Axxis
It’s Wonderful To Be Independent

02.09.2013

It’s hard to believe that our first interview with singer Bernhand Weiss of German hard rockers / power metallers Axxis took place 11 years ago. It’s even harder to believe that our last interview happened more than seven years ago – given that this band has long been among our favorites and that there’s been more than enough developments in their camp lately. In 2009, after the very successful album “Utopia”, Axxis decided to take the future in their hands, parting ways with AFM Records and putting together their own label Phonotraxx. Then came their first live DVD, followed by a very unusual record called “reDISCOver(ed)”, where Bernhand and keyboardist Harry Oellers were covering songs by such out-of-the-box artists as Celine Dion and Boney M. In order to discuss all these recent developments, as well as Axxis’ future plans, we set up an interview with Bernhand at Sweden Rock Festival where the band did a fantastic performance, but… unfortunately never got a chance to meet us. But having waited for too long, we didn’t want to give up, and shortly after the festival we got the Axxis singer on the phone and spent the next 45 minutes bombarding him with all kinds of questions …

How did you like your performance at Sweden Rock? Did you enjoy the event, the crowd and so on?

It was the first time that we played at Sweden Rock, and for me it was a wonderful experience. We were fighting for a slot on Sweden Rock for 10 years, and we never got a chance, but this year, 2013, we got it for the first time. The sun was shining, the crowd was unbelievable, I liked it very much. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to meet each other on the festival, even though I tried to find you, but everything else was wonderful. (laughs)

Harry told us in a previous interview that you always bring people from the audience on stage, but we never saw how it works in real life before Sweden Rock. Is it all improvised, or do you work out some scenarios beforehand?

(laughs) Because we play these songs at every gig, I like to have some special things on stage that will be a surprise for ourselves, too. If I put a boy or a girl on the stage, something special happens. Maybe something goes wrong, or something happens that is not on the plan, but that’s what I like – you have to react spontaneously, and sometimes it works. One week ago we played with a drunken girl on the stage, and it was horrible! It looked very bad, but that’s what I need – sometimes it goes great, sometimes it doesn’t work. With that child on stage at Sweden Rock it worked wonderfully, he hit the drums very well.

As you said, it was the first time you played at Sweden Rock, and the last time we spoke, you said that you are gradually, but slowly conquering new places in Europe with each album. Over the past five-six years, how much have you progressed? How many countries in Europe are still left to play?

When we started in 1989 with the “Kingdom Of The Night” record on EMI, and until the “Voodoo Vibes” record (1996), we had the problem that we were famous only in Germany, and on the border of Germany everything stopped. With Massacre Records, we got a chance to play in Italy and Spain for the first time, and on the “Hellish Rock” tour with Helloween, we got a chance to play in Sweden and Norway for the first time. We have played all over Europe by now, even in Romania, and I like it very much to play abroad. Unfortunately, due to illegal downloads, the entire market collapsed, for instance, in Spain – everybody is downloading all the stuff for free, and we get no money to organize a tour in this country. It’s a bit of a shame, but it’s reality.

And what about Russia? Have you ever got any proposals to play in Russia?

(laughs) Yes, I can tell you a story! We got an offer from a Russian promoter for three gigs – in Moscow, St. Petersburg and another city. We said, “Oh, great, it’s the first time we will be able to play in Russia, unbelievable!” I was looking forward for it, because a friend of mine, Victor Smolski, maybe you know him from Rage, is a Russian guitar player who’s living in Germany, and he is organizing Rage’s Russian tours. This was supposed to be our first visit to Russia, and they even started selling tickets for the shows, but we never got the chance to fly there, because they didn’t pay for our flight tickets. I don’t think there were any criminal intentions behind this (laughs), but anyway, our first chance didn’t work out.

For the past two or three years you are running your own record label, Phonotraxx. What are your impressions? How much has the reality of running a label been different from your expectations?

