Iron Savior
Next Time We’ll Bring Spare Guitars

17.08.2016

When people say that Helloween gave birth to the entire power metal scene in Germany, they refer not only to the band’s impressive back catalogue, but also to a great number of artists that this band somehow helped spawn. Our current interview subject, Piet Sielck, belongs to this expanded “Helloween family”, too. Back in the late 70s he played alongside Kai Hansen in the bands Gentry and Second Hell, and in the early 90s he rejoined Kas as an engineer for Gamma Ray. Kai then became a member of Iron Savior, helping the new band to earn a place under the heavy metal sun. But it was long time ago, and nowadays Iron Savior is a totally independent institution. Not only they play very solid power-metal, they have also invented their own science fiction universe and are telling stories from there in their songs. The main character is, of course, Iron Savior itself, a huge intellectual spaceship that was built to protect the mankind from evil, but, as it  always happens, something went wrong along the way… This spring Iron Savior released a new album, their 10th in total, and they promise to return to Moscow in December. We called Piet to discuss new developments in Iron Savior and the technical problems that are plaguing them every time they try to play one particular song on the Moscow soil…

I just saw your status on Skype, “Interview mode on”. What does it mean?

(laughs) Well, it just means that it’s time to promote the new album and I’m ready for interviews.

Great! The album, called “Titancraft”, is already out, so tell me, please, what has been the first reaction of the fans?

So far the impressions are really good, because we entered the charts in Germany at the highest position ever for Iron Savior, at the position number 62, and it’s really awesome! Also in Switzerland we have our first chart entry ever, at position 92, so that’s a real success, and of course we are proud as hell about that. So the reaction is very, very good so far.

Did you really expect it?

Well, of course I was *hoping* for at least as positive response as we had for the previous albums, “The Landing” (2011) and “Rise of the Hero” (2014). But that “Titancraft” would outdo those albums…  I wasn’t sure. I knew that was a pretty good album but you never know. In the end the fans have to judge what you have been doing.

Sure. So how was the recording process?

The recording process started about early 2015, I’d say. The way I work, there are no real production and songwriting phases, I combine them, they go together. Because when I write songs, for example, some guitar staff, I usually record it in a professional way already so I can use it later for production. So the songwriting and the production are more or less one big thing. But the real production – to put this way – when we’re only focusing on the album, it started in summer last year. Then it took half a year to finish everything.

Can you, please, tell me the story behind the cover artwork? It’s awesome, by the way. I really loved it.

I’m very proud of the cover as well. Once again it was made by Felipe Machado Franco, an artist from Columbia. He also made covers for “The Landing” and “Rise of the Hero”, and yeah, this time Felipe has outdone himself. I really love this cover, it really looks like a supercool movie to me! I mean, if I saw this cover as a movie advertisement I would be very interested in watching this movie right away. So it’s really awesome and… Well, some people were complaining, “Oh, it’s Felipe again, it’s very old-style and all the same thing, blah-blah-blah” and stuff like that. Well, I don’t care about that, I especially like this. I like that our last three covers are made by the same guy and this is some other aspect of the Iron Savior concept. I love this, I must say. The main key to this cover is the story of Iron Savior, of course. On “Titancraft” we have two songs that continue this story, which are the title track, "Titancraft" itself, and "Brother in Arms". Basically the story is that this huge spaceship, Titancraft was made by the mankind to defend themselves against the evil intruders…

Sorry, but I thought it was called Iron Savior, wasn't it?

It was! Iron Savior also is a spaceship, but it is special, it’s not only a spaceship, it’s also the last hero and all these things, the Iron Savior is something special.  The Titancraft is *just* a spaceship, but it’s the biggest spaceship ever made by the mankind, so I thought that it’s a cool thing to put on the cover. (laughs)

So what is Titancraft doing in the story? You invented it for this album, didn’t you?

Yeah, and as it’s the biggest spaceship ever made by the mankind, of course, it becomes the flagship of the united armada of the Galaxy to fight against the Evil… (makes a solemn pause, and laughs)

Cool! And what about "Brother in Arms"? Is it about Iron Savior joining the Machine World (this world first appears on the “Battering Ram” album (2004) – ed.)?

Yes, exactly! When I was thinking that the mankind might need a little help I remembered these Machine World guys. And so Iron Savior takes off to meet the Machine World guys and to ask them to help the mankind a little bit to defeat the Evil.

