Scanner
The Mission Gets Real

26.11.2013

The name Scanner may not necessarily ring the bell for those who got into heavy metal just a few years ago, since this German band hasn’t released anything since 2002. But in tape-trading circles in Moscow in the early 90s, Scanner was a household name, right up there next to Helloween and Grave Digger. Releasing two magnificent albums in the 80s, “Hypertrace” (1988) and “Terminal Earth” (1990), the band seemed to be bound for stardom, but line-up changes and the loss of contract with Noise Records got the band stuck for five years before Axel Julius, the only remaining original member of Scanner, got the situation back on track with the release on “Mental Reservation” (1995). However, this was just the first one in a series of comebacks, the latest of which we are witnessing at the moment: Scanner has just completed recording of a new CD which should see the light of day sometime in 2014. But there’s more that Scanner have in stock for their Russian fans – on November 30 they will headline the Moscow Metal Madness festival, which will be their first performance on the soil where an entire generation of metalheads was raised on their music some 20 years ago. Needless to say, we jumped at the opportunity to talk to Axel and find out more about the turbulent past and hopefully better future of the band…

You are going to play in Russia for the first time in November. What are your expectations? Do you have any contacts with your Russian fans?

As far as I know, we’ve got some fans in Moscow, on the forum of our official website there were some posts from Moscow some 10 years ago. Thus, I know there are some people waiting for us, there’s gonna be some crowd, and we expect to have fun!

We have seen a few discussions of the upcoming show on the Internet, and some people there refer to Scanner as “Axel with some obscure musicians”. Could you say a few words about the members of Scanner’s current line-up?

The most recent member of the band now is our drummer (Patrick Klose), he’s from Elmsfire, and he joined the band two months ago, because Franz (Eichberger), our former drummer, left us. Efthi (Efthimios Ioannidis) is the singer, he’s been in the band for 10 years, we played a lot of concerts with him, and he really deserves to be with us. The next release we do is the first release for Efthi. The bass player (Jonathan Sell), is brand new as well, and Andreas (Zeidler), the guitar player, has been in the band for five years now, previously he was playing in a band together with Efthi.

It was reported recently that drummer Franz Eichberger quit the band for “religious reasons”. Can you provide a bit more details on that? Scanner, as far as we know, have never criticized Christianity openly in its songs, so to me the “religious reasons” sound a bit confusing…

We don’t know exactly. He had some experience and he said that he felt Jesus inside, and that Jesus was telling him in which band he was going to play or not to play. He told us he could not play in Scanner anymore because Jesus tells him that playing in Scanner is not good. This is what he tried to explain to us, and we had just to accept it. To understand it is very hard, and we didn’t understand it – we didn’t do anything against Jesus or against religion. We do have something against the Church on the new album, this means that the Church is not really in favor for the coming human beings, but for their own benefit. Our criticism is directed at the Church, it has nothing to do with religion or God. Maybe he had some problems with this and he was not telling us the truth, saying instead that Jesus now tells him what to do in his life.

As far as we understand, the new Scanner album called “The Judgement” is more or less completed. Can you say a few words about its musical direction? When is it going to be released?

The album is going to be finished in December, we have yet to mix the whole album, but the recordings are already finished. We will try to get it out in spring next year, we just have to discuss it with our record company. The material, I think, is more back to the roots, we have fast songs and all this stuff that we had on “Hypertrace”, for example. There’s not so much of keyboards, because we have no keyboard player in the band anymore, so the music will be different than on our last album, “Scantropolis” (2002).

What label is going to release it?

We have an option with Massacre Records, but we are not totally bound by them. We can say, “OK, we are going to another company,” but the first decision is up to Massacre Records.

According to the news section of your official website, the band was already working on a new studio album in 2005-2006, but it never came out. What happened to those recordings?

They were destroyed. We got a virus on our computers, and all the recordings we had made were destroyed. We had to make a decision whether we start to record again or to try to get the original recordings refurbished for very much money. We didn’t have the money, so we said, “OK, then it’s lost, and we will have to record all the stuff again”. It took us another two years before we started again, then there were problems with band members, etc., and the whole thing is only about to be finished in 2013.

Does “The Judgement” feature the same songs as on that lost album, or is the stuff you are finishing now is totally new?

We did not re-record all of those songs, because we had a development in the band, and we said, “Some songs are OK, but others are too old for us, and we have no relation to them anymore, so we have to make some new songs, better than the ones we had before”. There are a few old songs on this album, but half of them are brand new – for us, of course; for everybody else they all should be brand new.

