Orden Ogan
Nowhere Else To Go But Space

31.10.2021

Metal heroes of the current generation are not built overnight – they take years and sometimes even decades to reach the top, and when it happens, quite a few people are taken by surprise, “Who are these Orden Ogan guys to have my all-time favorites such as Rage or Grave Diggers as special guests at their shows”. But the figures speak for themselves: the latest Orden Organ album, very fittingly titled “Final Days”, reached Number Three in the German national charts, which means that this star is no longer in the making, it is up there in the sky. We caught up with singer, guitarist and mastermind Seeb Levermann to find out how it feels to be so high in the charts, what it took to make the album amidst the pandemic and various other issues, and various other things that would help you portray the picture of a not so young, but still very enthusiastic and potent addition to the German power metal pantheon.

Every time a band releases an album with words like “last” or “final” in the title, fans get worried and ask questions like, “Are they breaking up?” or “Is this their final record?” This was the case when Iron Maiden released “The Final Frontier” or when Sabaton released “The Last Stand”. What was your reason for calling the album “Final Days”?

Yes, that happened to us as well, I have heard people asking if we wanted to quit, and I have just to say: No fucking way! We’re just getting started. I’m not really sure how we came up with the title, but I know that “Final Days” was the first thing that was ready for the record, even before we had the concept in mind and everything. We had this title very early on, I think it was a working title of one of the tracks that didn’t make it on the record afterwards, and we thought that it was a strong title for the record, so we stuck with it.

“Final Days”, like the albums before it, is not a concept album per se, it does not tell a single story, but I guess we can call it a thematic album because there is a common theme behind most of the songs. What comes first – the theme, the topic, and then you write music to it, or do you write a bunch of music and then decide what it is going to be about?

It really always depends. All of our records have this shared theme, like “Gunmen” (2017) was our Wild West record, and “To The End” (2012) was taking place in this post-apocalyptic ice world scenario. When we were writing songs for “Gunmen”, the first two tracks that we were doing had these Wild West harmonies and melodies to them, and we were instantly reminded of the Wild West, so we were like, “Well, maybe this is going to be our dark fantasy Wild West record”. With “Final Days”, as I said, we had the title first, and then we were songs and stuff. And then… Orden Ogan is a band that is always trying to be very close to our audience; as the band grows more and more, it gets more difficult, but we will always try to get offstage and talk to the people at the merch stand, sign autographs and everything. This is super-rewarding, you get to hear all those great stories from the people, how much the music means to them, how it helped them over dark times and stuff. I think it was at least 50 times that people asked us the question, “Ah, you have been in this ice world, and now you are ghost cowboys, what is coming next? There are no worlds to go to, do you wanna to space or what?” (laughs) If this question comes 50 times, you’d be like, “OK, maybe this is going to be our cyber record”. It’s a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy and a little bit of fan service as well. We really liked the idea and we also thought that it fit great to the title “Final Days”.

Also speaking about the title, which I forgot when I was answering the previous question: we actually wanted to make it a record of about 10 songs that are about 10 different ways how the mankind could find its end. We had “In The Dawn Of The AI”, which is about artificial intelligence that is taking over, then we had “It Is Over”, which is about the last asteroid impact on Earth, and we also had a song about a killer virus (everybody laughs), but we thought it might not be the best idea to release it right now, so we got a bit away from the original idea afterwards.

The songs on “Final Days” paint a very apocalyptic picture of what is going to happen to us all. In your personal opinion, is there a chance for a better future for the Earth and mankind?

