Leaves' Eyes
Stick Together No Matter What

29.03.2024

It’s interesting to come back to your old interviews and compare plans and expectations to what has actually happened since then. But it’s even more interesting when you have a chance to talk again to the same person and see where his or her life has taken them. Over three years that have passed since our previous conversation with Alex Krull, singer and mainman of German sympho metallers Leaves’ Eyes, the world around us has changed drastically in the ways none of us could have imagined. A lot has happened in the band too, with long-term guitarist Tosso Bauer deciding to quit, and a new album called “Myths Of Fate” high on the agenda. This album is also a new turn for Leaves’ Eyes, as it has a different lyrical concept and a new musical approach. But let’s hear what Alex himself has to say about the recent past and the nearest future of his band.

When we spoke last time, it was at the peak of the pandemic, and naturally we spent a lot of time on pandemic related topics. To continue from where we left off – do you remember your first live show after the pandemic? What were your impressions and feelings?

Actually we had planned five tours, and they were all pushed back again and again, it was a real nightmare. Two European tours, a North American tour, Latin America, also shows in Russia, if I remember correctly, and Mexico as well. It was really bad. Then finally we could play a show with Orden Ogan, and it was really cool. We played an open air theater… I don’t know if you guys know Winnetou, it’s a very big thing in Germany, it’s from an author called Karl May, and they have a Wild West open air theater, a really big one. We were playing there with Orden Ogan, it was a really good show, but it was still in between Corona measures - they were lifted and we could play at least this one, and then we played a festival in Belgium, where we were headlining or co-headlining, whatever. It was really great to go back onstage and play again, and it was a big relief. But after that there were even more difficulties to tour, because the measures against Corona came back. We all thought that when Corona was over, it would all be again like it was in 2019, or at least everyone was hoping for that. Well, it didn’t turn out like that. The world is getting even crazier now.

Let’s discuss the concept of the new album. Your previous record, “The Last Viking” (2020), had a storyline throughout it, but “Myths Of Fate”, as far as we understand, is more like a collection of stories from the Norse mythology. Is that indeed the case?

Yeah, you’re absolutely right about it. “The Last Viking” was like a saga about Hardrada, the last Viking king, it was all connected throughout. But what we wanted to do with “Myths Of Fate”... We had songs with Leaves’ Eyes before that were dealing with the magical and spiritual side of the Norse mythology. These songs are very atmospheric in the lyrics, and they touch upon the more mystical side of the Norse mythology. By the way, there’s also Slavic-connected mythology in the song called “Sons Of Triglav”.

Could you say a few words about the songwriting process for “Myths Of Fate”? How was it like working on this record, if we compare it to working on the previous one, which was made during the pandemic?

That was indeed a different approach. If you remember, back then we also did this “Viking Spirit” documentary about the connection between the Viking reenactment, as I’m a swordfighter in the modern Viking scene, on the one hand, and Leaves’ Eyes and metal, on the other hand. I needed a soundtrack for that documentary. Jonah Weingarten, who is a keyboard player in Catalyst Crime, a band I produce, and also in Pyramaze, is also doing soundtracks and music for computer games and things like that. He approached me, saying, “Hey, I heard about this documentary, it’s awesome, I would like to collaborate with you on that”. I said, “Wow, that’s a great idea”. We were talking with each other, and it turned out to be a really great soundtrack. When the album was released, and the soundtrack as well, I was thinking, “There are two or three songs on it that could be turned into metal songs”. We actually did that, and I told Jonah, “Listen, two of the songs are now metal songs as well”. (laughs) He said, “What? Really? That’s awesome, man”. I was like, maybe if we decide to continue with some ideas that I have in mind about the storyline and the concept of the album, I can tell him about this, and he can lay out some orchestrations for that. It’s something we can add to be yet another side of Leaves’ Eyes on top of what we already have - rock, metal, vocal melodies, etc. He said it was a fantastic idea. Thanks to this collaboration a lot of the songs we were working on got a refreshment, this cinematic background that you can now hear. And I’m also a video director, so for me when the music is painting pictures, it works very well.

