out Anasarca when listening to our songs.
You have always had a great covers for your albums. Is it important for you to have a great cover? Who is the author of the cover on “Survival Mode”?
I think “Godmachine”, “Moribund” and “Survival Mode” really have great covers – and they all were done by Robert Sindermann. “Dying” I made myself, but you can see that. 😉 So, covers are very important, as it is some kind of business card and a part of recognition. It is the same with lyrics. They are as well very important to me, I don’t want to writ shit in the lyrics or use covers without a sense. When you look at so many cover-artworks these days, they only have gore on it. Mostly violated and raped women, dismembered by a serial killer or monster. I think, there is much more violence and horror in our every days life and that’s what I want to show. Look at the covers of the 90s … most of them were real art! Great!
Who is the author of your lyrics and what are they about? Where do you find inspiration?
All the album's songs are based on real-life accounts of how far humans will go to survive extreme, life-threatening situations. For the front cover Robert Sindermann decided to focus on the story of Aron Ralston whose ordeal was dramatised in the Danny Boyle film “127 hours” and whose story we used in the song “Blue John”. Ralston got his arm hopelessly trapped under a boulder in a remote canyon in Utah with no hope of being found. He ended up amputating his own arm with the blunt tools at his disposal and lived to tell the tale. So what can be a better horror and death metal story than this real life story? We don’t need Cannibal Corpse like splatter-horror-stories, if we are keeping our eyes open and see what happens in the world. Humans do and did unbelievable things in order to survive – that was the reason for using this topic.
In your band is only one original member and that is you Michael. When I look at the Encyclopedia Metallum there is a great amount of musicians who played with ANASARCA. Why is that?
First line-up was Heiner and me. We left Vomiting Corpses and started Anasarca in 95. We recorded our first 5-track demo 7 days after founding the new band. Frank and Chris, who were on the “Godmachine” album as well, joined us. We had some personal problems with Heiner after we recorded the “Godmachine” promo tape 96 and so Herb joined us on drums. We recorded Godmachine in 98 and toured with Centinex. After that we had some personal problems with Frank in and so he left us.
Benny joined us, we recorded “Moribund” and toured with Beheaded. After that we completely broke and so just Herb and me did the 2004 album Dying. After that we wanted to play life and so we found Josh who joined us on guitar. Then everything slept in and we paused until 2012. It was hard to find new ppl. for some fun-priject Anasarca, just for fun without some deeper intentions of doing “music-business” again. Due to work and health issues two of the new members had to quit again and so we found our line-up for “Survival Mode”. But we are old now, we have many things we are responsible for today – and so our drummer Dirk decided to pause right after the SM-recordings due to work, family and health issues. He had a hearing loss some months ago. We paused 6 months and it got better, but after the recordings it became worse again and so he decided to pause. Not very easy to keep a band running, as you see. 😉
After so many years (since 1995) do you have any dream you want to fulfil? For some bands it might be a festival in Germany. Others wants to get to Nuclear Blast. How about you?
Dreams … hm. Some participation at US-festivals like the Maryland Deathfest would be cool, or playing in Europe like the Netherland Deathfest or other festivals. Some more merchandise .. I don’t know. As it shall always be only fun today – there are no big wishes. 😊
In 2015 was your 20th anniversary in the underground. You are like veterans now. When you compare your beginnings and today, has the time changed? I mean the attitude of fans, labels, promoters and so on. I often hear the sentence “it is not the same as it used to”. What do you think?
Everything is different now. A looooot of bands in the scene. The styles are different - more into core, like metalcore, deathcore or the brutal technical death metal. Less visitors of live-shows and many ppl. Who promise to buy an album, but then preferring listening at youtube, done by some rip offs. Labels want complete albums, that already have been recorded when they want to release it. Doesn’t matter how much costs the bands had to record it. On the other hand many bands record albums on their own by using home-recording. And often the albums sound like that – selfmade ... What I was appalled of, was, that the bands today are so fucking expensive if you want to book them. I mean, there was a German band (I even didn’t know) that wanted 1000 Euros for a show. As we did our Spain/Portugal-tour with Centinex in 1998, we were happy to get 175 Euros each band each show.
