Headhunter
Payback Time

15.08.2008

For many years people were asking Schmier, frontman and mastermind of German thrash metal legends Destruction, about the albums he did with Headhunter, a powerful collaboration between him, guitarist Schmuddel and drummer Jorg Michael (Stratovarius, ex-Running Wild) that existed in the early 1990s. Though the band existed for only five years, it left behind three high-quality albums, a little lighter than Destruction, but still full of energetic and catchy music. Unfortunately, these albums were sold out for a long time, and those who missed them when they first came out had to wait until 2007 when they appeared in stores again. But Schmier, a metal maniac, as he calls himself, did not find it sufficient to just re-release the old stuff, he brought the three original members back again for a new Headhunter CD, “Parasite Of Society”, which came out in 2008. Since we really enjoy the old Headhunter stuff and were actually among the ones asking about a possible re-release during our previous interview with Schmier back in 2003, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to get an update on this great project first-hand…

The year 2008 is very busy for you – you have the new Headhunter album out, and Destruction celebrates its 25th anniversary. Does this date, this 25th anniversary, has any special meaning for you, or is it just a good reason to celebrate with the fans and past and current band members?

It’s a mix of all of it. Of course, it’s a great motivation – when you’re celebrating 25 years, it’s a very special album, so we’re trying to put our 25-year history into the songs. We’re gonna have special guests and hopefully we’re gonna get some of the best songs we’ve ever written. We’ve been working really hard on pre-production. It’s also a great opportunity to celebrate with the fans and give them a special record that’s gonna stay in their minds for a long time.

You have two bands at the moment. How are you going to divide your time between Destruction and Headhunter?

I’m a metal maniac, so it’s no problem at all! (laughs) I concentrate on Destruction, of course, because it’s a big part of my life. Headhunter will always be done in my spare time, and as we’ve decided, we will only play at Wacken this year, so it’s no problem. At the end of this year we may decide to play some more Headhunter shows in the beginning of next year, but it’s still too early to talk about that. For now we’re gonna enjoy Wacken and enjoy the release of the first Headhunter album in 14 years. If there’s gonna be response from the people, there will be more headliner gigs. It’s a very positive thing, I had a great time doing the Headhunter album, and now I’m really looking forward to go to the studio with Destruction. Music is my life, so I don’t mind being busy.

It’s probably a trivial question, but what made you bring Headhunter back to live? How did the three of you get together again?

First of all, there was the demand for re-issues over the last few years, and it made me finally release them. We remastered the whole work, and it’s like I was diving back into the early days of Headhunter. I was listening to the songs and everything. At the same time, I started recording new songs, and I wrote some material that didn’t fit with Destruction and sounded really like Headhunter. For example, it’s the song “Silverskull” that I wrote for a good friend of mine who owns a tattoo place called “Silverskull”. When I had this song, I got very positive feedback, but it wasn’t the Destruction kind of music, it was more heavy metal. Then I called up the Headhunter guys and said, “Listen, we have these remasters coming out very soon, and I have a lot of material that doesn’t fit Destruction, and I have some time, so why don’t we sit together, have a beer, talk and see if it’s possible to do a new album?” I didn’t expect them to be really excited about it, but everybody was onboard within seconds, and we kept the ball rolling.

As far as I know, Schmuddel hadn’t played in any major bands since the Headhunter breakup. So what was he doing all these years?

He didn’t play in a real band, he was doing some cover stuff for a while. But he has a very busy job, he has worked for a radio station for a long time. He was also producing advertisement for radio, stuff like jingles, and he was also working with his own advertisement company. He has always been involved with music and playing guitar, but he wasn’t producing metal albums anymore.

How was it like being in the studio with Schmuddel and Jorg after more than 10 years? How much was the recording session different?

It was magical! If you haven’t played together for 14 years, and then you play together all of a sudden, it could feel really strange. But it felt very comfortable, there was magic in the air, we fit perfectly together. It was like back in the days, like we never had a break. We just jammed together, and there was always a great vibe between us. We all have strong personalities, we all are leaders, but when we come together, we work really well. It’s hard to describe, it’s a whole different situation than how it works with Destruction. It’s more based on rock’n’roll, on have-a-good-time kind of thing. We all were very touched by the great time we had in the studio, and we already plan to make another Headhunter album as soon as possible.

You have just said that there are three leader persons in Headhunter. But when it comes to songwriting, who does most of the job?