Your first two albums, “Hypertrace” and “Terminal Earth”, have recently been re-released by Divebomb Records. However, many other German metal bands from the 80s – Running Wild, Grave Digger, Sinner - are still unable to get back the rights to their recordings originally released by Noise Records, and sometimes they don’t even know who currently owns these rights. How did you manage to escape from the contract and get the rights back?

I got a message from Noise Records – in fact, it was 10 years ago – that the company had sold all of its back catalogue to some U.S. company. I recognized it, I said, “OK, that’s fine”, because it mean that I’m out of the contract with Noise Records. I don’t know what the other bands had in their contracts, but my contract was cancelled by this U.S. company, and I was to become totally free in 10 years. This happened in 2002, and now I’m out of the contract. Thus, I was able to re-release those albums.

You are really lucky! We talked to Chris Boltendahl a couple of years ago, and he says that he doesn’t even know whom to talk to about the rights to the classic Grave Digger albums…

(laughs) I did all my contracts by myself, and I know all the aspects that I have to know. I know exactly what I’m doing. Sometimes it’s not a band who is doing a contract, but their management, and if they change the management, nobody knows who’s got the contract, and what’s in the contract. That may be the problem.

These re-releases are on CD only. Have you considered re-releasing those classic Scanner album on vinyl as well?

Yes, there is a guy who wants to do it in Poland. I’ve just had contact with him, and for the moment it’s a little too expensive for him, but in the near future he’s gonna do this. I think they will be on vinyl in the beginning of next year or something.

What do you think of the current vinyl renaissance? What do you personally prefer – CDs or vinyl records?

I’ve never had a vinyl player in my life. I started with compact cassettes, and when our first records were out, I still didn’t have a vinyl player, so I had them on cassettes. When CDs were introduced, it was very cheap to buy a CD player, so I started getting a CD collection. For my taste, if you want to enjoy the cover and the booklet, it’s much better to have a vinyl record, because the cover is big, it’s often gatefold, etc. As to the sound, I don’t know. For some maniacs, it will sound better if an analogue recording is released on vinyl, but now everything is done in digital, and if you listen to it from a vinyl record, I don’t think there is any benefit for the sound. On the contrary, you will lose many aspects of the digital thing. I don’t know… Everybody who likes vinyl should be happy, but in the future, I think there will be just little reissues, and in the end, some other medium will appear. I don’t know what’s coming next, but it will be digital as well.

There is a very interesting song on “Terminal Earth”, which is called “Wonder”. Was the financial situation of the band really so bad in the late 80s, that you needed a “wonder to rescue you from fall”?

Yes, that’s right! (laughs) It was like this, and for a couple of years it didn’t change. For example, when we were on tour, we had to ask the record company for some money to buy food. This song was inspired by this situation – we were on tour and we had to phone the record company to get our money for the day.

Did you only do music in the time of “Hypertrace” and “Terminal Earth”, or did you have to have a dayjob?

At that time we had the status quo of a semi-professional band. Somebody in the band was only playing in the band, others were also studying, and one of us was working. Later on, the decision was made to make it professional, and some of the people couldn’t stand having no money, etc., so they quit the business completely, they said, “I don’t want to play in a band anymore, I have no money, and this pisses me off”. So they quit the band for another job, but in general, in the early 90s we were a professional working band. However, when there was no money, everybody had to work somewhere.

You have said in earlier interviews that you don’t like “Terminal Earth” very much, because the singer, S.L. Coe, changed a lot of the vocal lines and music when he joined the band. Have you considered re-recording it, as it was originally intended to be?

(laughs) This was directly after the recording session – the rest of the band members said, “We had much better melodies and much better other stuff before, why did you do it with S.L. Coe?” This was a point of discussion in the early 90s, but after that I never thought about this.

A lot of the band’s lyrics are based on science fiction and deal with aliens coming to earth. We know that in the 80s you did not write lyrics for Scanner, but what was (and is) your personal opinion on the topic of aliens? Do you personally believe that “We are not alone / they watch us and hear our voice”?

We came up with this concept when M.A.J.O.R. (Michael Knoblich) was our singer, and we rehearsed for this “Hypertrace” thing. I was studying sputniks and astronomy, and I was totally in the science atmosphere, and he was into science fiction, this Terrion thing, etc. We wrote that together, and I said, “OK, you believe in what they’re writing in your science fiction books, and I believe in what I have from my science”. I think in the whole universe there will be some other planets where there will be life, that’s for sure. We are not alone, and some day we will meet the aliens – maybe on other planets, but anyway, there will be planets with life. That was the idea behind it.