(sighs) For a better future… If I’m going to say the stuff that I want to say right now, people will say that I’m super-negative and pessimistic, but I would consider myself a realistic person who as a realistic view of the world with a little bit of optimism in it. I really think right now when I look to the left and to the right and everywhere around me, at all the different countries, and hear the different people that I talk to, I get the impression that it’s getting worse everywhere in the world. I don’t know how it is in Russia, but especially here in Europe people are radicalizing themselves more and more, they are getting more to the very left side of the spectrum, or to the very right side of the spectrum, and there’s no middle anymore. People don’t talk to each other anymore, there are no real discussions - if somebody else has got another opinion, you don’t try to convince him, but rather badmouth him and silence him. This is actually what the song “Inferno” is all about. Talking about a better future for the mankind – yes, I hope so, I really hope that it will go this way, but really have the impression that the mankind just doesn’t learn. I mean, we’ve got all this technology around, but the only thing we do is basically the same stuff that we did 500 years ago – fight for land, fight for resources, fight for power and stuff like that. Apart from very few people, I don’t see any progress happening here. I wouldn’t really be surprised if World War III rises at some point in the future.

The recording of “Final Days” can also be called apocalyptic, as the album was eventually delayed for nine months. What are you going to do differently next time to avoid such situations?

I don’t believe in stuff like that, but you could get the impression that there was somebody that didn’t want us to get this thing finished, like some evil forces or whatever. Literally everything that could go wrong went wrong big time, starting from the recording of the bonus DVD that we did in 2019, when all the audio effects were corrupted and had to be restored which took forever. Then came the drum recordings, and I had to go to the music store like six days in a row, because something would break down, and we couldn’t fix it, like microphones that we really needed and had just one of. Dirk (Meyer-Berhorn) broke his right cymbal – drummers don’t usually break their right cymbals, this is the big one, you basically can’t break that. (laughs) There were so many situations that threw us back for weeks that at a certain point we just said, “OK, we’ll have to postpone it, because it doesn’t make any sense like this”. When COVID hit, that was actually just the cherry on top for us. At that point we were already cynical, it was like, “OK, well, AND the global pandemic – what else? (cracks) Just throw more at us! It’s fine!” But in the end it turned out great, I think the result speaks for itself, we went on No. 3 in the German album charts, which is a huge success for us. Coming back to your question – I think statistically speaking, everything should run perfectly smooth next time (everybody laughs) after all the crap we had this time.

Yeah, it’s like you’ve run out of back luck! All the bad things have already happened. OK, what is the current situation with your arm, is it getting better? We heard that you had some bad accident and therefore decided not to play guitar live, but you still recorded all the rhythm guitars on the album, is that correct?

What happened is in 2019 I broke my thumb, and it was two weeks before the first festival show. Obviously we didn’t want to cancel, because we had such great festivals lined up, like Bloodstock in the UK, and our first Japanese tour, and we really wanted to do them all. The first obvious choice was bringing our bass player Nils (Loeffler) from bass to guitar, because he’s an amazing guitar player, he was just playing bass because Toby (Kerstling) and I were playing guitar, that was our spot, and when he joined the band he was like, “I’d rather play bass with you guys than not play in the band”. That was the obvious choice to bring him from bass to guitar, and he did a phenomenal job. That’s how we did the first shows. I know there are a lot of people that if they are used to cling on their instrument, they will feel sort of lost on stage, but it was the total opposite for me. I felt like a fish in the sea straight away – you can move around, you are closer to the audience, you can do more crap onstage, play around with everybody and go on everyone’s nerves. On top of it, I never struggled with playing guitar and signing, but I still think that my vocal performance improved a lot. The audience seemed to love it, the record company came to us and even the Powerwolf guys came to us when we played Summer Breeze together, saying, “You should keep it like that, because it’s great”. So we were like, “OK, if everyone seems to love it, and we love it as well, we should keep it”.

The only thing that we had then was that the bass player position was vacant. That was super-simple, we were in the rehearsal room, and we were thinking, “OK, who could possibly do it?” And everyone was super-enthusiastic, like, “We could ask Steven (Wussow)”, “Yes, maybe we ask Steven”, “Alright, I will give Steven a call”. I called him, and he was the same – “Yeah, I heard that maybe you need a bass player, I’m going to the rehearsal”. We were laughing about it in hindsight, because you would think it’s a big thing to bring in a new guy at the point where the band is right now. Steven is a former bass player of Xandria, this female fronted symphonic band, and we were on tour together with the guys, and he’s super-nice, one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, and he had so much fun with him on that tour. But Xandria are not active right now, nobody really knows what’s going on, and that was the super-obvious thing for us to do. And he had left Xandria, he was like, “Oh, I have nothing going on anyway”.