As far as I remember, they were bad guys, right?

In the beginning they were bad guys, but I left it open whether they were bad guys or not. In a way they are bad guys, ‘cause they are machines, but now as they met Iron Savior and talked to it and in a way they share the same uniqueness that Iron Savior has, they feel something like brotherhood arising between them, let’s call it like this. And yes, the machine guys of course agree and join Iron Savior and beat the shit out of the evil bastards.

Wow! I was always wondering if you ever thought about writing a real story, a science fiction story, something like that.

That is something I have on my mind for the retirement. Because writing books is not something that you can easily do on the side, you know. You have to focus on that and I think if I really dig into that and start writing, it probably will take a year or even longer. Right now I can never find time to do this, since I have to do something to make money, you know… So that is something that I have postponed to a later time. But it is definitely on my list and I will do it one day! Because I really love the story and there is a lot of stuff in there but so far I only have the plot of the story. I don’t have any characters or details to make the story interesting yet, I would have to think very hard about that of course.

I’m sure you’ll manage that.

Yes, I’m quite positive about it, ‘cause I have a lot of ideas and will come up with lot of cool heroes and characters to fill the picture.

We are all looking forward for that, but not for your retirement. (both laugh) It looks like you’re a huge science fiction fan, aren’t you?

Yes, science fiction has always been my thing. I really love it. When I started Iron Savior 20 years ago I thought that it might be a cool idea to have the two loves I have – which are of course metal music and science fiction, - to have them combined.

What is your favorite science fiction story? It can be a book or a movie, doesn’t matter.

Well, my favored books are still all the Dune books written by Frank Herbert, and then continued on by his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I think this is really awesome stuff. I really love this entire universe he created with all the details. It’s a masterpiece for me. Speaking about movies, I love “Star Wars” and I really love “Star Trek”, especially the new crew they have come up with. I think they did an awesome job on this. I mean, in “Star Trek”; for the “Star Wars”, it’s pretty much the old crew… (laughs)

And what about the new “Star Wars” movie?

Well, it was pretty good. I watched it… Of course, I watched it. It definitely plays in the same league with the other “Star Wars” movies. Too bad that Han Solo died, I really loved him, but maybe Harrison Ford said, “Ok, that’s it. One more and… But no more.” Let’s see what they do in the next one.

I’m a bit concerned if I should keep it in the interview. Is it a spoiler still?

No, I think with the movie being out for almost a year, everybody has already found out that Han Solo died on a bridge. I mean, those bridges in “Star Wars”… The minute he approached this bridge I knew, “Ok, that’s it for Han Solo”. People usually die when they walk on bridges in “Star Wars”. (both laugh)

Ok, let’s get back to the album. This song, "Gunsmoke", is it about “The Magnificent Seven”?

It is about “The Magnificent Seven”, exactly! When I was writing the song I had no idea what the lyrical approach to this one would be. It could also become a metal anthem, but I thought, “Well, we have ‘Heavy Metal Never Dies’ and in terms of songwriting it is a little bit too close to it”. I don’t want to repeat myself and put on another heavy-metal-is-so-cool song. And then all of a sudden I came up with… I don’t know, this movie just popped out on my mind and I thought, “Hey, wow. This is cool”. I loved this movie in my childhood. Yul Brynner was awesome there. The black guy…  And so I thought, this is a worthy theme for a song.  When I wrote the lyrics, it was actually pretty fast because I had a lot of pictures in my mind. And then spontaneously I came up with this short introduction, you know, this horse and gun shooting and stuff and the outro and yeah, here we go, with "Gunsmoke". (laughs) It’s a cool song and a part of our live set now.

Oh, have you already chosen the songs for live sets?

Yes. Right now in our live set we play "Way of the Blade", "Gunsmoke" and "Beyond the Horizon". We are still thinking about adding "The Sun Won't Rise in Hell" or maybe also "Strike Down the Tyranny", but you know it’s always very hard. Because we have quite a big back catalogue and we have quite a lot old hits from the early years that the fans really want to listen to. So it’s always really hard to decide which song we’re gonna play and which song we’re gonna leave out, so… Right now we have decided for three new songs, but maybe we’ll add another one.

Actually when I listened to the album I couldn’t decide which song I’d like to hear live. They are all great!

Absolutely! They all are cool to play live.

But personally my favorite is "Rebellious". I think, it would be super-great for playing live. What do you think?