As Headhunter was basically my idea, I’m the motor of the whole thing. I come up with some ideas, then I meet with Schmddel and we work on them together. Then we send all the material to Jorg, because he lives very far away. We all live far away from each other in Germany, and this doesn’t make it easier. But I’m taking care about the direction and the basic ideas, and then I work with Schmuddel, and his unique guitar style brings in a whole different vibe as we’re playing the songs. We work really well together, it’s very easy songwriting, there’s no big talking, we just jam out, and that’s very nice.

You have recently said that Headhunter is a fun project. Does it mean that you get a bit tired of all the seriousness and aggression that you have in Destruction and need a bit of more light-hearted music?

No, I’m a pissed-off guy anyway! I just need some fun in between all the stress. Even this time I wrote pretty aggressive lyrics for Headhunter, because there’s just too many things going on in the world that piss me off. It’s just that the direction of the band is not as aggressive as in Destruction, so there’s a whole different vibe when we record the material. It’s more traditional, and we try to celebrate our roots with the music somehow. Destruction has always been more about musical destruction and aggressiveness, and Headhunter has always been “the soft side of Schmier” – my 1980s roots and stuff. I may be getting older, but I’m not getting less pissed off at society. You can expect the next Destruction album to be really aggressive, don’t worry! (laughs)

Destruction have a certain framework for lyrics, there are issues that you write about through most of your career. How much is the situation different in Headhunter?

Of course, with Destruction we have a big legacy. It’s a band that’s lasted 25 years in the music business with all its ups and downs, and we have a lot of fans worldwide whom we don’t want to disappoint. There are certain expectations, and these expectations have to be fulfilled somehow. We always found a compromise between our musicianship and our progression on the one hand, and keeping the roots of Destruction on the other hand. Headhunter is a different thing, the band was founded just to have a good time and to get over my sad story with Destruction back in the 1980s, and in this sense it’s easier to work with Headhunter, because nobody can demand that we should do something. It’s a fun band, there are no limitations, we use thrash metal, we use hard rock, we use rock’n’roll and heavy metal influences. This makes it a lot easier to work, the limitations for this album were low, because we don’t know if it’s gonna sell or not, but it doesn’t really matter because our lives don’t depend on it. It was more important to do an album that sounds great than an album that would sell a lot.

What made you cover “18 And Life” by Skid Row?

It was actually my idea. We’ve always done cover versions that weren’t very typical for heavy metal, and this very classical 1980s hard rock ballad was a kind of a big challenge. It’s a really good song, it’s an anthem of the 1980s or, you may say, of my youth. We knew we couldn’t do it the same way as Skid Row, so we wanted to do a heavier, more punky version. It was a nice challenge, and it turned out really good. I really like it. On the other hand, of course, you will find people who think it’s sick to cover Skid Row, but for me Skid Row is one of the most important bands in the 1980s hard rock generation. It was just fun to do it, and if you listen to the song, it doesn’t really sound like a Skid Row song anymore.

I remember back in the 1980s there was a big war between glam and thrash metal…

Definitely yeah, but that was in the 1980s. Now we look back at those times and see that everybody was giving his best. I lately met the son of Sebastian Bach when we played in Los Angeles with Destruction, and he was a big Destruction fan. The circle is closing down again.

You have also re-released the entire back catalogue of Headhunter. Which of the three albums had the most success in the past, which is most successful now, and which do you personally like better?

It’s difficult to say. All the albums have some highlights, it’s very difficult to say which album is the best. I think “Parody Of Life” (1990) was a special record, because it made my day to continue with music. For me the best Headhunter album is “Rebirth” (1994). I don’t know why, maybe I like the songs the most on this album. I think the first two albums have their weak spots, there are one or two songs on each of them that I don’t like so much. So “Rebirth” maybe has the highest quality of songs. It’s less thrashy, maybe the least thrashy album of these three, but the production sounds very good.

These re-releases are not yet available in Russia, but I have seen the tracklists, and they are the same as on the original versions. Does it mean that in the 1990s you recorded all the material that you composed, and there are no bonus tracks available?

There’s nothing at all. It’s very bad, but we recorded all the songs we had, we put them on the records, and there’s no extra material. There was a demo tape around, but nobody has it anymore. We tried to find it, but we couldn’t find it, so there are no bonus tracks. But it isn’t that bad, because we put in the lyrics, made some liner notes, and the idea was to make them available for the people who don’t have these albums yet. We didn’t want to make the people who already have the albums buy them again, we just wanted to give all the new fans of Destruction a chance to buy Headhunter albums for a good price.

