MP
Our Only Chance Is To Get Heavier

19.08.2011

If words and compliments could be turned into money, the members of German band MP, also known as Metal Priests, would have become millionaires long ago. Though serious reporters from the Metal Hammer magazine would always rate МР albums as low as possible, the fans of traditional German heavy metal of the 80s welcomed such records as “Bursting Out” or “Get It Now” with open hands. As time went by, the band disappeared from the stage, but it has recently been revealed that the musicians are back together (though the new line-up is quite different from the original). MP vocalist and former bassist Thomas Zeller is here to tell us about the band’s difficult destiny and future plans.

Thomas, please tell us the recent news from MP. When can we expect a new album of the band?

The MP chapter was totally closed for me. But two years ago some heavy metal fans from Poland, the label called Headbanger Records, asked me if they could re-release some of our LPs as CDs. They also asked me if I could write some new stuff, so that they could have some bonus tracks for these re-releases, and this was the point when I thought “Ok, why not?” But the problem is that our former drummer, Tomas Schneider, is very sick, he has some psychological problems, he is in the hospital and totally out of order. And the next problem I had was that Andy Wolk, the original guitar player, changed his musical preferences, he now plays acoustic guitar, he plays folk but not metal, he doesn’t like metal anymore. Then I thought, “Ok, I have Uwe Ulm, the next guitar player, he is on board again, and I can bring in people from my other band Dr. Rock Inc. - my good friend Jurgen Fory and bass player Chris Kolb”. The latest addition was another good friend Randy Knur, the drummer. I thought, “Ok, I’ll try new material of MP with these new guys,” but the problem is that everybody is very busy with their jobs. It’s not so easy as it was 20 years ago when we rehearsed 3 or 4 times a week and we needed three or four months to compose a new album. Now everything is slow, it’s awful - we needed nearly one year to write two songs. We rehearsed five times and then we went into the studio with Randy and recorded these songs. At this tempo it will take us another two or three years until the new album is ready. (laughs) Let’s see what happens, I don’t know. The other problem is that we are very old bastards now, a month ago I had a birthday, I’m 50 years old now – at this age everything goes slowly and that’s awful.

Judging by these two new tracks  “Braindead” and “Out Of Mind”, your new stuff seems to be heavier than your previous works. Will the rest of the material sound in the vein of these two songs?

I think that’s the only chance we have – to make new stuff much heavier than the old stuff. Some people say that MP were a speed metal band, but I don’t know why – it was boring hard rock (laughs) and not speed metal. I read all the magazines and I know some journalists, so I know they don’t like this old hard rock stuff like Nazareth – thus, our only chance is to play heavier that before. And in the old times I couldn’t sing, I was the singer of MP because we had no singer. I was a bass player, and everybody said, “Hey Thomas, you have to do this job”. I shouted instead of singing, but now, many years later I had many singing lessons, vocal trainings and so on, now I’m a much better singer that in the old days, but I try to sing harder anyway. I think if we make heavier music than in the past, it would be better for the new music market in the world.

Can you say a few words about each of the current band members? MP has no official web site, and we don’t know much about them.

You can go to the websites of Diamond Train – another band of Uwe, Dr. Rock Inc – I play in this band with Jurgen and Chris, and Atze Datze – an AC/DC tribute band where I sing as well, and Randy is the drummer of this band. As you see, I have two extra bands that I sing with, these are the bands with which I am onstage now and again. MP is a project at the moment and we will perform on stage when the new album is ready. Until then it’s only a project – Metal Project. (laughs)

Oh, another nice way to render meaning to these two letters!

Actually Metal Project was the original meaning of MP! We all had other bands, our main bands – me, Tomas Shneider and Andy Wolk – but we met two times a week to play metal, a little bit heavier than the other bands we played, and we used to say that it was our Metal Project. Then we got a deal with EMI/Electrola, it was a major deal, but they didn’t like the music and my vocals, they said, “Oh, you sound like a beast”. Nevertheless, they thought how they could sell this music, that’s how the first album (“Bursting Out”, 1985) had the subtitle “The Beast Became Human”. But at that point we still had no name for this band – we got a deal, but we had no name, can you imagine? Finally we had to decide, and we wanted to take MP – the first letters of “Metal Project”. Then the producer said, “Oh, I like Metal Priests”, but it wasn’t our original name, the original name was Metal Project. The situation is the same now, it’s again a new project (laughs), we need another two years – we are slow snails (laughs).

You mentioned Atze Datze – an AC/DC tribute band that you sing in. Is it just for fun or does it help you earn money?