Today it is hard to get reviews, as the fanzine (today mostly webzines of course) are flooded with material from labels and bands. Although we had a good standing in the past days, many zines told us, that there won’t be a review possible due to that situation. Crazy.
The history of your band starts in 1995. How did you even get the idea to play death metal? Who was your idol and inspiration? Please, tell us some stories and memories from the past! How is it to be a death metal band in Germany?
We started as one of the first German death metal bands in 1990 as Vomiting Corpses. I was no founding member, but joined in 91. So, that was the music we were into, we grew up with. Inspirations were bands like Possessed, Celtic Frost, Death, Morbid Angel, Edge of Sanity, Grave, Entombed, Obituary and many more. My personal idol was Chuck Schuldiner. I was some kind of DEATH-hooligan – beware of telling negative things against DEATH, I have been really offended! Until “Spiritual Healing” after that DEATH were uninteresting to me any more. As I knew Chuck personally, I had some dispute with him afterwards, as the played in Germany. That was the point we lost contact. That time most of the concerts have been in bigger cities we had to travel to, if we wanted to visit them. But was pretty cool. We have been a family within the scene – maybe different than today.
So, with Anasarca it was like – just normal. We were rehearsing, having some good times with beer ‘n stuff … We never played live that often, so we ever have been a very local band, although we had some “success” in the German scene that time. I thought we had – since Survival Mode I learned something better, as many ppl. seem to not knew us before …
We started as one of the first German death metal bands in 1990 as Vomiting Corpses. I was no founding member, but joined in 91. So, that was the music we were into, we grew up with. Inspirations were bands like Possessed, Celtic Frost, Death, Morbid Angel, Edge of Sanity, Grave, Entombed, Obituary and many more. My personal idol was Chuck Schuldiner. I was some kind of DEATH-hooligan – beware of telling negative things against DEATH, I have been really offended! Until “Spiritual Healing” after that DEATH were uninteresting to me any more. As I knew Chuck personally, I had some dispute with him afterwards, as the played in Germany. That was the point we lost contact. That time most of the concerts have been in bigger cities we had to travel to, if we wanted to visit them. But was pretty cool. We have been a family within the scene – maybe different than today.
So, with Anasarca it was like – just normal. We were rehearsing, having some good times with beer ‘n stuff … We never played live that often, so we ever have been a very local band, although we had some “success” in the German scene that time. I thought we had – since Survival Mode I learned something better, as many ppl. seem to not knew us before …
What are ANASARCA´s plans for the next few months? Do you want to support your new album with some longer tour and do you want to play in the Czech Republic?
We are at the moment searching for a new drummer. But we would like to play the new stuff live in single shows or festivals – although there is no time left for a bigger tour. And of course we would love to play in Czech, as we always met great ppl. from your country. But as we have not booking-agency or something like that, everyone who is interested in us should mail me at mike@anasarca.de
Are there any albums which have caught your attention recently?
I must admit, that I mostly listen to old stuff. There are some cool band that came out. German Maat are great, Necrot or Sentient Horror, our friends from Slaughterday …
Do you know and listen any Czech bands?
I recently listened again to some old friends out of Czech: Ingrowing. Unbelievable nice guys and really great old-school grindcore! But I am not that much into a special scene. I’m listening to music and if I like it, I mostly don’t know where the band comes from. So, maybe I know some cool Czech bands … But what I know is great Czech beer! 😉
Thank you for the interview and I wish you a lot of sold albums, hundreds of crazy fans and tons of great ideas.
Thank you very much for your support! Join us on facebook at facebook.com/anasarcadeathmetal or support us with buying our stuff at http://anasarca.bigcartel.com
Cheers!