In the 80s most of the music for Scanner was written collectively – there are two or three writers mentioned for most of the songs. But starting from “Mental Reservation” you are writing almost everything – both music and lyrics. Why did it happen? Was it because there were no other composers left, or do you prefer to have creative control over the band, especially after problems with S.L. Coe?

At first the problem was that we got a new singer, Leszek Szpigiel (aka Harridon Lee) - he was Polish, and he was not good at English. He had great difficulties in writing English lyrics, and I said, “OK, let’s try to get some words together. Please tell me what you want to write about, and I will write the actual lyrics”. We discussed it with the bass player (John ABC Smith), and he said, “OK, if he’s not able to write the lyrics by himself, let’s try to write these lyrics for him so that he can sing something”. As to the composition, it was just the situation that developed in the band. Some members didn’t work with the band anymore, or when they started composing, there were no ideas, so I did it all on my own. This was a process, it wasn’t that I was telling them, “I wanna do all this, I wanna control everything”. It was just a development.

The only cover version that Scanner has ever recorded is “Innuendo” by Queen. This is a very challenging choice, to say the least. Why did you decide to cover this song?

It was because I liked this song very much. I heard it one night on the radio, and I didn’t know it was by Queen. I just started singing with the chorus when I listened to it, and the next morning I said when I spoke to my friend, “Hey, I listened to one song, I don’t know, it sounded like Queen, but I can’t say if it’s a Queen song”. He said, “Yeah, what did you listen to?” I said it was something with the flamenco guitar, etc., and he said, “Hey, this can be ‘Innuendo’ by Queen”. I said, “Are you sure? I’ve never heard of this”. He said, “Yeah, there’s a video and it was maybe a hit”. I said, “OK, I will listen to this song, and make sure that it is “Innuendo” by Queen, because I want to cover this song for one of my CDs. Queen is a big rock band, so it would be quite good to turn it into heavy metal”.

The album “Scantropolis” was very different from what Scanner did before, it had a female singer and it was not so fast and heavy. As far as we understand, for you it was more of an experiment. How do you look back on it now? Do you still like this record?

For this time it was the right decision. We tried to get a new singer, a male singer, but we didn’t get one. Then we wanted to turn our female background singer into the lead vocalist – she was a very good singer, she was always with us live, and she was overall a very cool girl. But she was not able to do it because she was afraid to be the lead vocalist. She said, “OK, I will do the demo for you, but I won’t become the lead singer”. We did that demo, and our record company said, “Oh, it was so good, please take this girl and make the whole CD with her.” Unfortunately, it was not possible, and we tried to find another girl. We found Lisa (Kroft), and she was not half as good as Chris (Schmitt) who did this job before, so it was a compromise. But at that time, there was no other singer around, and we needed one, and the record was what came out of it. A lot of keyboard sounds, a lot of experimentation, of course. I didn’t want to release it via the record company which I had at that time, Massacre Records, I wanted to go to a more commercial label, but when they listened to that stuff, they said, “Hey, we wanna have it for ourselves, we wanna take it and release it”. However, the problem was that this company couldn’t promote this material, they were more focused of heavier stuff. So, this was the right decision for this time, but not for a long time.
 
There is a song with German lyrics on this album, it is called “Engel Brecht’s”. Why did you decide to use Bertold Brecht’s poems in your music? Will the new album contain any German-language songs?

No, it was an experiment as well – to make it the other way round. We had lyrics by a German author, it was a good text from my point of view, and we tried to make some music around it. This was just a one time experience, and we will never do it again.

It you look at the booklet of “Scantropolis”, it is very obvious that the album is inspired by the movie “Metropolis” by Fritz Lange. Are you a movie fan? What kind of movies do you like?

I’m a movie fan, definitely! I like science fiction very much, and whenever a science fiction movie comes out, I watch it to see if it’s good or it’s not. I also like Quentin Tarantino’s movies, I think it’s one of the most entertaining movies you can watch.

There has been a lot of drama in the history of Scanner, with many musicians joining and leaving, sometimes on band terms. The song “Rest In Pain” from “Scantropolis” – is it a kind of general statement, or do you refer to somebody in particular?