You’ve mentioned “Sons Of Triglav”, a song based on Slavic mythology. Could you say a few words about this track? How does it fit into the album concept which is mostly based on Norse mythology?

First of all, there was always a kind of connection between vikings and Slavs anyway. This connection is also present very much on the modern Viking scene. For example, the biggest Viking event - and we were also filming that for the newest video which will come out on Friday - is in Wolin, Poland, and it’s the place that used to be called Jomsborg, where Jomsvikings were having their main fortress. And it’s also the area where my family on my father’s side comes from. It was an obvious idea to include something from there in the album. By the way, the biggest modern Viking army nowadays is called “Jomsborg”, and we also wrote a song called “Jomsborg” in the past.  My father was a policeman in the territory of Szczecin, when it was still a part of Germany and was called Stettin. In this area, there was a strong tradition to worship Triglav, there were a lot of sagas about that god, and even Christian monks were saving the statues of Triglav - you know, Christianity wanted to destroy everything that was connected to paganism and stuff, so they saved some of the important statues. One such statue was hidden and buried, so it could survive that witchhunt, so to say. It was for us a very good approach - family-connected, Viking scene-connected - to write something about Slavic mythology. A lot of friends I have are doing Slavic reenactment, so that makes absolute sense.

What happened to your former guitar player Tosso Bauer? He was in both Atrocity and Leaves’ Eyes for more than 25 years, and he seemed to be happy recording music and playing around the world, but now, as far as we understand, he isn’t playing in any band. Why did he decide to quit?

We are still in contact almost every day. He’s living not far from me, so we’ll go to dinner in a couple of days. (laughs) We are still best friends. There are private reasons why he wanted to go in another direction. But as I said, he’s still very much connected with us and also with Elina (Siirala, vocals), they also meet, and when Elina comes to the studio, Tosso shows up. For me it was also a big thing that Tosso was not part of the band anymore, at least as far as going on tour with us is concerned. I think there were just personal reasons. He always had another job, and when Corona hit, he was getting more and more involved with that. He’s a social worker, he’s taking care of teenagers, people living on the street and stuff like that. and people needed those guys very much. He decided to go this way instead of continuing as a rock musician. But there were and there still are no bad feelings at all, he’s still advising me sometimes, we still talk about the band - what shall we do with this or that. We’re friends, and it’s normal, I think, when friends talk about things. If he ever wants to change his mind and come back, he’s always welcome. (laughs)

How did you find Luc Gebhardt, the new guitar player? Has he also replaced Tosso in the songwriting department?

Yeah, he was involved a bit when we were in the studio and stuff. We still have some other songs recorded where Luc was more involved. He actually – that’s the funny part here… We had a guitar tech, a roadie, named Andy back in the day with Atrocity, and he was the guitar teacher of Luc. (laughs) Tosso and me got a message from Andy, “Hey, I have a great guy, Luc, he’s in your area, please give him a chance”. We had like, I don’t know, 100 guys who had applied, and then we had like 25 guys, a smaller range, sending videos, and then we invited 10 of them to see how they are in the studio. And eventually we went for Luc.

You are about to start touring for the new album in the middle of March. We hear from various bands that touring has become extremely expensive after the pandemic. How does that affect Leaves’ Eyes? Is it still possible for a band like Leaves’ Eyes to survive financially with current touring costs?