Yeah, we were thinking about "Rebellious" as well. Yes and no, I’d say. It definitely would be a cool song to play live, but I don’t think it’s the best song on the album, and that of course is the way we usually choose songs. We really think what the best songs on the album are. Definitely "Rebellious" is a cool song, I love it. I like the lyrics, they are quite easy, and then I like this straight-forward approach of the song. It definitely would work live very well. But as I said, there are so many other cool songs. (laughs)

Ok, tell me please about "Way of the Blade". Why did you choose this song for the video?

Because it’s a quite straightforward song, but on the other hand it definitely carries all the trademarks of Iron Savior, of what Iron Savior is all about. Because you always have to think that some people who watch this video have never been in contact with Iron Savior before that. And it’s a song that you really can understand right away. You probably have noticed that some songs on the album have a little more progressive touch to them than on the previous album. So we thought that putting on "Beyond the Horizon" for the video - that would be actually my personal choice because I think that it’s the heart of the album - might be a little bit too complicated. "Way of the Blade" is something you can listen to and like it right away. That was the reason for choosing this one. The problem with this one for me was that the lyrics of this song are not really an Iron Savior thing. It’s about swords and knights, and Lord of the Rings kind of stuff, you know. And it was a little bit tricky to put that into the video without becoming ridiculous because… It was obvious that we’ll not have the budget to put in these Lord-of-the-Rings-like battle scenes. So we thought, “Ok, we’re Iron Savior, we are known for having a little smile on our faces”, so we decided to make a little joke out of it.

Actually, I haven’t seen the video yet. I just saw the pictures of you playing in some kind of a bunker…

Yes, that’s the band performing in this bunker scenario. We do have fighting scenes of knights, but the clue is, during the video it turns out that that’s a video game we’re playing and the joke in the end is that we were just about to make it to the highest score but then the computer crashed. (both laugh)

Ok, you mentioned this progressive approach to the songs. Actually our fans here, in Russia, are a little bit concerned about that. It looks like it has become something like a fashion in heavy metal recently to bring in some progressive twists into songs. How far do you plan to go in that direction?

Well, not too much. I mean, we talked about "Gunsmoke" and "Way of the Blade" which are not progressive I must say. (laughs) Of course there are songs like "Beyond the Horizon" - which is not too progressive as well, which I must point out very clearly. There’s just a bit more musical information there than on "Way of the Blade", that’s basically it. In terms of what progressive means for me… To put it like this, there are some songs on the album that have a little Savage Circus touch to it.

Do you miss Savage Circus?

No, not at all. I stopped Savage Circus in 2011 so I’m not doing this anymore. It’s not that Iron Savior now plays in the Savage Circus style, it’s not the case, I have to point this out very straightly. (laughs) It’s just that I *spice* the songs here and there with these elements. But don’t worry. When you listen to the album, you know, it’s 100% Iron Savior.

So you are not moving towards progressive, right?

No, absolutely not! It’s not what we want to do. We’re Iron Savior, we’ve been doing this for 20 years and we stand for a certain style. Fans are expecting Iron Savior and they buy Iron Savior. So I can assure everybody that on "Titancraft" you’ll find 100% Iron Savior.

That’s cool! Can we please talk about your backing vocals? Did you know Frank Beck before he joined Gamma Ray?

Yes, we’ve known Frank for a long time. He came to a choir session for "Titancraft". It was clear that Piesel (Joachim "Piesel" Küstner, guitarist) couldn’t be part of the vocals session because he had to work, he was out of town, so I thought, “Why don’t we call Frank and ask him if he wants to join me”. And he just agreed, he thought it was a cool idea. Lucky me! Because when it came to the recording of the choir vocals unfortunately the bass player, Jan (Jan-Sören Eckert) who usually does the most part of the vocals with me, he was sick, he was laying in the bed and he couldn’t sing a word. So it was great to have Frank there, so this time there were Frank and me. And spontaneously I invited over my daughter to join him. I wasn’t sure about the outcome because we had never done this before, we had never done choirs with a female voice, but it turned out to be really awesome. I think, the choir  vocals on this album are so great, and this is also a little bit because of Philippa, because the female voice adds something to the choir, something that we never had before. And so next time it’s gonna be Jan, Piesel, Frank, Philippa and me. (laughs)

And what about Philippa? Does she have her own band?

Actually, she does, yeah. She has her own band, where she’s doing lead vocals.