Yeah, it’s so literal. Sometimes your bandmembers are friends, and if they’re gonna leave for a valid reason, if somebody can’t do it because he’s ill or something, it’s OK, but if they’re leaving or a lesser reason, it’s like you’re losing a friend… It’s difficult to explain, but it’s sometimes like divorcing your wife. It’s always not so easy. And you can’t talk about it to those guys, ex-members, because they left, so this is the only way to tell them something – to put it in a song.

“Scantropolis” ends with a live version of “Till The Ferryman Dies” recorded in Stockholm. Do you have recordings of other songs from that show?

No. It wasn’t all of us playing live in Stockholm, it was only the audience that was recorded in Stockholm, and we did a live mix.

It’s a pity Scanner has never had a live album… Are there any old live tapes in existence that could possibly be released or put online?

I’ve just found some bootlegs, but they’re not good enough to release them.

What happened to Lisa Kroft after the release of “Scantropolis”? A few magazines reported that she died…

No, she didn’t die. You see, it was like this: she had to do some job in the band, but she didn’t do it, and after a while she quit for a cover band. She went to a band playing Top 40 hit. I didn’t understand why somebody should do it - having a career with a band like Scanner and then moving over to a Top 40 band, it’s out of my understanding. For me she died, that’s definitely what I thought about it.

We guess you have asked this next question to yourself a few times – Scanner exists for 25 years, you have released five very interesting albums, but you have never had the success the band deserves. What is the reason?

If I knew it, I would change it, but I don’t know. I’m unlucky in the sense that I can’t pay the people, the members. If I get some money, I give it to them, but there’s no money, they can do what they want. They have no contract, they can say, “I quit the band”, etc. This is a problem, and it’s getting harder to keep the band running, when some people quit, and you can do nothing but let them go. If we can’t find members, we are wasting more time, and everything is taking longer. Maybe that’s the reason, I don’t know.

What do you do in life outside Scanner? Do you have any hobbies?

My biggest hobby is being a musician. Another one is that I’m making movies with the company that I’m running with an American guy, it’s helping me a lot with earning some money in addition to what I get from being a musician. I’m also helping my wife with surgeries, she’s a veterinarian, and sometimes I’m there in the morning.

How do you write music – do you sit down specifically with a guitar and jam on it, or does music come to you at any time, and you just try to capture it?

Sometimes I dream it. (laughs) I think it’s totally perfect, but when I wake up in the morning, I try to get it done, and it’s gone. “Oh, I was dreaming it, but where is it?” Then I try to find it again, I take the guitar and try things out the whole day. Sometimes it’s coming, sometimes not. This is how I always make these things - if I’m inspired, I have a guitar with me, and I make my songs.

What do you think about the heavy and power metal revival of the late 90s – bands like Hammerfall and Rhapsody? Do you like their new version of power metal, or do you prefer bands from the 80s?

I like both of them. When Hammerfall played at Wacken, I saw them for the first time there, and I said, “OK, what we did ten years ago, they do now”. (laughs) They are not part of the revival, they have always been there. I have nothing against it, it’s power metal, and I like power metal. For me it’s much better than all this death and gothic and I don’t know what else is coming. I like it very much!

In general, what music do you like to listen at the moment? Are there any new bands that have impressed you lately?

Killswitch Engage was the last thing that impressed me, and among the stuff that came out later, there wasn’t so much. I’m very critical about other people’s music and lyrics. (laughs) There was all this hype about Avenged Sevenfold, but I think it’s so clean, something is missing… There are so many new releases which are hyped, and I can’t find them as much interesting as they are described. I’m very critical about the new stuff coming out.

How do you put together the setlist for live shows? You have five very different albums, so it should be not an easy task…

In Moscow we’ll play a half of the “Hypertrace” album, and the rest of the setlist will be divided among our other albums. We’ll play maybe two or three songs from each album, and about a half of “Hypertrace”.

Do you intend to play any stuff from the upcoming record?

Yes, we’ll play two new songs.

In general, what are the future plans for Scanner? Where do you intend to take the band in 2014 and beyond?

I hope that the line-up we have now will be constant, so that we can promote this album and make a world tour. We have been asked to play in the U.S. for a long time now, and this would be a dream come true for us to go there. It should be possible in 2014 to play more gigs than we’re doing nowadays, and hopefully the band will be known better all over the world, that’s our aim!

Scanner on the Internet: http://www.scanner4u.de

Special thanks to Oleg Kolenda (Delta Mekong Concerts) for arranging this interview

Roman Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
November 11, 2013
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