The only real line-up change that we had then was with our guitar player Toby. Already in 2018 we had the impression that something was a little bit off with the guy. Let me put it like this: sometimes stuff in your private life changes for the worse, and you might not be able to do everything you want to do the way you want to do it. There was so much stuff going on that we just figured: it doesn’t work like this, not with the band that is doing stuff full-time, where you really have to put some energy and some time into it. So we agreed to send him on vacation first. This was actually the toughest thing because nobody was coming to our minds who could take over the guitar spot. Orden Ogan is not progressive technical death metal, but it’s still not easy to play. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the hardest Dream Theater stuff that you can imagine, I would say Orden Ogan is 7.5 or 8, especially when we do the high-speed shredding stuff that Toby did in the solos and stuff. Then there was a friend who gave me a call, he was like, “I’ve heard you have some problems there. What is it with Patrick Sperling?” I was like, “Hmm, I have seen the guy, but I don’t really know who he is”. Then my friend said, “OK, let me explain: He looks like a young version of Zakk Wylde, he plays like a young version of Zakk Wylde, he lives 30 minutes from your place, he’s a big Orden Ogan fan, he’s a guitar teacher so he can go on tour, he’s a great guy, and he’s not playing in any relevant big band”. I was like, “This really sounds like winning the lottery”. (everybody laughs) I gave him a call, and the first thing that Patrick did was laughing at me. I was like, “Why are you laughing?”, and he’s like, “Don’t think I’m a weirdo or something, but I somehow expected this call to come at a certain point”. I was like, “OK, then you know what the question is”. He said, “Yes, I know, and I’m in”.

Orden Ogan is one of the nicest bands you will ever meet. Everyone here is super down-to-earth, there is no ego bullshit going on, everyone is a really nice person, and we’re all making fun of each other all the time. There’s never bad blood or anything. If there are problems, we discuss it, and that’s it. Even with the crew, it’s super-important for us that if you do all the traveling and you don’t get a lot of sleep, everyone should be cool with each other and help each other. Patrick is a super-nice guy, too, and a good friend meanwhile, because obviously it’s been over a year already, even though we haven’t gone on stage together so far (cracks) because of the pandemic.

Are you personally able to play as before the accident, have you recovered 100 percent, or do you have any issues with getting the parts right?

It’s pretty funny that it took so long, it was like five or six months. I had this thing on my thumb so that I couldn’t move the hand for like four months or so, and when they took it off, it was super-difficult and it took weeks and weeks to be able to move my hand in a decent manner. It was like re-learning to play the guitar, but to answer your question – I’m perfectly fine again, I recorded all of the rhythm guitars and almost all of the lead guitars for the album.

As you said, “Final Days” reached number three on the official German album charts. How much has it changed the life of the band? We’re not asking if people recognize you in the streets, because, as far as we understand, everybody in Germany is now wearing masks all the time, but anyway, when you become a Top 3 band, what happens?

Nothing! (everybody laughs) Nothing really. We’ve just sold a couple of records more, it’s not that we’re doing TV shows every weekend or stuff like that. We’re still a heavy metal band, and it basically just shows the great support of all the people that are listening to the music and have become fans in the last months or years. I’m super-grateful for that, I’m really happy that there are so many people that really seem to like the band. But when it comes to Orden Ogan, it might sound cheesy, but this is really what I wanna do, this is really what comes out of me. I would do these records anyway, and it doesn’t matter if we’ve got 500,000 or 50 monthly listeners on Spotify. It’s great to see that there are so many people that really like it, that it means something to the people, but it doesn’t change us.

How does the band cope with the pandemic? Do you still see each other from time to time, are you able to rehearse together or write new songs?