It’s a very interesting question. We started to form our publishing company in the year 2000, and it was our start in the business that goes on a bit behind the scene. When we decided to form a record label, that was another step forward, and for us it was a great chance to promote ourselves and distribute our records by ourselves. To be honest, I like it very much, because now we are responsible for everything, we have everything under control, and we earn more money with it. Nothing really changed – we’ve got the same distribution partner, Soulfood, which also distributes the releases of AFM Records, and the only thing that changed is that we get more money from the sales now. OK, we also have more responsibility – we have to book our own promoter, we have to invest a lot of money in advertisement and everything else, the financial risk is on our side. But for a rock musician it’s a wonderful thing to be independent from the business. We have our own small family, and for the first time we’ve got the chance to promote our own bands, not only Axxis. We signed Dawn Of Destiny and Mercury Falling, and it’s a very interesting constellation, because we can offer them not only a record deal, we can offer a tour, they can support us, we can build up the band, and they’re very excited about the sales on our label in Germany. It’s a lot of hard work, but I like it very much.

Do you think digital sales are the future of the music business, and CDs will die out soon?

Everything is digital today. The capabilities of the Internet are growing and getting better, so I think the future belongs to digital downloads and digital streaming. It’s not better than the CD, but it’s the future, unfortunately. At the same time, there s an interesting development here in Germany, maybe it’s the same in Russia, too – a lot of people are buying vinyl records. I don’t know why, but we have had some vinyl releases – “reDISCOver(ed)” and “Paradise In Flames” (2006), and we’re selling a lot of them. It’s not that we can live off it, but it’s a really cool amount.

Vinyl sales are also on the rise in Russia, but among the people whom we know most of those who buy vinyl continue listening to mp3. (everybody laughs) They buy a vinyl, they put it in their shelf and continue listening to their iPod!

Unfortunately you cannot fit a vinyl record on iPod! (laughs)

Your last studio album with AFM Records, “Utopia” (2009), went into Top 40 in Germany. Do you think it is possible to repeat that success with the next Axxis record on Phonotraxx?

Hehe, that’s another interesting question for us. Every time when we’re talking about record sales, we say, “Should we sell our CDs via our home page?” For example, with the “reDISCOver(ed)” CD and the DVD (“20 Years Of Axxis”, 2011), before we released them, you could order them via our homepage and you could get them directly from the band with a signing card, with a T-shirt or whatever. We got a lot of orders via our homepage, but they don’t count for the Media Control Chart. The charts don’t notice these sales. For the next CD we will have to decide of we should sell it via our homepage or if we should sell it on the regular market and get a chart entry. Harry said, “Let’s take the money”, and I said, “Let’s take the fame”. (laughs) I don’t know, it’s not so easy to decide.

By the way, when can we expect the next album of new Axxis songs? It’s been four years since the release of “Utopia”…

The next CD will be very special, because next year we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary, and we decided to make a very special thing for it. On February 28 we will release the next real Axxis CD via our label Phonotraxx, and I cannot tell you so much about this release, but I can tell you it will be a very special and important release for Axxis.

We have read a lot of interviews about “ReDISCOver(ed)”, but there is one thing that is left unclear to us – why did only you and Harry participate in the recording process? Why weren’t the rest of the guys involved?

First of all, I have to say that we hate cover songs! (everybody laughs) The next argument is that I hate cover bands! In Germany, in every fucking club everybody’s playing cover songs – a Rammstein cover band, a Scorpions cover band, a Simple Minds cover band and whatever. We have so many young interesting musicians, but they never get a chance to play those clubs. For example, I’m coming from Dortmund, there’s a club nearby, and every weekend a cover band is playing there, but no new fresh bands who’ve got wonderful songs ever have a chance to play live on their stage. Old musicians, and even some famous musicians, are playing covers, too. I think this is killing the music scene, because Iron Maiden, AC/DC and those big bands – they were there when I was young, and they are still in the business, but where’s the next generation of metal bands? One of the problems is this cover stuff. Everybody wants to make money on music, and it’s easier to play songs by other bands than to write your own songs – because of illegal downloads you get no money for it, and whatever. But I fight for own songs, and that is the reason why we recorded a covers album – to say, “Hey, if you want us to be alive in they future, we need your support in buying our CDs. And if you don’t wanna buy CDs with our own songs that we have written by ourselves, then we will be playing cover songs in the future! That’s horrible! You don’t want it, and we don’t want it”. That’s why we did hurting songs, the songs that hurt me, “My Heart Will Go On” – my God, horrible! But we did it to show the people, “Hey, this could not be the future of a rock band!” Very few people understood it, but some of the people did understand it, and some magazines in Germany speaking about copyright protection put this CD as an example of what has happened to music. That was the reason why we recorded this CD without other members.

And what do the other members think about this CD? Do they like it? Or do they also hate cover songs?