A lot has been said about your departure from Nuclear Blast and a new deal with AFM Records. But still it’s not very clear to me – what did you gain from signing with AFM? What do they do for the band that Nuclear Blast were not doing?

There’s always a big difference when you’re signed to a label that has 100,000 bands, and you’re just number 510, and when you’re signed to a label that has 500 bands, and you’re only number 5. There’s a lack of interest from the label that you get as the label is getting bigger and bigger. We didn’t really wanna go away from Nuclear Blast, it’s just that after five years it was a necessary decision to look for a change. I don’t have any problems with the label, I would always go back, because it was one of the best times ever. We’re still friends, and I still work for them sometimes. It’s just that the time came for a change, you have to try new stuff sometimes, and the band needed an extra push. Of course, it seems strange to go away from one of the biggest labels, but Nuclear Blast at that pointed signed stuff like Nightwish, the bands that were very commercial and selling a lot more records than we did. It was difficult for us to see that we’re not top-notch with the label anymore, because they were not investing that much effort in us, they had a lot of other things to do.

You obviously have a lot of knowledge about the music industry. Have you ever considered getting a job at a record label yourself?

Maybe I should one day, it would really make sense. But I’m too busy writing and performing music at the moment, so maybe I will consider that in the future, we’ll see.

By the way, do you still run the restaurant in Germany that you used to have in the 1990s?

No, I had to make the decision against the restaurant, because I was getting too much work. I was close to a heart attack - working at the restaurant all day, doing the band, and also taking care about everything around the band, stuff like management, web hosting, etc. It was getting really too much for me. We also made the decision to tour more, play more shows and stuff, so I had to make a choice. I chose heavy metal instead of the restaurant business for the next few years, but I can always retire and have a restaurant again one day. It was a nice experience, I’m missing it sometimes, but I don’t miss the stress. I can really focus on music now, and that’s great.

Going back to Nuclear Blast – you sang on a song for their anniversary compilation “Into The Light”. What surprised me is that they put this song on the light part of the compilation, while it has more in common with the dark part. Do you agree with the label’s choice?

It just happened actually. I think it was the request of Victor (Smolski) from Rage, he wrote the songs, he was choosing the singers, and he wanted me to sing on the album. He had a lot of melodic singers, and he wanted to have one different singer to create more diversity, so he was asking me. I was surprised, the other album would have been more logical, you’re totally right. But Victor is a friend of mine, and it was great to work with the Rage guys in their studio.

You also did your own tribute to metal with the song “The Alliance of Hellhoundz” on the “Inventor Of Evil” album (2004). I recently spoke to Mike Osegueda from Death Angel about his contribution to the song, and he said that such projects increase the unity of the metal scene. Do you agree with him, do you think projects like “The Alliance Of Hellhoundz” really make musicians closer to each other and fans closer to each other? Or did you have to pay to anyone to secure his or her vocal contribution?

No, nobody got paid! The whole idea was to express unity and tear down the borders between different styles. Fans still think that some styles are better than other styles, and I think you have to see that a lot of musicians in the metal genre, from black metal to hard rock, are good friends. Behind the scenes they’re all drinking together, having a good time, talking about business, and exchanging experience, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a black metal band or a fucking punk rock band. I wanted to give this vibe to the kids with this song, and prove that it’s possible to have two generations of metal singers – from old school people like Biff (Byford of Saxon) to new guys like Shagrath (Dimmu Borgir) or Speed (Soilwork) – can sing one song. It was a very special moment to me, because I had my own heroes singing this song, I mean Paul Di’Anno and Biff, and I had some of my great friends from the music scene as well. It was a very touching moment.

Can you say a few words about Destruction’s history DVD that is coming out soon?

The DVD will come out in January. It will include two of the Wacken performances, primarily the one from last year when we had three drum kits and all the old members on stage. There will be even more shows that we will record on the upcoming tour, and the whole history section, with interviews with the old members and stuff. It’s gonna be really cool, I’m looking forward to it.

Does it mean that you were in contact with all the previous band members all these years, or did you have to search for someone? As far as I understand, most of them abandoned music long ago…

When Destruction came back, we’ve been getting in contact again and again, even more so over the years. Now finally it’s like a big family, in Wacken we were all together, we rent a big bus and traveled to the festival together, then threw a big party together, and rehearsed together. It was fantastic, and we really want to carry that vibe over to the DVD. Even if they’re not in the band anymore, they still feel bound with the band, and we’re all friends now. It wasn’t always like that, but music and the Destruction history are uniting everyone.