Actually apart from the video shoots and the photo shoots that we did, there’s been almost no contact apart from the digital stuff. Of course, we are having Skype calls and stuff like that, but we don’t rehearse right now. We’ve never been a band that rehearsed a lot in the first place. The other guys are really good musicians, and everyone knows what their part is. I mean, we will rehearse before we do a tour or festivals, but some people in the band, if we take Steven and Dirk, they are 800 km apart, and I’m basically in the middle of everyone, I’m like a magnet that everyone is coming to. We have been thinking of maybe doing a streaming show or something like that, but I personally really had to recover from everything a little bit after the record was done, because there was just so much work. There are so many people who are just sitting at home and bored to hell, because they don’t know what to do with their time because of the restrictions that we have in Germany, but it was the absolute opposite for me, I was working like 14 to 17 hours a day in the last months. Also my studio had what you would call a clusterfuck, because so many productions have been moved, and I was basically working on eight records at the same time. I just finished the new Brainstorm record a couple of days ago, and I’m working in parallel on the new Rhapsody Of Fire record. It was so much stuff to do that I’m glad that I will have a little bit of time off starting next week, so that I could just focus on doing a little bit more sports to get back in shape. (laughs) At the moment the band is going slow, but it’s the same with everyone at the moment, no matter who you call, everyone is slowed down 50 percent or something.

With such a workload as a producer and mixing and mastering engineer, do you still listen to metal music just for pleasure? What are the latest albums that really impressed you?

Like I said, if you’re working on music 14 to 17 hours a day, when you get into the car, and somebody pushes the button to turn on the radio, you’re like, “No!” (everybody laughs) What I’m doing a lot as a producer is referencing other productions. I will check out great productions that have been released just to see how they compare with my productions, if I have too much bass, or too many high frequencies or whatever. Speaking about listening to music just for pleasure, it may sound weird, but I’m listening a lot to great productions just because they are great productions, because of the sound of it, not because a band, if that makes sense. For example, I’m not the biggest thrash metal fan, but I really love what Andy Sneap has been doing with Exodus and Testament, so I’m listening to that stuff a lot. The latest band that has really impressed me from a songwriting perspective might have been Ghost, I really like their “Meliora” record, that’s when I said, “Wow, that’s amazing”.

Do you as a producer have a dream band that you would really love to work with?

As I’m making power metal and working with a lot of power metal bands, everyone seems to think that I’m a power metal guy, which is actually not the case. When it comes to my personal taste of listening to music, I would say I’m pretty much at home with British old school death metal, bands like Bolt Thrower and Benediction, that is my thing. I’ve just had a collaboration that was amazing for me because I could work with Asphyx from the Netherlands, a death metal band, one of the bands that I was listening to since I was very young, I really love their records. Obviously Bolt Thrower is history, they are not here anymore, but you get Memoriam, you get Benediction, these bands would be great for me. The other stuff I think every engineer and producer would mention is Megadeth or Metallica, stuff like that. But it’s so difficult to be heard by their management, they would rather work with somebody who’s done multiple platinum records. I think I will have to work on my portfolio a little bit (cracks) and get some platinum and gold records done before I can work with bands like these.

In 2019 you had your own cruise called “Pirate Cruise”. Could you tell us more about how it went? Would you be interested in doing it again after the pandemic is over?

Oh, we will surely do it again. There is this ship here on this lake in the area where we live, and many years ago I was doing some parties on this ship as a promoter. I was thinking to myself, “It would be amazing to do a show there one day”. It’s one of these ideas that stay with you for years until you actually do that stuff. (laughs) So I got back to the guys and said, “Hey, let’s do a metal show on your ship”. The thing is that we released the info about the cruise, and it was sold out in 25 hours. There were so many Orden Ogan fans that were super pissed off, because they were like, “I’m not on Facebook for one day, and you release a thing like this, and it’s sold out in one day”. I really get that people were super annoyed that they couldn’t make it to the event. The event itself was amazing, it was really great. There are not many people that fit on the boat, it’s set for 600 guests or so, and you’re very close to the audience, there’s no real backstage area or anything, you’re basically in the middle of the fans. It’s really great, we really want to do that again. I’ve told you that we’re thinking about doing a streaming show – we’re actually thinking about maybe setting up our own Patreon channel and give the patrons early access to stuff like this or even do a cruise just for patrons. Like I said before, we really want to do the best for our fans, and it’s not our intention to piss off the fans with something that they might consider unfair.

