Crematory
Human Blood

04.03.2008

“You must die to be reborn,” sang the mighty Manowar many years ago, and even though a lot of what they sing about is just fantasy, this statement is definitely true. Even though German gothic metal titans Crematory enjoyed recognition in the 1990s, it wasn’t until the band broke up and got back together in 2003 when they turned into a really big name on the international metal scene. All their albums since the reunion have been extremely successful, and the new record “Pray” is bound to solidify their success even further. We got in touch with the band’s drummer, manager and spokesman Markus Jullich to find out some of the secrets of Crematory’s survival, and even though this interview is not so much focused on music as our interviews usually are, it may work as a glance behind the music…

The new album is called “Pray”, and in the past you also had an album called “Believe” (2000). At the same time, Crematory can hardly be called a spiritual or religious band. So what motivated you to name the album this way?

It’s not a religious thing. We initially wanted the album to be called “Gothic Metal”, it was a working title, and we wanted to use it for the new album. But when we saw the cover for the new album and the pictures, we felt that the title of one of the songs, “Pray”, fits much better with the layout. That’s why we chose the title, it has nothing to do with religion.

The new cover artwork is quite different from what you did on the past several records. What does the girl on the cover symbolize?

The new cover was done by the same person who has been working with us since the album “Act Seven” (1999). We told him that we wanted to have a cover in the style that’s typical for a gothic metal album. In the past some of our covers, for instance, the German album (“Crematory”, 1996) and “Revolution” (2004) were much different, but now we wanted to have a typical gothic-metal-style cover that fits good to the music, so that the two would form one unit.

What definitely surprises the listeners a lot on the new album is much more diversity in the keyboard parts. How did you decide to integrate orchestral sounds in your music? And have you considered working with a real orchestra?

Before we started to write new songs, we had a band meeting, and all the band members discussed what we wanted to do on the next record. The thing is that when we played in Russia last year, the organizers said, “We wanna book Crematory again, but we wanna have a best-of show.” At that time we were very sad about it, we were like, “Oh shit, we have to go to the practice room to rehearse the old stuff which we haven’t played for a long time.” But when we went to the practice room, we had a lot of fun playing old harder stuff, where we used much more atmospheric and darker sounds, especially from the keyboards. So when we had a band meeting, everyone said, “Let’s go back to the roots, we had a lot of fun playing old songs, we wanna do it now and make a gothic metal album with the feeling we had in the mid-90s, when we did “Illusions” (1995) or “Awake” (1997). Let’s recreate the old experience and the old feeling that we had and also upgrade the sound with more aggressive guitars.

Lyrically the album is said to be darker than before, even though “Klagebilder” (2006) was already a very dark album. What inspires the band to write about such dark themes? Especially when Crematory has quite a successful career, you all have dayjobs, families and so on…

This is a thing that we were missing a little bit, especially when we did “Klagebilder” and “Revolution”. When we made a comeback with the “Revolution” album, we had more interest in electronic music, and this influenced the album a lot, we wanted it to be more electronic. On “Klagebilder” we had a much more rock-oriented sound, and we won many new fans with “Revolution” and “Klagebilder”, but we also lost some of the old fans, who preferred the gothic metal sound, much heavier and darker. Some of our fans wrote in our guestbook or in personal letters, “You lost the darkness.” We sat together, talked about it and decided that they were right – we definitely lost the darkness on our past two albums, and on “Pray” we wanted to bring back the heaviness and the darkness we lost. We wanted to have an aggressive sound and mystical themes like we had on the albums before.

Speaking about the success of the band – when you released “Revolution”, it was supported by a single and two videoclips, but when you moved to Massacre Records and released “Klagebilder”, there were no singles and no videos in support. Did you have a limited budget or you think that Crematory at the present stage doesn’t need this kind of support?

The main problem is that here in Germany there are no TV stations that play our videoclips. Every time we had very good videoclips which were very expensive, we paid 30,000 euros for “The Fallen”. This time it made no sense to spend so much money on the videoclip that the fans cannot see. We did make a videoclip for the previous album, but it was not released at that time. It’s a live recording of “Hollenbrand” that we did last year at the Wave Gotik Treffen festival. This time we are talking with two partners, they wanna have Crematory sounds from the “Pray” album for a soundtrack to some movie. We are ready to give them the songs, but in return they will make one or two videoclips for us for small money. It makes sense to do that again.

As you said, the working title of the new album was “Gothic Metal”. At the same time, as far as we understand, no one in the band actually listens to gothic metal – you all prefer different kinds of music, not necessarily metal. So how did it happen that Crematory started playing gothic metal and become one of the leaders of the genre?

I don’t know. (laughs) Every band member listens to different styles of music, for example, Felix (vocals) likes death metal or metalcore, Matthias (guitar/vocals) prefers thrash metal, Harald (bass) likes EBM and electronic stuff much more, Katrin (keyboards) listens to normal radio music, and I’m the oldest person that listens to all different styles of music. The main thing is that every band member brings in his influences that form the style of Crematory, and it’s gothic metal. (laughs)

You have a band, a family and a dayjob. Do you still have any time for listening to other people’s music? Have there been any new albums that really impressed you lately?