It’s like that for all the bands that are going on tour. Of course arena bands maybe have it easier, I mean huge bands playing stadiums or big arenas, but for the bands playing clubs, I think, this inflation and this whole crisis in the world, the global energy crisis, is the main factor that makes things go crazy. That’s for sure affecting festivals as well. In the summer season, there were a lot of bands from the United States that were supposed to travel, and they just couldn’t afford it anymore. When you made an agreement before the energy crisis, then you were calculating with totally different costs, and suddenly it’s not possible anymore. It was already very tricky during the corona with the measures. I remember there was a discussion going on for the “Last Viking” tour, which never happened, but when we made the final attempt, there were problems like – if a bus driver gets sick, there will be no replacement, because a lot of bus drivers had gone for other jobs, they were not driving bands anymore, so there was no replacement available. In addition, oil and gas prices were going so high, that was also a problem. I don’t wanna be political, but the message from me is very simple: everyone on the metal scene should stick together, no matter what. And we saw it, for example, on the “70000 Tons of Metal” cruise that we’ve just played – there were people from 71 nations. No matter what crisis is going on, we should all help each other and support each other. I know the times are very very harsh at the moment, for example, we cannot just go and play in Russia, and the thing is that none of us on the metal scene wants to have conflicts. We have this metal lifestyle that gets us connected, and maybe politicians can learn from that.

In support of the new album, you have released three videos, and two of them were made in Iceland. Why did you decide to go and film there, and what are your impressions from the country?

Actually there will be two more videos coming, one on Friday, “In Eternity”, it’s totally different to the others. They’re all different from each other. I can tell you that the next one is connected to my mother. That was actually Elina’s idea, because she was singing at the funeral of my mother, my mother died in the Corona-times. With that in mind, Elina came up with a song idea, and that’s the song coming out on Friday. We filmed in Wolin, Poland, as I told you, but we also filmed a huge part of that in Iceland, too. How did it come together? Actually I was in Spain on a Viking gathering, we have people from Barcelona and they were setting up a very nice event. I was there and I met a buddy called Egil, who is from Iceland, and he is a Jomsviking. I also met him at the Summer Breeze festival, because he’s also playing in a black metal band. We were talking, and the idea was born. He said, “Hey, Alex, we have such great locations, and you do great videos, maybe that would suit you”. And I’d always had an idea to go to Iceland, so maybe it was vice versa – I asked him whether he thought it was possible for me to go to Iceland and film there. He knows a guy who films there, and he was himself in “Game of Thrones”, for example, as an actor, he was one of the Wildlings, I think. That’s how it came together. We figured out some really great locations, where they made “Game Of Thrones” and also “Star Wars”, “Star Trek”, James Bond movies, Batman… For me it was like paradise, I could go everywhere and film plenty of stuff, Elina and me stayed there for almost a week.

But so far you have never played there, have you?

We talked about it with Egil and Daniel, the other guy who was there with us. Once we had an idea, a very long way back then with the second album, “Vinland Saga” (2005), we were thinking about making the journey of Leif Erikson (a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus – ed.) playing shows – from Norway to Iceland to Newfoundland, Canada, and stuff. We were already setting up a route, but then we go a North American tour offer from Blind Guardian, and we went together with Blind Guardian, so we never got to implement this idea to play along the route of “Vinland Saga”. It’s a small scene there, but there are some festivals, and we have Icelandic bands that are really cool. Let’s see how that idea can be brought back and whether we can do it. I’ll be all up for it, now that I’ve been there.

Lately on Facebook there has been a heated discussion about the use of artificial intelligence for cover artworks. What is your opinion on that topic? Is it OK when bands use AI to cut costs?

It’s anyway already in progress, and it’s probably not stoppable anymore. The problem is that if people think that this AI is creating something brand new by itself, that’s not the case. It’s just putting together bits and pieces by other artists, and that’s the problem we have here. There are already artists going out, graphic guys especially, and saying that they found their own ideas in so-called AI art. That’s not OK, of course. I think it’s edgy stuff, really risky, because real artists today can’t survive anymore because of AI. At the same time, artists generate real art; AI – I don’t think so. To use it to make your own picture to a partial extent – I understand that, I also was experimenting with that, because I’m also an artist, but I think there are boundaries. If something is too generic or too plastic, I don’t want to have it. I want to have something that is organic and that has a soul, not just a rip-off.

“Myths Of Fate” is your third album with Elina on vocals. Don’t you think it’s time for a new live DVD? The previous one was released in 2009, which is 15 years ago.