Coming back to your latest album – some of the songs on it are written together with Stefan Manarin, who was a guitar player in a very early Orden Ogan line-up, from 2000 to 2006. Did you use his old ideas, or did you reconnect with Stefan after all these years?

Two things about this. We actually count the history of Orden Ogan from 2008 on, when the “Vale” record was released. Everything that happened before was basically another band, it was another life. It was basically pupils hanging out in the rehearsal space eating pizza and making a bit of music. 2008 was the year when the professional career of Orden Ogan started. Coming to Stefan, he’s an amazing guy we have been friends with over all these years. Like I said before, we felt in 2018 already that we might run into some problems with Toby, our then-guitar player. I wanted to write new songs, we all wanted to do that, but I’ve always been the driving force in the band. However Toby couldn’t manage it at all, so I was working more with Dirk, our drummer, which I did on “Gunmen” as well, and it was working great. I have to say that Toby is one of my best friends, and the whole situation was really bad for me because we all knew that it couldn’t work like this, but we all didn’t want to let him go, if you understand what I mean. It was really a bad time. I had the impression that I needed some other place to go, some other people around me and stuff, just to free my head a little bit of all of that stuff. With Stefan we have always been in touch, he’s such a great guy, he’s always in a great mood, it’s always one joke after another, it’s crazy. He’s basically referring to himself as having a guitar toilet, you know, like the toilet syndrome – if he’s got a guitar on his lap, you can expect that everything will be coming out of him constantly, there’s something happening all the time. (laughs) At some point in time it will be a great idea, you just have to filter it out, say, “Hey, wait, this was great”. I went to him, he’s living on the North Sea, it’s a really great place where he’s living, and I stayed there for two weeks. It was basically two weeks of playing guitar from early in the morning till late at night. All of his ideas that we used were new ideas. The great thing is that he always follows the band, listens to records and watches the videos, and he knew perfectly how the band had to sound like. I think we wrote some really good stuff together - “The Dawn Of The AI”, which we released as the first single, is largely written by Stefan.

If we look at the metal bands that have become major stars in the past few years – Sabaton or Powerwolf, for instance – they are very consistent in their style and don’t really change anything from album to album. “Final Days” is not a dramatic departure from “Gunmen”, but still it’s different musically. Did you as the band feel that you were taking any risks with it?

Not at all. If you look at it from the perspective of harmonies and melodies, all of our records have this Orden Ogan feeling. If you compare a song like “To New Shores Of Sadness”, which was the opener on “Vale” in 2008, compare that with the “To The End” from 2012, and a song like “In The Dawn Of The AI”, they are… I wouldn’t say they are copies of each other, but they are very close from the songwriting perspective. If you play them on the guitar, if you’re a guitar player, you will understand straight away what I mean. I think the identity, the DNA of the band has always been there, we just change the theme from record to record, which I think is a good thing, because it keeps it fresh. There are other bands that have been super-successful that do the same, take Iron Maiden, for example – they’ve been to Egypt, to space and to every place. (laughs) Also I think the fans really dig it, because they don’t know what is coming. The only thing that is really different this time is that we tried to illustrate this sci-fi character with some vocal effects, glitches, dubstep sounds and stuff like that. But to be fair, we had horns and a banjo on “Gunmen” to illustrate the Wild West thing. On top of it, I think I got a lot better with my production skills. I wouldn’t say that “Gunmen” is a bad sounding record, I think it sounded good for its time, but “Final Days” is probably the best-sounding record I’ve done so far. I haven’t heard any complaints from the fans, let me put it like this. Obviously you will always have one or two persons, a certain percentage that are maximalists of a certain era, they think that “Easton Hope” (2010) is the one and only record and we will never do stuff like that again, while other people will say, “No, ‘Gunmen’ was the best record of all time”. I think in five years there will be people who say “Final Days” is the best record we’ve ever made and we can never do anything that is better.