When I was younger, my favorite musician was Billy Idol. In the 1980s I was more into synth pop stuff such as Depeche Mode, and then I went back to heavy music, it was Iron Maiden and Metallica. And now, as I said, I’m listening to everything. For example, I like the new Paradise Lost album (“In Requiem”, 2007) very much, the new Amorphis album (“Silent Waters”, 2007), Nightwish, so it’s really everything.

For many musicians it’s a dream to earn their living by doing music. But you went the opposite way – from a full-time band to doing music as a hobby. Does your current situation make you happy?

(laughs) In the late 1990s, when we agreed that we would be finished with Crematory, we were all 30 years old and we didn’t get enough money to live from the music. It was hard for us to say, “OK, we are 30, we have to organize our normal lives, so that we could pay our rent and other bills in the future.” When we did the comeback, we said, “We are a professional band, but everybody has a normal job and children and the whole family thing, so we will do Crematory as a hobby.” We do it professionally, but due to the things I have mentioned we can’t go on tour for three months. We did it in the 90s, but now we only play shows on weekends. For example, we fly to Russia on Thursday, play in Moscow on Friday and in St. Petersburg on Saturday, and fly back on Sunday. This is possible, and this fits together with the job and family thing. We can’t spend so much time on the band as we did in the past, and we don’t release albums every year as we used to do.

But would you like to go back to being in a full-time band again?

Yeah, definitely! It was the best time we had. When we started with Crematory, it was a big dream of ours to reach what we had at that time. I think the biggest dream of every band member is to be a full-time professional musician, but it’s not possible when you play metal music in the Crematory style, you can’t earn enough money to pay for everything you have to. Nevertheless, when I listen to my heart, it’s the biggest dream that I have.

How do your workmates and bosses react when they find out that you’re a metal musician, that you spend a lot of time working on songs and that you can’t do overtimes?

They are very proud. The people who know us privately or due to our job are very proud that they know us. They say, “What? You are a rock star?!” (everybody laughs) Well, I’m not a rock star, I’ve had a little bit of success with my music, and that’s all. But it’s very nice to hear people go like, “Oh, Crematory? I know that name! Are you a member of that band?” It’s hard to recognize me, because I’m always wearing sunglasses on photos and different clothes, but I’m very happy when people come to me and say, “Wow, you play in Crematory! I have your first record!” It’s no problem to get a leave from work to play some shows.

As far as we understand, your dayjob is with an insurance company, right?

Yes, I’ve got a really big insurance office here, it’s my own firm that I inherited from my family. My father did this for 25 years, and I’ve been doing it as well for 15 years, though for the first 10 years I wasn’t doing it really good because I had a full-time band. But in the past five or six years it’s been doing better, I have a really big office, eight people are working for me, and we have 5,000 customers.

It is common opinion nowadays that being a good musician is not enough for becoming successful, you also need to be a good businessman or a good manager. Do you agree with this opinion?

I enjoy to do both. When we started Crematory, we had no money to pay to a good management, so Katrin and me decided to do it on our own. I think it’s a good balance for me to do both sides, and it’s also very important that there’s someone within the band who’s also have an idea of what’s going on in the music business. There are many bands who are only musicians and they know nothing about the music business, but there are always people who want to rip off musicians. It’s a good thing that there’s someone in the band who can organize everything with the record company, the distributor, the merchandiser, etc. It helps the band a lot that I also do the management.

A business question: we’ve seen the list of your endorsers in the booklet of the “Klagebilder” album. Such companies as Yamaha or Korg are no surprise but there was also the logo of the Uncle Sam sportswear company. What does partnership with such a company give to Crematory?

It’s really easy for us - I got to know them through insurance. (everybody laughs) When somebody in the band wants to have some special item, or me especially, because I love to have their clothes for my free time, I give them a call and say, “Hello, I’m Markus from Crematory, we wanna have your clothes, and in return we can do some promo things for you.” And it’s no problem, they give us what we want.

We remember the bonus material on the “Liverevolution” DVD, with the footage of the band creating chaos in hotel rooms and other locations throughout Europe. What was the reason for putting this kind of footage on the CD? For some fans it may be difficult to accept this contrast between the band onstage playing dark and heavy songs and the band backstage having fun in this sort of way…

It’s very simple – we wanted to show the fans that we are normal people like you and every other person. We go to the toilet like every other person, we have some fun, so we decided to show the fans what’s going on backstage, how the band is in private situations.

Speaking about touring – your tour dates for this year include a German festival called Rock for the Kids. Can you say a few words about it? Is it some special event for children?

It’s a benefit festival for children that are ill. The organizer of this event is a good friend of mine, he called me and said, “Can you help us raise some money for sick children, can you play at our festival?” I have two children of my own, I’m very happy that they are not ill, and I can understand that people who have ill children and no money are facing a big problem. We want to help them.