Can you give us the name of the band so we can find it?

Well, no. I mean, at the moment the name is Rock to Pussy, but there is actually another band called Rock to Pussy, so don’t get confused. A t the moment they are looking for a new band name, but they haven’t decided yet.

Do they play hard rock?

Yeah, it’s hard rock and some punk stuff… Yeah, it’s basically rock’n’roll there, yeah.

Ok, talking about Frank… Kai Hansen is a little bit tired of being both the vocalist and a guitar player for the band. And what about you?

It’s ok for me. Actually, I have always done a lot of vocals on stage with the help of our bass player Jan. So I don’t have to sing all the time. We worked out a pretty good plan, so I can catch some breath in between. (laughs) It’s working very nice and at the moment we are both singing in a Gamma Ray-like way and I feel comfortable singing myself. As for Kai, it definitely makes sense because he was singing really a lot with Gamma Ray and of course they have more shows than we do, and the voice is torn down faster. So yeah, I think it was a good decision. I saw Frank doing it and I think he’s doing a great job.

Talking about live shows… We are waiting for you in December, right?

Yes, we’re looking really, really forward to this. We have really great memories about “Plan B” and “Club Volta”, of course. So we hope to return to Moscow and find the same kind of crowd there and have a great metal party.

You always have some technical problems when playing “Heavy Metal Never Dies” in Russia. Is it Russia or is the song just unlucky?

(laughs) I don’t know. Of course we learned the lesson and next time we’ll definitely bring spare guitars with us. But yes, it’s really bizarre, but we hope next time we’ll play “Heavy Metal Never Dies” without any interruption.

Are you still going to play it?

Yes, of course we are. This is a must, we have to play this one, of course.

And what about “Breaking the Law”? Why did you choose this song to play live at every show?

I don’t know, it just became a habit, kind of. Years ago I had an idea that we can play it spontaneously, without announcing it, as a surprise song. It worked out really great, because everybody knows this song. Now maybe it doesn’t come as unexpected anymore but... (laughs) But every time we do it, people are really freaking out so we just made it a habit to play this one in the end of every show.

Didn’t you think of choosing another surprise song?

That might be. The idea came to my mind but of course I cannot tell it because it won’t be a surprise anymore. (laughs) But yeah, there would be something. People expect “Breaking the Law” and, hey, we play something else! (laughs)

This year you are celebrating the 20th anniversary on the band, right?

Yes, exactly. The band was founded in 1996, that’s true.

Do you plan anything special?

No, for the 20th anniversary we don’t do many special things. We thought it would be great to do something for the 25th anniversary. This is when we’ll have something special going on. Of course we’re gonna do something special with our record label, but we have to think about it. To be honest, I knew that would be the 20th anniversary, but I was so busy with remaking of “Megatropolis”, a live DVD, writing songs for this album, making the production… So I didn’t find any time, to be honest, to think about something special for this anniversary. So I have postponed it for the 25th one. (laughs)

I see. By the way, why did you decide to remake “Megatropolis”?

Well, “Megatropolis” was done while I was still working with Savage Circus. At the time when I was writing “Megatropolis” I wanted to make Iron Savior a little bit different to Savage Circus, so I thought at that time that it would be a good idea to give it a little bit more rock’n’roll touch, to cut out some things. On the original version there are very little choir vocals, basically just straight solos without harmonies going on. At the time I was doing it I thought it was a cool idea, but I must admit that some years later I was regretting this because… “Megatropolis”-1, the original version, it was missing too many of the important Iron Savior trademarks, such as all the backing vocals, etc. When AFM called me up in the end of 2014 and told me that they had run out of stocks of “Megatropolis” and asked if I had some bonus material, I didn’t have any. I thought, ok, maybe I can add some stuff that I left out when I was making the album and remix it. That’s the story to “Megatropolis”-2 and to be honest I think it was a really good idea to do this because I really love the version 2.0. I think now it plays in the same league with all the rest Iron Savior albums. “Megatropolis” was never a bad album, actually. It has good songs, it was produced nicely, but it was just missing something. But now I really love “Megatropolis” again I must say.

Do you have plans to remix any other albums, or that’s it?

No. What we do is we started to re-record some old stuff from the earliest years, if you look at the previous albums you’ll see it. On "Titancraft" we also put the new version of "Protector”. This is something we will continue on doing in the future. It might also be possible that we do a little bit more in this direction but this is still a little bit secret, I cannot talk too much about that.