They like it very much. I like the CD, too, because it’s good for a party. If you have a metal party or a regular rock party, these songs are working. You don’t need a DJ, just put “reDISCOver(ed)” in your CD player, and it would work fine. But it’s not a regular Axxis release, in my opinion. The other guys said it was great and wonderful, but hey, that was more or less a side-project.

Speaking about the other guys’ involvement – there was a song written by Marco Wriedt (guitar) on “Doom Of Destiny” (2007), and a song co-written by Marco and Rob Shomaker (bass) on “Utopia”. Do the guys participate in the songwriting for the next album, too?

We would like to do this, we want to involve them in the songs, but it’s not easy sometimes. For me it’s a very interesting thing – we’ve got a lot of good musicians, but not everybody is a good songwriter. And we had bad musicians in the past, who were really good songwriters. You don’t need to be a good musician to be a good songwriter. Marco is a wonderful guitar player, but if he comes up with a riff that I like, he says, “Oh no, it sounds like Joe Satriani”. “Marco, it sounds wonderful! It’s got magic, it’s got a vibe, I like it very much”. But he has too much knowledge about playing guitar to write songs. That’s why we only have a little bit on his songs on our albums. For every CD, we always give him a chance. We’ve got a very good drummer (Dirk Brand), by the way, who has a good songwriting attitude, and we’re writing some songs in the rehearsal room with the entire band. And our bass player Rob has done two really good songs for the next CD. We have so many songs, maybe we’ll need two CDs for the next release. Everybody’s doing a really good job, it’s not longer a Harry Oellers/Bernhard Weiss production only, it’s the work of the whole band. By the way, we’ve got our old guitar player Walter Pietch back in the studio, and we’re thinking about writing some songs together with him.

On the past couple of albums you started singing in German. What is the reason?

Maybe because I’m a German! (everybody laughs) I was growing up with English and American music, but when I started to make music, my first band was a punk band called Shift-In, and we were singing punk music in the German language. Years later I had this Prometheus Brain project with a theater in Memmingen, Germany - I was an actor in a theater for one year, and we staged a rock opera on stage. I met a theater actor there who wrote songs in German, and they sounded very interesting. German is a very strong language, usually I hate it, because it sounds too strong for music, but he showed me some very cool tricks with the German language, and I liked it. It was the reason why we wrote the songs “Fass mich an” and “Engel aus Hass”. The next German song will be called “Lass dich gehen”, which means “You have to flip out now” or whatever.

What is the song “Sarah Wanna Die” (off “Utopia”) about? Do you refer to any specific person in that song?

In my family there was a girl who died at the age of six. And one year before that my grandma died, she was 94 or 95. So within two years I was able to compare how people are dealing with the fact that you have to die. For me it was a very interesting thing – the girl of six years had no problems with it. Sure, had a problem with it, but she was thinking about the angels, how she would be going to heaven, she was playing with those thoughts a little bit, and it was not so sad for her if you compare it with the situation of an old woman. I was surprised and shocked, it was a mixture of surprise and shock. I really lived with this situation two years ago, and I just had to write a song about this. But the girl’s name was not Sarah, it’s only my imagination.

Another song which has been of interest to us is “She Got Nine Lives” (off “Doom Of Destiny”). This song is about a conflict of generations, parents and their daughter, isn’t it?

It’s about a punk girl who wants to go out of her parents’ house and live on the street. Some friends of mine got to know a girl who did this. She was 16 or 17 years old, and she left their parents and lived on the street for two or three years. It was good for her, it was dangerous
sometimes, but on the other hand, it was her own life and she learned a lot of things on the street.

You also have a daughter – do you ever have this kind of conflict in your family?

(laughs) No, I have no conflicts in my family, everything works fine. She’s good at school, better than I was in that period of time, and I’m very proud that she’s growing up. The problem is that last week she got her first boyfriend, and I have weapons in my cellar now waiting for him! (cracks) For me it’s a very difficult situation, because as a father you see that your daughter has got her first boyfriend… (sighs) it’s a strange situation!

We remember doing our first interview with you 11 years ago, in 2002. In that interview we described your music as “happy metal”, and you liked this definition a lot. But your later records, especially “Utopia”, are not so happy anymore. What is the reason?