With Headhunter, you have recently shot a new video for “Silverskull”. Can you say a few words about it for those who haven’t had a chance to see it yet?

We basically did it the old school way. The song “Silverskull” is about a tattoo place in my home town Freiburg, its owner is a good friend of mine, and he tattooed me a couple of times. He’s almost like a brother to me, and the song is a tribute to his place and our brotherhood. But at the same time, being a freak, a tattoo freak, is also pretty much a rebellion, so it’s about the brotherhood, the pain and the anger. It’s a very special thing to get tattoos and it’s also very addictive. We have a nice video that’s dealing with this, and also the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll thing – the party and the girls. I think it’s an old school video that expresses our lifestyle very much.

As far as I understand, making a video costs a lot of money, and in Germany no one’s gonna show it on Viva or MTV. Do you think these expenses will pay off, especially with Headhunter, with whom there are no plans for a big tour or regular activities?

As you said, TV is out of the question, but on the Internet there’s MySpace, there’s the official website, there’s Blabbermouth, there’s YouTube – there’s so much stuff to go, and they’re gonna show it. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of clicks on Destruction videos on the Internet, and I think the Headhunter video will be a good promotion, too. Fans will be able to see it on YouTube and many other locations. I don’t think it’s senseless to do a video. Of course, you have to take care of the costs, and we made sure that the video wasn’t too expensive, because it’s costing money.

Both Destruction and Headhunter have a broad representation in the Internet, there are MySpace pages for each of the bands, and you also have your own MySpace page. How much does the Internet help your bands? Or does illegal downloading overshadow all the benefits of a good promotion?

Of course, it overshadows the benefits. We’re losing a lot of money every day, we’ve already left out the whole southeastern part of the world – South America, many parts of Eastern Europe – where the bootlegs are dominant. We don’t sell very many records there, it’s all bootlegs. And now they are downloading the stuff from the Internet, which increases the chance to get an album for free. Of course, this is a big problem for the labels, but also for us, because somebody has to pay for the production of the album, the promotion and everything. On the other hand, I can really say that the Internet is a fantastic thing, because our fans are sitting just round the corner this way. We are in touch, we’re on the boards, you can talk to us, you can ask us stuff, you can have the newest tour dates and infos, have a pre-listening to the songs. But if you want to support the band, you have to buy their album, otherwise the band will die one day. As long as people understand that, there will be future for all great music, but if the people are too greedy and don’t want to pay for music anymore, we will have a problem.

I’ve recently had an Internet discussion with some guys, and what they basically argued that is there has been very little development in metal music in the past decade. The 1980s gave us thrash metal, death metal, doom metal, the 1990s gave us black metal and gothic metal, but this decade has given us no new styles, except probably love metal. There are good albums coming out, but they are quite traditional. Would you agree or disagree?

It could be true that mot much new stuff is being created. But it’s very difficult to bring in a totally new style, and I don’t know if it’s really necessary. Don’t we have already enough different corners on the metal scene?

Maybe you’re right, there’s already too much stuff on the market, and there’s no chance to listen to all of it.

Definitely! Isn’t there too much stuff out there already? I think there are so many genres, so many forms of metal, that it’s already difficult to follow them. I don’t think we need that many new styles. If you’re a rock’n’roll fan, and you like rock’n’roll music, do you want a new style of rock’n’roll? No, you want the pure style of rock’n’roll. So as a metal fans I like pure metal, that’s fine to me, I don’t need a new revolution in metal. For me it’s the quality of the songs that matters, and not the creation of something new. Nevertheless, there are some new good bands out there, the bands that are mixing different styles, mixing progressive metal with death metal and melodic elements, which is a great idea. I don’t think metal will be going back into a sort of devolution, but it’s for sure that we don’t need so much progress in metal. I don’t think it’s necessary.

For most of your career in Destruction and Headhunter you’ve played with a three-piece band. You tried playing with two guitars in Destruction in the late 1980s, but very soon you returned to the original format. What’s so attractive in playing as a three-piece for you?

Less people, less trouble! (everybody laughs) I love two guitars, I’m a big fan of Judas Priest and stuff, but it’s just hard to find a second good guitar player that is fitting really well. We’re working very good together as a three-piece, so why should we change that and risk running into troubles again? We had so many troubles with Destruction back in the day because of the second guitar, it was a great time, but in the end it paid off. So it should be this way – less people, less trouble.

Headhunter on the Internet: http://www.official-headhunter.com

Special thanks to Irina Ivanova (CD-Maximum) for arranging this interview

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov
April 10, 2008
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