Ok. Can you discuss your live DVD then? If I remember correctly you have already tried to do something like that before and that didn’t work out very well…

That’s right, we had this… You are talking about “Interlude” (1999), right? Yeah, it was an opportunity for us, because those live recordings were already there but the set wasn’t long enough to make a whole album, and so we added some newly composed and recorded studio tracks to it. I think the combination didn’t work out too much because the fans didn’t know if it was a live album or a studio album, so… I think “Interlude” for the time was sold quite nicely. I also think the live tracks on the album are done quite well and the newly recoded songs are also cool… You know, it wasn’t as successful as the other albums because, as I just said, people didn’t know whether it was a studio album or a live album. But I think with the DVD we are all very, very happy.

That’s right. Ok, here I have some personal questions. Do you still have straight jobs?

Yes. My job of course is recording and producing. Of course Iron Savior takes a lot of time, but I also do production for other people. Piesel, our guitarist works as a front-of-house engineer for Gamma Ray and Edguy and also does tour management for Helloween, so he has these so-called day-time jobs. Jan also has s day-time job. And Thomas (Nack), our drummer, his main job is that he plays drums for a musical production company here in Hamburg, where he has to play, like, five times a week and sometimes two times a day. That’s what makes playing live a little bit difficult for us. But if you saw the DVD you know that we came up with a trick. (laughs) We have a substitute for everybody in the band. If Thomas is not available we have Sören Teckenburg of Paragon to take over the drums. Actually he played in Club Volta because Thomas had to work at that time. The same goes for Jan. Uwe Seeman comes in if Jan is unavailable, and if Piesel is on tour with somebody else we work with Jan Bertram, also from Paragon. Since we do that our live availability and the number of shows we can play increases significantly. (laughs)

So you have two line-ups in the band.

Yeah, exactly. Sometimes it’s a bit strange, but I think this only happened once that nobody of the original line up was available except me. It was a bit bizarre (both laugh) but it only happened once. Most of the time it’s only one who is missing.

I see. And what are the bands that you are producing?

Well, last year in between the DVD and "Titancraft" I worked with Paragon on their new album, recorded most of the stuff and did the mixing. Also I have a lot of smaller projects that I do. For example I did the mixing for a project called Legend of Valley Doom – you may have heard about that – by Marius Danielsen, a guy from Norway. Interesting stuff. Recently I did another mixing for a band called Darkest Sin which is also cool. But, of course, "Titancraft" and “Megatropolis” and the DVD were very time consuming, so… And right now I’m focusing on the live shows that are coming up, getting my stuff together.

Why did you start playing bass before turning to guitar?

I started with bass because I was a kid and I didn’t know the difference between the bass guitar and the lead guitar. (laughs) Whenever I heard lead guitar playing on the radio, I said, “Oh, this is what I want to play”. My father said, “You mean the bass guitar?” And I was like, “Yes, yes, of course”. So I started playing bass guitar for half a year and then I was like, “Hmm, bass is not really what I meant. I was talking about the other thing, with 6 strings on it”. (laughs)

Ok, and maybe the last question. Who is your favorite superhero?

I must say that my favorite superhero is still Superman. Going back to a saying of Bill from the movie “Kill Bill” which is very true, Superman is the only hero who is not disguising himself. He is Superman and he disguises as Clark Kent. With all the other superheroes it’s the other way round. Spiderman is not Spiderman, he is Peter Parker. He dresses up as Spiderman, but he is Peter Parker. With Superman it is the other way round. He is Superman and he disguises as Clark Kent. I think, this makes Superman special. And hey, he is Superman! He has all the fucking superpowers in the world! (laughs)

I’m through with my questions! Thank you for your time. Do you have any last words for the fans?

Of course I have! Big thank you again to all the fans, also thank you for this interview. Especially to the Russian fans, thank you for supporting Iron Savior in such an awesome way. It’s really overwhelming to see all this reaction and the support and these really heart-warming feelings that the fans have towards Iron Savior, which we also experienced during our latest visits to Russia. And we are looking absolutely forward to returning in December and paying back a little bit for everything the fans have been doing for us. Thank you!

Iron Savior on the Internet: http://site.iron-savior.com/

Special thanks to Irina Ivanova (AFM Records) for arranging this interview

Ekaterina Akopova
June 10, 2016
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