It’s just for fun. It’s not so easy to earn money playing music in Germany. Even if you are in a very famous band, it’s a real problem. Atze Datze is really a fun project but on the next 3 or 4 weeks we’ll put out our first CD. We recorded some live shows to make a live CD, because the studio CD doesn’t make sense as the original AC/DC are still alive, and for Atze Datze to record a studio CD with AC/DC songs would be just stupid. But we thought a live CD will be good for gig promoters. When I phone some promoters and say “Oh, we are an AC/DC cover band! Can we play in your venue?”, they say, “Hahaha! It’s a good joke! Can you send me some recordings?” So we thought we need some recordings to play them to promoters. It’s not that I want to get famous with Atze Datze, it’s just a fun project. (laughs)

Please tell us a couple of words about Diamond Train – another band of the guitarist Uwe Ulm. What kind of music do they play?

It’s also a cover band, they play cover songs of 1980’s stuff like Savatage, Whitesnake, Deep Purple, Guns N’Roses. Two days ago they supported Uriah Heep and The Sweet.

Can you also say a couple of words about Dr. Rock?

Dr. Rock was similar to early MP, we also played covers on stage but we had one album with our own songs. Our record label was Twilight, a German distribution company. Our CD “Rumble” was released five years ago – oh, time goes by! – and I think we sold 930 CDs over 5 years. (laughs) Cool or what?! But MP was very successful in the past, our first album “Bursting Out” sold about 10,000 copies, “Get It Now” (1987) – 9,000 copies, and the third LP (“Showdown”, 1988) was the worst, I think it sold 2,000 copies only. The fourth CD, “Melting Point”(1992)  – at  that time we searched for a new definition of MP, and we thought that Melting Point was better than Metal Project (laughs) – it flopped totally. Four weeks after the CD was released the record label went bankrupt, and all we got for it was a check for 60 Deutschemarks. The production was very expensive – it was 10,000 Deutschemarks, and we had to pay it ourselves, and all we got from that bankrupt label was the check for 60 Deutschemarks. (laughs) The rest of the money was gone.

Thomas, let’s speak about the beginning of your career. When did you start to listen to rock music and who were your favorites?

I think I was 13 years old and I started with Jimi Hendrix, it was my first favorite musician. Later it was The Who – for many years they were my favorite band. When I was 14 or 15 years old, I was also into Deep Purple and Aerosmith. Then in 1974 or 1975 I heard AC/DC for the first time and this was the point when everything changed in my life –I’m the greatest AC/DC fan on this planet. (laughs) I started to make music in bands when I was 14 years old. I was only bass player and not the singer, and only later with MP I started to sing because we had no singer. I became the singer because we had no other man for this job. My first band was Cry and then Rotor, where I played over 10 years. Andy Wolk and Tomas Schneider, who later formed MP with me, were also Rotor members. Tomas was the singer, not the drummer but he didn’t want to sing in MP, he thought my voice is better for metal than his voice. (laughs)

I have already made some notes about our history. When the next MP album is released, we will make a new home page and I started to write our biography for it in English. I started about two years ago, I thought, “I need a very long time to write this, so I’d better begin now” (laughs), and it was ready in two years. It starts like this, “It is the year 1985, the band MP is having its first rehearsals”. We got a record contract through the band Franz K., they sang in German, and Rotor was also singing in German, not English. We thought, “Our English is bad, so let’s try it in our mother language” (laughs) Stefan Josefus, the drummer of Franz K., was the guy who was the first producer of MP, and he was our mentor. Like Gene Simmons, who was the first to recognized Van Halen.

Can you say a couple of words about your singing style – who influenced you to sing in such way that you do?

When I said that I sang like a beast, I meant that couldn’t sing, I was only like (roars) “Arrrrrrrrghhhhh!” If you don’t know the words you can’t say it was singing (everybody laughs). I couldn’t do it better. Now I can sing, I am doing OK, but 20 years ago it was awful. It was the problem of MP. On the first record, “Bursting Out”, the music was also very aggressive, and the vocals fit the music. On “Get It Now” we tried to add more melodies, play something closer to Whitesnake, and I couldn’t sing it. My vocals didn’t fit anymore. That was the point when we said, “Let’s try to find a singer”. I was also the bass player, so it wasn’t a problem for me, but we couldn’t find anyone. We were based in Freiburg, a country region, and we didn’t have many singers there. The guy from Karlsruhe, Andi Deris, now he is the singer of Helloween, I know him personally, but he played with Pink Cream 69, and he didn’t want to sing with MP.

And why did you decide to stop playing bass eventually? Since the album “Melting Point” you’re only the singer, so why don’t you play bass anymore?