We were watching your video for “Inferno” and noticed that you pretty much did it yourself – you are the producer, director, you were involved in filming it and editing it. How did you like this experience? Is it something that you are going to explore more in the future?

I did that a lot in the past actually, I was working a lot on the “Gunmen” clip, I was working a lot on the “F.E.V.E.R.” clip, I was doing a lot with the director of the clips, Reiner Franzen, I think we started working with him on “The Things We Believe In” in 2012, and it was always a very good collaboration. I always come with crazy ideas, and he’s always cursing because he doesn’t know how to turn them into reality. (laughs) I actually worked quite a lot on those, we edited the stuff together, and I would have loved to work with Reiner on this record as well, but for personal reasons and scheduling stuff it didn’t work out the way we wanted. Obviously there was also the pandemic going on. We were planning to do everything super-differently than we did, we would have loved to do more cinematic stuff, for example, for the “Let The Fire Rain” clip there was also an entire storyline planned to be shot, but we couldn’t get actors to the locations, and we couldn’t get the permissions to shoot on the locations. We basically did what we could, and I think the result is great for what it is. I think it will look differently next time.

Just out of curiosity, is this the real AFM office that you’re showing in this video?

(cracks) Yes, it is.

How did they react, when you bombed their office on the screen?

I think most of them loved it and were laughing their asses off, but one guy there was really super pissed off, and everybody else was like, “Ah, come on, where is your humor?” But I really have to say that we were done with our record deal after “Gunmen”, our record deal was fulfilled, so I had the option to go wherever I wanted. I had meetings with all the big companies that are relevant, at least here in Europe, and I got an offer from all of them. But we decided to stay with AFM Records, because we did great so far with each other, we really love the guys, they’re like family, and they did great things for us. They also made a great offer, and I didn’t see any reason at all to go to another record company. I’m a realistic guy, like I said before, and I always try to follow logic, and there was not a single argument that would make me want to pick another label. And the aliens in the video are shooting the main targets – you’ve got the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eifel Tower and the Statue of Liberty and everything, so actually it’s a compliment. If you’ve got the Eifel Tower and the AFM building, that means AFM Records is one of the main targets. (laughs)

What are touring perspectives for Orden Ogan at the moment? The tour with Brothers Of Metal is rescheduled for February next year – what are the chances of it actually happening in that timeframe?

It’s actually the third time that had to reschedule it. The first tour that was planned for the record was in September last year, not with Brothers Of Metal and Wind Rose, but with Grave Digger and Rage as special guests, which would have been an amazing German metal package. We had to reschedule this to April this year, and now we’ve had to reschedule to February next year. I don’t think there will be a lot of shows going on in 2021, but I really think it’s super-possible that we will do it in February next year. I know that there are discussions about doing shows in Russia finally, because I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time, and it might finally be happening next year. We obviously will have to see what happens – if a super-killer mutation number 666 comes with a mortality rate of 99.9%, there will be no one to do the tour and no one in the audience. (everybody laughs) But I do think that it will be super-possible that it works in February next year. I think it’s a great package, the other two bands are really great. This is also one of the things I really like about Orden Ogan – we can headline a package with seasoned veterans, silver-headed guys like Grave Digger and Rage, and we can also go out with very young and modern bands, and this really speaks for the Orden Ogan audience – there are both super-young guys and very old guys in the audience. I think it’s really great that we don’t appear to just one very narrow target group.

Orden Ogan on the Internet: https://www.ordenogan.de/

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

Roman Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
May 6, 2021
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