Artillery
One Foot In The Thrash

30.01.2012

Like most of the veterans of the thrash metal scene, Denmark’s Artillery have had their share of break-ups and revivals. It got to the point when no one believed in the band any longer, especially because original singer Flemming Ronsdorf made it clear that he wasn’t interested in doing a lot with Artillery. But the Stutzer brothers, Michael and Morten, made yet another attempt at bringing the 80s cult back to life, and this time it was surprisingly successful. “My Blood” is already the second album released by Artillery after the reunion, and it’s probably the closest they have come to their 80s heyday. Missing an opportunity to hear the success story of this revival would be unforgivable, and Michael Stutzer was kind enough to agree to answer all our questions…

At that point, however, force majeure circumstances started coming in. We at HeadBanger.ru are no strangers to doing interviews via Skype, everybody knows this is cheap and easy, and we do agree that this is cheap, but as to easy… well, sometimes not at all. Not only we were losing connection four times over our 40-minute conversation, the level of noise coming from the speakers was so high that it is better described as barrage. As a result, even though Michael did answer everything we asked him, a lot of that could not be deciphered from the recording. That’s also the reason why this interview took so long to be published. We apologize to the band, label and readers, but what you find below is the best we could come up with…

You worked on “My Blood” with Soren Andersen as a producer once again. Can you tell us about his contribution to your music? Does he try to change anything in the songs?

Soren is very good in listening to harmonies and vocals, and he’s a very good person to work with, because he has lots of ideas. It’s not like he says, “Look, you have to do this, you have to do that”. He only comments when he sees some issues, and overall he does like our music. He only pushes the band to the limit when he speaks that way. He’s a very good producer.

You have worked with many great producers such as Tue Madsen, Andy Sneap, Flemming Rasmusen. How would you compare Soren Andersen to them?

I think they all have been good, but the good point with Soren is that he’s like a friend to us, he’s like an extra member of the band. Apart from making music, we can have a beer with him. We see him around almost every day.

By the way, Tue and Andy were responsible for your album “B.A.C.K.” (1999) but it sounds not that great. Do you still like “B.A.C.K.”? And what can you say about the working process on “B.A.C.K.”?

The problem with “B.A.C.K.” was that we were more of a project than a band. Flemming, our old singer, wasn’t really committed to the band at that point. He didn’t want to play live at all back then, so this was more like a project. But “Cybermind”, a song from “B.A.C.K.”, is still in our set, it’s one of the best songs we’ve ever done. So I have mixed feelings about the album.

Do you still say in touch with Flemming? Can you compare Flemming and your current singer Soren Adamsen in terms of personalities and professionalism?

I really don’t speak that often with Flemming, I’ve actually met him only one time after that. The point is that Flemming wanted to stay on the underground level, he hated touring. But he was a good singer and he sang great. If you compare him to Soren, Soren is really a friend of the band, he is interested in playing live, and he’s very easy to work with. He’s got a great presence on stage and a lot of fire. I really think that Soren fits the band better than Flemming did, and you can really see it.

By the way, how did you find Soren Adamsen? Did you have any other candidates?

At first we tried the old singer from a band called Anubis Gate (Torben Askholm), but he couldn’t really sing, and he suggested that we should try it with Soren. He sang with other bands and he wasn’t really familiar with Artillery, but we tried it out, and after two rehearsals we were all sure that this was the right combination. Soren can do the high screams and he can also really sing. So we were all motivated from the start, in about three weeks we wrote four songs, so it was really a comeback.

What influenced you to add some oriental pieces to such songs like “Mi Sangre” and “Warrior Blood”?

That’s the thing we have been famous for since “By Inheritance” (1990), we always try to keep some of the oriental influences there. The funny thing is that those oriental influences come from being in Russia! We were in Russia in 1989, very close to the Iranian border, and in the train which we were riding you heard that kind of music all the time. You could say that “Khomaniac” was written in Russia!

Would you agree that there are a lot of elements of classic heavy metal on you last two albums?

Yes, but I think they’ve always been there. If you go back and listen to “Fear Of Tomorrow” (1985), for example, you will find a lot of elements of classic metal, and the same is true for “By Inheritance”. We’ve always been considered a melodic thrash band, right from the start, and I don’t think the music has changed so much. Of course, the singing is different, but it’s still very honest.