You and Katrin are taking your daughter with you when you are going on tour. How does your daughter like it? And do you think it’s safe for her? All kinds of things may happen on the road…

I have two daughters now, my second daughter was born on October 24 last year. When we were in Russia, we had our elder daughter Janina, who is four years old. She enjoys very much to be on tour, she goes on stage, takes some pictures of the audience and has a lot of fun. We have a babysitter whom we are flying or driving with us, and she takes care of all the matters related to Janina. She goes to hotel with her, she visits some restaurants or playgrounds, and she stays with the child all day when Katrin is doing the soundcheck or playing onstage.  

In your opinion, what must a man do to be a good father?

This is a really hard question! You have to ask my baby! (everybody laughs) I try my best, it’s really hard when you have a baby, though with the second one it’s much easier, because we’ve been through all this four years ago. But the first time it’s amazing, I was with Katrin when our baby was born, and it’s unbelievable, I can’t describe it with any words. I try my best to be a good father, I always try to do something with my kids on weekends when I’m not in the practice room, and I hope that I’ve got happy children.

The members of Crematory have been together for a long time, you are one of the very few bands that have had only a couple of line-up changes over 15 years. What kind of relationship do you have in the band – is it more like a family, where you meet every now and then and go out together for a beer or something, or is it more like an organization, where you only see your colleagues when you have to?

For me Crematory is like a second family. I formed the band with our old guitar player Lotte in 1991, and it was very sad for us, especially for me, to part ways with him in 1997, but it didn’t work out at that time. The relationship in the band is very friendly, we are old enough to talk about everything, good things and bad things, and I’m very happy that everything works so well with the rest of the band. I think the personality of each band member is more important than their musical skills. When the five people fit together on a personal level, you can work together to develop your music. It’s not really difficult to find a better drummer than me for the band, but it won’t be the same for the whole family of Crematory without any one of us.

Last year there were announcements that you are planning to release a greatest-hits double CD and an album collection of 11 CDs and two DVDs. However, these packages have not been issued yet. Do you still plan anything like that for the future, or have you abandoned these ideas?

Yes, this was our idea to do that. But the record company said that they wanted to have a new studio album, and I agreed with them. When we got back from Russia, we decided to do a back-to-the-roots gothic metal album and postpone the greatest hits package for next year. Our contract with Massacre Records finishes after “Pray”, we’ve got offers from other record companies, and we wanna talk with them in the summer, when we know how many copies of “Pray” we have sold and we have the feedback. After that we will do the greatest hits package, I think it will be next year, but I don’t know exactly at this time. Everything is finished for this package, we have the compilation ready here in my office, but we will see what is going on in the future. It is possible that we will stay with Massacre Records, it is also possible that we’ll go back to Nuclear Blast – I don’t know, we’ve got a lot of offers today.

A lot of people are talking about the decline of CD sales nowadays and the emergence of powerful digital download stores such as iTunes. Do you agree with the opinion that a CD will soon become a thing of the past, and all music will be digital?

I like the CD much more, I want to hold it in my hands. For our new CD, the artist who designed the cover made a whole story in pictures that goes through the whole booklet. You will see it when you have the finished product in your hands. I like a CD much more than the sound of digital music. The problem is also with illegal downloads, we are happy that we have a good distributor in Russia, Irond Records, who can also control this problem a little bit. They do a very good job for us, we made a direct distribution deal with them for the last album, and we fit very well together. We are very happy that we have a partner like Irond in Russia.

Speaking about the Internet - all the members of Crematory have their e-mail addresses listed on your website. How often do you get fan mail, when do people usually write about, and how often to you actually respond to their letters?

When a new album is released, it gets horrible, we get hundreds of e-mails every day, and it’s not possible for us to answer all the e-mails. When it’s possible, we do that, but it’s really hard.

You have announced tour dates for the next few months, and the band Atargatis will support you on most of those dates. Why did you choose these guys? Is there any connection between Atargatis and Crematory, especially given that your guitar player Matthias has done some vocals on their latest studio album?

They supported us at some shows here in Germany in 2006, and Atargatis was also with Massacre Records, so Massacre asked us to take them as a support act. We said, “No problem,” we listened to their music and found out that it fits together with Crematory. So we played about six shows together, they are very nice people and we had a lot of fun. This time they also did a new record, it came out four weeks ago, and they called me and said, “Can we go on tour with you again?” I said, “No problem, you are nice guys, and it works very well, so you will support us.”

As far as we figured out from this interview, you enjoyed playing in Russia very much, and it even changed the musical direction of the band. And are there any chances of seeing you in Russia again this year?

I hope so, because it was amazing for us in Russia. Everything was well-organized, and the response from the fans was unbelievable. In the past, Crematory didn’t play many shows outside Germany, and the fast that we played in Russia twice shows you that everything was fine. We hope we can get a new offer for this year or the beginning of next year, it will be a big pleasure for us.

Crematory on the Internet: http://www.crematory.de

Special thanks to Alexei “KIDd” Kuzovlev (Irond Records) for arranging this interview.

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
January 17, 2008
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