We got a very bad review in Metal Hammer for the “Show Down” LP. Metal Hammer wrote that my singing was awful, shitty and so on. And that was a test for me - either I do it right, or we are looking for a singer again. I started to have singing lessons, I had three or four really good teachers who tried to show me how to sing. That was a very long process, it took four or five years and I tried to make it right. I had to think about so many things when I was singing in order not to make a mistake, and I wasn’t able to play bass at the same time. To play bass and sing was too difficult for me and I had to look after for so many new rules. Then we thought, “Ok, let’s look for a new bass player”, and there were a lot of bass players in our region, so it was not a problem, and I wanted to concentrate totally on my singing.

Please tell us about the album “Bursting Out” – how was it recorded and what are your best memories about that album?

First we made a demo, and we sent it to Stefan Josefus from Franz K., the producer, and then he went with the demo to EMI. Then I got a telephone call and he said “Ok, they will do it” – that was the good news. The bad news was that they needed it in eight weeks, and we didn’t have enough songs. We had four songs from the demo, and the other six songs were composed in two weeks. We were driving to a town near Dortmund to record those ten songs, and the whole process, including the composition, took three months. And the best memories I have from that period are not about the album, but about some gigs. In 1986 when we had a first TV appearance. The producer told us that we would have to use playback, but it’s not so easy as it seems, and we had to train to play to playback. In the rehearsal room we had a cassette player, we made a cassette of “Bursting Out”, we put a microphone in front of the cassette player so that we could hear the complete sound. We had a little PA in our rehearsal room and we posed in front of it, but we weren’t playing, we were using playback. And then three or four guys visited us – they came into the room and they saw what we were doing – we only posed to the music from the cassette player, and they said “Oh! These guys don’t play live at all”. (laughs) That was a shame, I can tell you! That was a funny thing. As to the studio, we were young and drank a lot of beer, so sometimes I was so drunk that the next day we would play the recording from the day before only to find out that my tongue was like (mumbles) “Mow-mow-mow” (everybody laughs). I had to do it again because I was too drunk the day before and you could hear it on tape. (laughs)

Speaking about the second album “Get It Now”, did you have more time to work on it or was it also done under pressure?

We worked on it for nearly one year, so there was no pressure. It was a luxury situation but our drummer was going sick at that time. He really had problems with his brain and now he is in mental hospital. So we needed another drummer and that was a problem. Ok, we came from the region where drummers don’t grow on trees, and when you hear “Get It Now”, the drumming is very different to the first album. We had a pop drummer, he played the whole stuff very clean and straight, but not really heavy. He was not a heavy metal drummer, he was more suitable for the music of Tina Turner or Joe Cocker. Another problem of this album is that it sounds too calm. But the songs are good, so later on when we had another drummer, the songs were great on stage. You can hear some of them on the album “Bursting Out – Live And Loud”, which came out in 2000. There was Claus Sperling on drums, later on he played with Primal Fear, and when you hear the old “Get It Now” numbers with good drums, they sound very good.

Why did you decide to add a second guitarist on the album “Show Down”?

Andy Wolk started attending a university, and at some point he got a problem there. He told me, “I don’t have time and I have to leave MP”. So we started to look for a new guitar player, and we found Uwe Ulm. For four or five months they played in MP together and then Andy left MP because he had no time to play music. This is a always a problem if you are not a professional musician – we have jobs, studies and so on, and we have to make the music as a hobby. So we played on as a three-piece with Uwe, but later we decided to find a second guitar player because we knew two guitars sound better live. There are bands like Motorhead and they are great as a three-piece band but with Uwe Ulm alone on the guitar it was not so good, so we needed a second guitar player.

What do you think now about the production of “Show Down”? Are you satisfied with the way it sounds?

Oh, “Show Down” was the album that marked the beginning of MP’s demise. We had a good drummer, that was OK, but the songs were not. In addition, my vocals didn’t fit the songs. That was the problem I mentioned to you before – we wanted to go in the direction of more melodic bands like Whitesnake, and the singer couldn’t sing. In the older days it did fit, but on “Show Down” it didn’t fit anymore. This was the album I don’t like. Do you like it? (laughs).

We think it’s a good album musically-wise, but the production is very bad, the sound is really dry.

You’re totally right. The album was a total mistake. Even the title - I wanted the title to be written in one word – in old western movies, “showdown” is when John Wayne and bandits make a duel. But the producer didn’t speak English and he spelled it in two words, “Show” and “Down” – oh, scheisse! That was typical for that album.

And why did the band split up after the release of that album?

The album didn’t sell well. It sold only 2,000 copies and we lost the contract. But we didn’t split after “Show Down”, we made the fourth album “Melting Point” and only split after that. We needed four years to make the next album. We lost the contract after the “Show Down” but we got a new contract with a very independent label, Savage Records. That was the label that went bankrupt and we got the check for 60 Deutschemarks while the album cost us 10,000 Deutschemarks. At that point when we said, “Ok, let’s stop this band, it makes no sense”.