I think Axxis is not really a happy metal band, Axxis are a rock band that is sometimes playing happy songs such as “My Little Princess” or “Touch The Rainbow”, but we’re also doing songs like “Kingdom Of The Night”, “Angel Of Death”, or whatever. We’ve got a wide range of different styles, in my opinion, that’s why I don’t wanna say that Axxis is a happy metal band, but we are playing some songs that are happy. Usually I really like the mystic sound, for example, the intros on “Utopia” or “Doom Of Destiny”, something a bit darker. I like happy metal, that’s true, but it’s not only happy metal that we’re doing, sometimes we have acoustic stuff, sometimes we have power metal, sometimes we have regular hard rock. This definition is not wrong, but it’s not fully right, too.

But don’t you think that 10 years ago your music was happier than it is today?

Maybe we were in a happy mood in that period of time! I’m not sure… What was our CD in that period of time? “Eyes Of Darkness” (2001)?

Well, “Back To The Kingdom” (2000) is a really happy record!

Yeah, but “Eyes Of Darkness”, for example, is a little bit darker. It’s always a mixture, we have a little bit of everything, it’s not one style, in my opinion. But I understand what you mean, the direction of “Doom Of Destiny” and “Utopia” is a bit darker, but we still have funny songs, such as “Lady Moon” on “Paradise In Flames”, or “She Got Nine Lives”, the one you’ve mentioned, it’s a happy song.

You mentioned a theater production in which you were involved several years ago, “Prometheus Brain Project”. Can you say a few words about this project? What was it like for you to be a part of it?

I was very proud, to be honest. It was a huge theater with a huge stage, and we were going on tour through a lot of different theaters in Germany. “Prometheus Brain Project” deals with globalization and the problems we have with Africa - a lot of people are coming from southern Africa and try find their luck and start a new life in Europe, for example in Germany. The scene is set in Paris, France. I was very proud, because I had to write songs for this theatre project, and I had to be an actor on stage for the first time in my life. I was told I have a bit of a talent to do this, we got a lot of good reviews, so I’m really happy. We’ve got one song on the Internet, in Germany it’s forbidden and you cannot get access to it on Youtube, but maybe you can see it, it’s called “Virus Of The Modern Time”, and there you will see me playing Thunder Bear, looking a little bit strange with a mask on my face. We haven’t released those songs, I think they only belong to this project, that’s the reason why. These times are unfortunately gone, I have no time for it anymore, they asked me to do another project next year, but for next year Axxis is more important for me, and I cannot commit to it.

It’s an interesting thing – a few years ago another German hard rock band, Bonfire, participated in a theater production (“The Rauber”), too. Do you think there is a new generation of actors and directors in Germany who are rock fans? Is rock music in Germany now perceived as a more serious form of art than, say, 10 or 15 years ago?

I don’t think so. It’s only happening with some musicians who are thinking about new ideas that may connect their style of music with another scene, another culture. But to a certain extent, you’re right, there is a minor trend, take Avantasia, for example – it’s not a real opera thing, but it has something to do with opera, and many bands are thinking about ways to connect these two scenes together. Nevertheless, you can’t talk about a trend here. We are going our own way and trying to do something special.

A couple of years ago you did a tour where you only performed material from your first three Axxis records. How did you like this experience? What do you think of those records when you look back at them now?

I still like those three CDs, and for me it was like a walk through my history. It was very interesting. But we’re still playing very old songs, as you saw on “Sweden Rock”, we’re playing “Living In A World”, “Little Look Back”, “Kingdom Of The Night” – these are our hits, and the people want to hear them. This tour was a very special thing, because we had a screen in the background where we were playing video footage from those days, and it was very interesting for me to watch all those videoclips and private material. To be honest with you, for me it doesn’t matter which songs we’re playing on stage. For me it’s more important to get a good sound, to play with the people a little bit, to get a good connection to the audience, and whether we are playing old songs or new songs, it’s not so important. It’s interesting for me to play new material because I get to see how it works for the people, because I learn a little bit more what songs fit more to the people and to the band, but everything else doesn’t matter. Hopefully the songs sound powerful, and people like them.

Do you have any plans to re-release those old records on Phonotraxx, or do the rights to them belong to EMI forever?

You are really into the business! We raised this question last week, because the EMI deal, I think, will be finished in two years, and we are thinking about getting all the EMI material back to Phonotraxx. I’m not sure if everything works smoothly, or we will have to get some lawyers, but formally the deal expires in 2015, and then all the material from EMI will be re-released on Phonotraxx.