The song “Warrior Blood’ was described by Soren as follows, "A song about fighting. Soldiers, prize-fighters, people who are struggling with deadly diseases." But the video for this song is not as serious as we would expect. Why?

The idea for the video was that we wanted to use the theme of the CD. It has “My Blood” as the title and the song “Warrior Blood”, and they describe something that transcends from generation to generation, something that you teach the children. “Warrior Blood” also means that you have to fight for your rights, not only as a revolution, but also as evolution, peacefully, you can try to be stronger and really make a change, but you have to learn the hard way. That’s the overall attitude of the video. But we didn’t want to make it too serious, because we are down-to-earth people, we are not rock stars, we just want to have fun.

The song “Concealed In The Dark” is dedicated to mountaineer David Sharp (he died while tried to climb Mount Everest on his own – ed.). Why did you decide to choose his story?

I think some day Soren was searching the Internet just for fun, he stumbled across that story and thought, “Hey, that’s a good story”. The guy was just sitting there trying to get on the mountain, and he died because he couldn’t get up or down. People were passing by and no one took him. That’s a good story.

Why did you decide to re-record “Ain’t Giving In” from the “Mind Factory” demo (1992) for “My Blood”?

On the previous album, “When Death Comes” (2009), we used two songs from that demo – “Delicious Of Grandeur” and “Uniform”. It was obvious to try to do “Ain’t Giving In”, too. That demo had some good songs on it, but they were never released.

And what about the song “Welcome To The Minds Factory”? Will it ever see the light of a day?

Maybe. We used some of that on the bonus track for “B.A.C.K.” called “Jester”, but we renamed it because Flemming wanted to use other lyrics. But maybe we’ll do it in the original form on the next album.

Your brother Morten writes most of the music for the band. Why did you contribute only a few tracks on last two or even three albums?

Morten just has so many good ideas, and I’m more focused on other sides of the band’s activity. I’m very busy and I don’t have time to write more songs. Maybe on the next album I’ll come up with two or three more, we’ll have to see.

By the way, who was the first to get into heavy metal and start playing guitar – you or Morten? At what age did it happen?

We started at the same time. I was 13, he was 12 or something like that. I had a very old guitar, and Morten had a very old bass, and the drummer had to play just one drum.

On the first two Artillery albums everybody is credited for writing the songs. Was it really the case, or was it just a kind of agreement within the band to credit the whole band as the authors of the songs?

On the third album, even though Morten came with most of the ideas, the credit goes to a lot more people. Also our old guitar player Jurgen Sandau, who was no longer in the band at that point, is credited on that. At that time you couldn’t say, “That song is your song and this song is his song”, we were all very much involved in creating songs, including Flemming, who started to write all the lyrics on “By Inheritance”.

Artillery was one of the first (if not the very first) thrash metal bands in Denmark. Was it hard to get recognition playing such extreme music in the early 1980s?

(laughs) It was very hard. All the bands in Denmark back then were playing in a more pop-oriented way, except Mercyful Fate. Thrash metal was a very small thing. People used to call us a punk band because we played faster than the rest of the bands, someone said we sounded like fast Motorhead. They couldn’t swallow us. I think we were very early, and that was great.

The most successful and popular musicians from Denmark are Lars Ulrich and King Diamond. What can you say about the metal scene in Denmark in early the 1980s? Were there other significant bands?

Of course, there were bands playing a more popular style, like Pretty Maids, for example. There were others, but none of them carried on for too long.

And what would you say about the Danish metal scene of the present time?

I think there’s a lot of good bands coming out of Denmark right now. We have a lot of new thrash combos, young people enjoy to play thrash metal, and I think that’s great. But of course, heavier bands get more attention, bands like Mercenary, for instance.

It’s common knowledge that Lars Ulrich hang out with Artillery in the 1980s when he was visiting Denmark. Can you say a few more words about the band’s relations with him? When did you get to know him? Do you see each other nowadays when Metallica comes to Denmark?

Not so long ago we said hi to James, because he came when we released “When Death Comes”. We said, “Hello, come down to our release party tonight”, and he did it, that was cool. We got to know Metallica because we shared the rehearsal room with Mercyful Fate. When Mercyful Fate was on tour and Metallica was beginning to write songs for “Ride The Lightning” (1984) and “Master Of Puppets” (1986), they used the same rehearsal room as us. In fact, at that time we saw them a lot. After that we didn’t see each other too often, because they were busy, but still whenever they would come to Denmark, they invite us to their concerts.