And how did it happen that Kosta Zafirou from Pink Cream 69 played drums on pre-production demo fro “Melting Point”?

Kosta din’t play on the pre-production, it was the song “Riding To The Dawn” that came out on a compilation CD. We had no drummer at that time, and Uwe Ulm was friends with Kosta. Kosta is living in Karlsruhe, and Uwe is living near Karlsruhe, and Kosta was a friend of him. Uwe called him and said, “Hey, we need you. Can you come into the studio?” And it was not a problem for him. Andi Deris from Helloween is also a friend of Uwe Ulm. Before Uwe joined MP he had a band called No Mercy, and Andi Deris was the singer of No Mercy before he joined Pink Cream 69. I have an old demo of No Mercy with Uwe Ulm and Andi Deris on vocals. So Kosta played drums for us – it was a friendship thing but he didn’t want to be the drummer of MP.

How did you get Paul Samson to produce “Melting Point”?

Paul Samson was a good friend of mine. I’m an old Samson fan. On “Melting Point” we had an executive producer who also tried to help us with money a little bit. He was also a promoter and he made tours of Samson and Girlschool in Germany, and he is a friend of mine. He brought me together with Paul Samson and we were good friends in the following years. He produced “Melting Point” and MP played as a support act for Girlschool and Samson on their German tour. Sadly, Paul is dead now, he had ovarian cancer. I still have many letters he wrote to me at that time. Every two weeks I used to get a letter from Paul – that was really great. I saved them all. So that was the reason why he produced “Melting Point” – the CD was produced by him and Dejan Georgievich, but Dejan was only the man behind the mixing desk, the real producer was Paul Samson.

The song “Rising Star” was dedicated to Ilse Krumer. Who is this person?

It was a nice girl, Uwe Ulm loved her, I think. She also wears Indian clothes. “Rising Star” is a song about American Indians. You know that the Europeans came to America, but Indians were the original population of America, and Europeans drove them away. So we wrote a song about the Indians – they were murdered by Europeans and were forced to live in reservations and this is the song about this problem. Ilse Krumer is a half-Indian girl, she looks like Nscho-tschi from “Winnetou”. (laughs) “Winnetou” is an old Karl May movie, I’m not sure if you know it. (movies about Winnetou, an Apache chief, were extremely popular in the Eastern Europe in the 60s and 70s, they were starring Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitic – ed.).

We have one yet album to discuss – “Bursting Out – Live & Loud” (2000). Where was it recorded and how did it happen that the band got together again?

That was a long story. To put it short, Klaus Sperling from Primal Fear brought us together. We played with Primal Fear and Chinchilla in the called venue “Spinner” in the German town of Backnang. It was a fun project. In the second floor of “Spinne” there was a studio, and that was the reason why we went to “Spinne”. You could put all the cables down from the studio to the venue room and record it on the first floor. It was optimal. (laughs)

Was this recording a one-off thing or did you continue to play shows after the release of “Live & Loud”?

After the recording of the live album we played three shows, and two of them were with Primal Fear. Klaus Sperling played with both them and MP, two gigs a day.

Why didn’t you continue after that?

The problem was with Klaus. For him that was fun, he is an old friend of mine, but after those three gigs he didn’t have time for this project. And Andy Wolk didn’t want to play heavy metal anymore, he said he wanted to finish, so MP died again. I think the live recording was the best recording of MP. Wee also worked on that recording in the studio to get a better sound, so that it would not sound like a bootleg. And also my vocals – for the first time I was able to sing a little bit, not like in early days. (laughs) I think it fit the music nicely. Unfortunately, we said goodbye to the band again. Now I want to start it for the third time, but I think we will need two years to make a new record. We’ll be posting rough mixes on the Internet as soon as they are ready, and then we will do the final mixes when the entire record is put together.

We don’t know if you’ve ever heard about it but MP was very popular in Russia in the late 80’s. Even if it was hard to get your albums here, many fans had your albums on bootleg cassettes. We think some of the fans still remember the band from those times. So can you say a few words for your fans in Russia?

Well, one of my greatest wishes is to visit Russia. I saw many pictures from Russia and I think it’s such a beautiful land and I think the most beautiful women in the world live in Russia. I mean it seriously – it’s not a joke. I see many Russian people who are living in Germany nowadays and I think, “Oh, what beautiful women”! And now when you tell me that the band was successful in Russia, oh… Before Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl became friends, the Germans didn’t know what happened in Russia, it was like another world. I’m happy that those times arte gone. One day in my life I will visit Russia – I promise. Because I must see the people, I must see the land. Before I go to America I want to go to Russia.

Konstantin “Hirax” Chilikin, Roman Patrashov
May 4, 2011
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