“Utopia” features a bonus track, “20 Years Anniversary Song”, which has a lot of special guests like Andi Deris and Doro Pesch. How did you put together the guestlist? Did all these people play a part in the history of Axxis, or are they just your friends in the business?

All the singers who sing the song with me are friends of mine. For example, Schmier from Destruction, Andi Deris, Claus Lessman from Bonfire got to know us a long time ago, and that’s the reason why I asked them. If they had not been my friends, I would have to pay them! (everybody laughs) Doro was singing in her hotel room in London, Andi Deris was singing his part on the island where he’s living, Bonfire were in Ingolstadt, Bavaria… With Schmier, it was a very interesting thing, because in the beginning I thought that if he sings on this song, it wouldn’t work, but he sounds wonderful! He’s got a wonderful great voice, I was very surprised. I think it’s a very interesting mixture of different styles – for example, we’ve got a soul singer, Rolf Stahlhofen, he’s not a metal singer, he has more to do with soul and blues. And it was also a challenge to put all these different styles together.

This song also features a contribution from Walter Pietsch, your former guitar player. As far as I understand, your split with him back in the late 90s wasn’t very easy. How did you manage to get together again?

We never had a problem with Walter. He left the band in 1999 because he didn’t want to be on stage anymore, he just wanted to be a producer, he wanted to produce other bands, probably earn more money with it, maybe that was the reason, I don’t know. But we’re still friends, and we’ve never had a problem with Walter. There were other bad situations in that period of time, because Harry’s child died, and we had to make a break. That’s the reason why we wrote the song “Only God Knows” on “Back To The Kingdom”. It took us one year to be able to sit together and say, “Hey, let’s stick together, let’s do the band again”. It was a sort of comeback for Harry and me, and we had to do a casting to find a new guitar player. To be honest, this was very difficult for us, because I was growing up in Axxis with Walter Pietsch, and for me it was very unusual to have a kind of stranger in the band. It takes some time to get to be friends, to get a relationship. In the beginning it was difficult, that was the reason why Harry and I produced “Back To The Kingdom” by ourselves, and the guitar player, Guido Wehmeyer, was only playing the stuff that we wanted to hear. But it worked, and we got to be friends with Guido, too.

As a record label manager, you must be listening to a lot of young bands. In your opinion, how is the hard rock scene in Germany doing at the moment?

(sighs) It’s a good question. We have a good rock scene in Germany, we have a lot of big festivals, such as Wacken or Bang Your Head, but like I said before, we have no next generation of big bands. We have a lot of young bands who never have a chance, because, like I said, we have a lot of cover bands everywhere around us. That’s a big problem, in my opinion, we’ve got an Iron Maiden cover band, a Black Sabbath cover band, a Pink Floyd cover band from Australia, and they’re making more money than the real Pink Floyd! It’s a strange situation. The scene is changing, and I hope that businessmen will try to find new bands and invest money in them. We have to decrease illegal downloads somehow to get a strong market and build up new bands. I saw that with Dawn Of Destiny and Mercury Falling, young bands, not big names, and we had to invest a lot of money to make them a little successful. I’m happy that it works, but it’s not easy for the next generation. I think the scene is there, it’s still strong, but we have to take care that there’s a next generation for this.

You and Harry have been together in the band for more than 20 years. How do you manage to remain partners for so long? Don’t you ever have musical or business disputes?

(laughs) I’ve never been together with a girl for so long! (everybody laughs) They say we are a kind of husband and wife, it’s unbelievable, for me it’s a surprise that this relationship is working for such a long time. I’m still happy to see Harry, he’s working in the studio, and I’m sitting here writing lyrics for the next CD and doing the interview. I think it’s a really good relationship. The reason why this works is that every year we’ve got new challenges that make Axxis interesting for us. We were working with female singer Laconia, we got our own label and a publishing company, then we were doing our very first live album and DVD, and then we were working on a really strange covers album – that makes the band very interesting, every year we make a step further. From the musical side, it’s also very interesting, because Harry is buying a lot of CDs, and I hate to listen to music. (everybody laughs) Marco, another example, is also very much into the scene, he knows everything about musicians, producers and everybody, and I’m totally stupid in this. (laughs) But at the same time, I’m free, I don’t copy anybody, because I’ve got nothing in my head, and there’s nothing to copy! (everybody laughs)

Axxis on the Internet: http://ww.axxis.de

Interview by Roman Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
Photos by Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
June 24, 2013
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