You said that your first demo “We Are The Dead” (1982) wasn’t included in the “Deadly Relics” compilation (1998) because it featured singer Per Onink. What kind of issues did you have with him? Was he opposed to releasing that demo?

Oh, that’s a different story. In the town where I live, there was a guy from the record company Mighty Music, and one day he saw me riding on my bike and he said, “Hey, do you have any old demos by Artillery? We wanna hear it”. I went down to my cellar and I found all those demos we did, and gave him this material. But there were a lot of tapes to listen to at the same time, and “We Are The Dead” was the tape that he apparently forgot about.

Please tell us about singer Carsten Lohmann. It’s interesting that he was a teacher…

We were searching for a singer at that time. There were a couple of guys from our town who got us in contact with him, and he wanted us to try him. That was OK to me, even though Carsten was never in line with our ideal of a singer. It was difficult to get him traveling, because he was a teacher. By the way, Soren, our new singer, is a teacher, too.

Jorgen Sandau, one of the founding members of the band, left Artillery after the second album “Terror Squad” (1987). Why did he make this decision?

Jurgen was still in the band when we reunited to go to Russia, but he didn’t want to play songs in the style “Khomaniac”, he wanted Artillery to continue in the vein of “Fear Of Tomorrow” and “Terror Squad”. Jurgen decided that he wanted to try some other stuff. Morten also plays guitar, so he switched to the guitar, and we got Peter Thorslund for the album recording and shows.

In 1989 you did a tour in the USSR, where you played in some very strange locations, mostly somewhere in Central Asia. We have heard various crazy stories abut that tour. Can you tell us what really happened?

(laughs) I will try. It was a very daring thing, there’d never been a thrash metal band in Russia at that time. We arrived in some city in Uzbekistan 200 kilometers from the Iranian border, and 400 kilometers from China. We did six concerts there, and the fans were going really wild, they were coming onstage and giving us all kinds of presents, badges and even flags. The military allowed that, because they didn’t have an order to the contrary, but then people started falling down from the stage and somebody was hurt. After that we were not allowed to go on in Russia, they put us on a train, and we had to go 3,000 kilometers all across the country while they were figuring out what to do with us.

There were some rumors that the band had negotiations about other shows in Russia in 2007 but that shows never happened. Why? Would you still like to come to Russia?

We never heard back from the guy. We replied to him presenting our conditions, but he never wrote us back. We would like to come back to Russia to see how the country has changed now. We had a fun time in Russia, the shows were fun, and we hope to come back to Russia some time.

You left the band after “By Inheritance”. Did you felt that you were burnt-out?

After we made that album, we got a lot of offers to tour all over Europe. But Flemming didn’t want to play those tours. A lot of stress occurred because of that. I said, “I don’t wanna be in a band like this because I want to play live. I don’t wanna sit on my ass when there are people who want to see us”. There was no fun in that. So I left Artillery and started a band called Missing Link. Soon after that Carsten (Nielsen, drums) also left the band, so there was basically nobody left in the band.

Tell us about your project Missing Link – what kind of music did you play in this project?

Missing Link was a more straightforward metal band that sounded more like Savatage and stuff like that.

The thrash metal scene has witnessed a sort of revival in the past six or eight years, with many young bands appearing on stage and becoming successful. What can you say about such bands as Evile or Warbringer? Have you heard them, and if yes, do you like their music?

I really like Evile and Bonded By Blood, they have some good songs, and I am looking forward to seeing them live, because they will play with us on the upcoming tours. There are many young bands playing in that style, a lot more than five years ago, and it’s good to see that the music continues through generations, that the music is stronger than time.

How much do you practice on guitar nowadays? What are your favorite guitarists?

I grew up listening to the music from the 1970s, and I still admire guys like Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath. He has his own unique style. I also like guys playing more melodic music, guys like Michael Schenker. I have had a lot of different influences on my style.

Artillery on the Internet: http://www.artillery.dk

Special thanks to Agnieszka Kulpinska (Metal Mind Productions) for arranging this interview

Roman Patrashov, Konstantin “Hirax” Chilikin
April 8, 2011
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