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Interview to THORNWHIPPED (Germany)

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1. Hello Stefan, pleasure to have you on Rotten Pages ´zine. How are you doing today? Let us set the scene first. Where do we find you right now? Please describe your surroundings.

Well I am fine and thank you for having me on Rotten Pages. I am currently sitting in my little man cave in Eisenberg/Pfalz, Germany at my home-studio desk, where all my equipment for making music surrounds me. Honestly this is also my bedroom sorts of.


2. I can't really imagine the amount of work involved, but as a one-man project it's certainly huge. What challenges and advantages do you experience as a one-man band?

The biggest advantage for me is to be able to do what I want and when I want it. I am divorced, have three kids and my new partner she also has two kids. Then I have my regular job. It is almost impossible to fit in that calendar also regular sessions with several bandmembers. They would basically need to be ready and waiting all the time for when I finally have an available time slot. Being a one-man band, whenever there is some spare time available, I can quickly jump into my man cave, grab a guitar and start going.

The challenge is of course that I have to replace the non-existent band members with their instruments, that are not really my main instruments. I really try to prevent the other instruments to simply go along whatever I play on my guitar, which is my main instrument. Every instrument should really be taking part and stand out at times and that is extremely difficult to accomplish alone.


3. Your death metal seems to be both melodic and brutal. How do you explain your sound?

My sound or music is kind of a mix of all kind of different metal sub genres, simply because I have listened to so many different bands, since I was 13 years old which was 35 years ago. All those influences are swimming around in this kind of ´idea soup´ that I try to stir and get something out. My main influences I would consider to be Death Metal, Thrash Metal and Melodic Death Metal and I like variations between those a lot.


4. How do you as a “band” find your own sound? Is there a specific sound for your region/country pertaining to the style you play?

Most of the bands I listen to are not from Germany. Probably my second most favorite thrash metal band is Kreator. Concerning Old School Death Metal my absolute favorite always was Morgoth, also from Germany. But other than those, the bands and musical influences come from all over the world. Thus, my sound is not correlated directly with where I am from.


5. Let´s talk about your debut EP “Like Locusts We Are”.When you recorded to it how much attention did you pay to things like track order, lay out and art work? How was planned everything?

My problem was that I gathered much material over years and always started with new songs, new riffs, new ideas constantly. I never got to the point of actually nailing something down and commit to it. Finally, I thought either you get something done now, or you will remain in this stage forever.

Then I simply took the five song ideas that I had gotten as far as possible and concentrated on those only for time being even though the creative part is much more fun.

I had to learn much about mixing and handling all sorts of tools and plug-ins with many revisions and rework done and just hoped in the end that the mastering engineers would not simply make fun of me and send me away.

The order of the songs was a little random in between. I knew I wanted a banger and a second one to start and the most melodic song at the end.


6. Would you say that there is a specific concept that you follow regarding the lyrics of your songs?

From time to time I write something into my notebook like a theme or topic for one of my next songs. That are basically just general ideas like „song about this constant flow of negative information that scares people“, or „song about the habit of virtue signaling“, something like that. I want my songs to have meanings that are relevant in today´s world or expose mankind´s wrong doings.

The actual lyrics then are not easy to generate to be honest and I struggle sometimes pretty much to write down the final versions.

7. All the songs on the EP are crushing and heavy, from start to finish. But there’s also a great deal of memorable melody in the songs. Was that a conscious effort or just something that happened as the songwriting progressed?

For some songs, I know right away, that I want to have melodic vibes in it, sometimes I even have that melody already in my head, before even starting with the first riff.

For others this comes as soon as the Rhythm Guitars, Drums and Bass are finished and I start playing around just for fun to accompany this with a Lead Guitar.


8. When you write songs that are longer than 6 or 7 minutes how do you keep it interesting to listen to?

When songs are like 3-5 minutes long, I think one can work with common song structures consisting of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, back and forth between those. As soon as a song is longer, I try to break out from these common structures. Then you need to have more variations, add something new and unexpected like acoustic or different melodic parts and riffs that sound interesting. At least that is what I am trying to do and I do not want to be too repetitive.


9. You seem to be very old school in your approach to metal. When in your opinion was the best metal produced?

I grew up with metal at the end of the 80´s and mainly in the 90´s. Back then especially Death Metal and Black Metal took off after having being started shortly before. Since the coming-of-age phase is so determinant, I still prefer the metal and sound from that era. There is very good new music of course, but nowadays everything has to be totally crystal and clear sounding, no real rawness anymore like in the older days. Sometimes I get the feedback, that this rawness in my music is appreciated, sometimes people are telling me the opposite and say it needs more polishing to sound more crystal and crisp. I try not to fixate too much on total clinical clarity.

10. We live in a globalized world where there are no borders to be crossed thanks to the internet. How do you best utilize this to gain the outmost for you band?

That really gives us one-man shows the possibility to even get our stuff heard. Back in the day you had no chance without a band that played live in your neighborhood which I did in the 90´s by the way with a local Death Metal band.

Being old school like I am, still buying CDs and never streaming music before, I have to learn a great deal to get the most out of all the possibilities. I thought I bring out an EP and then see who will listen to it…now I slowly have to learn that things have changed nowadays.

It is a sea of possibilities but you got to manage that somehow and I am still a newborn in this field. The whole social media part is massively important nowadays and before starting Thornwhipped, I never had Facebook, You Tube accounts and all that. I also never wanted to become and Instagram nerd that posts something every minute. I still have to find my middle way here.


11. As a metal band do you feel that you’re a part of a greater worldwide community of metalheads?

I know that many metalheads are out there all over the world and sometimes I see them when going to a concert. I recognize also that I am not too old since the average age of a common metalhead has significantly increased since the old days.

In every day´s life I do not meet too many of them. But you always know that once you come together and play or enjoy a show, you are just one horde with the same attitude and everybody seems to be everbody´s friend at least for that night.


12. What would you like to see Thornwhipped accomplish that you have not been able to achieve yet?

My first intention was to have people listen to my music from different parts of the world.

That first step is to show face and exposing yourself and your music to the public can be frightening. What if you get hammered because of the shit no one can listen to?

Now since I got that out of the way, I always say it is now simply about spreading the seed of Thornwhipped as far and wide as possible.

I will try to bring out my first full album in 2025 which of course is also an effort and I hope, that I can sell a tiny number of good old CDs even, which would simply be a blast.


13. Thank you my friend! I want to give you the final word. Is there anything you want to share with our readers?

I hope that everyone that reads this will take a listen and it is a great thing for me to be heard and asked about my music by metalheads from South America. This is just so cool when you sit in your small German community here to know that guys down there are checking out your music.

So, I just want to say thanks, hail and cheers to all of you!





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