You’re right about it. The thing is that we have this Wacken stream, which is online, at least in Germany fans can still watch it, and we have some rights to that. It could be an idea to make something out of it, because that show was really amazing. We haven’t made a final decision yet, but that is something that I think is worth releasing. Or maybe we will do something else in the future. Let’s see. (laughs) We haven’t had that many chances to record ourselves live, but maybe it will change now.

We would like to ask you a few questions about Atrocity. Now that the “Okkult” trilogy is finally completed, where do you intend to take the band further?

(laughs) First of all, it was a really important decade when we did this trilogy. We also toured for it in Europe with Belphegor and Arkona from Russia, which was a great tour, also in the middle of a crisis, and we saw that it was functioning, it was a really good tour. (pause) I don’t want to spoil things too much. We are thinking about some stuff coming, and we have some surprises in the pocket… There will be for sure some Atrocity stuff coming out.

The third part of the trilogy sounds more brutal and less symphonic than the first and the second ones. Was that intentional, and if yes, why did you decide to reduce the symphonic component of the music?

I think it was something I had in mind: the end of the trilogy, the last part, has to be the most brutal one, like a fist in your face. It has to be the metal highlight of the trilogy. But we still have songs like “Malicious Sukkubus”. You’re right about it, it’s rawer and heavier, and that was the intention.

There is a joke going round that Tosso left and took all the orchestral scores with him…

(cracks) No, that’s not the case. But I have to tell him about that! (everybody laughs)

What songs do you currently play live with Atrocity? It must be really difficult to choose a setlist from so many albums …

Yeah, it’s always tricky, you’re right about it. On the tour with Belphegor, we were focusing on the “Okkult” trilogy, but we also played some Atrocity classics. That actually sums it up. We also played “Reich Of Phenomena” from the “Atlantis” album (2004), and some songs from the first two records. It’s always a mix, but to be honest I think that our latest stuff has to be presented live as much as possible, that’s logical.

“Okkult III” charted at number 32 in the German album charts, which is one of the highest positions in the history of the band. Does the current success of Atrocity make you happy?

(laughs) Yeah, of course. It actually could have been even higher, we were just one week too late. (laughs) They told us that with the same record we could have made Top 20 or even higher, but when you release a death metal record, you cannot calculate how it will do in the charts anyway. It’s not such a big market as it is out there for more melodic music. On the other side, it was very nice to see that a lot of people remember the name Atrocity. We were kind of excited ourselves: how will it go with the last part of the trilogy? Will people like it? And then we got the best reviews everywhere, it was really amazing. I didn’t see any bad reviews at all, and as to the fans, it was very seldom that somebody said, “I like that record better”. You always have that, but most of the fans were really celebrating this release.

Speaking more about success – do you see any opportunities how you can bring Leaves’ Eyes to the next level of success? Maybe get another label?

(laughs) Well, this is something about this business that I’ve been in long enough to know that it’s not always the label and stuff like that. A lot of things have to come together at the right moment, and it’s sometimes just pure luck that you succeed with something. Suddenly people get triggered by a band, and you wonder, “Wow, really? Now? Why?” Sometimes it happens. With Leaves’ Eyes, we have a really great fanbase around the whole globe, and we are really happy to have that.
The guys at Metal Hammer said they like this record the best of all Leaves’ Eyes records. I as a musician don’t want to come out and say, “Oh yeah, we’ve just made the best record in the history of the band”. That’s the classic, you know. (laughs) But if someone else is coming to you and telling you this, especially after being on the scene for a while, that’s quite a compliment. I think that’s a very refreshing Leaves’ Eyes record, we were happy that we could do some tricks here and there, especially with Elina’s vocals. I’m very satisfied with the album – let’s see what people will make out of it.
These are heavy times in the music business. With labels, there are big changes going on, they are swapping people, that’s for sure connected with the crisis and everything. Let’s see what happens.

We understand that seeing Leaves’ Eyes or Atrocity in our country is not a subject for discussion at the moment. But have you received any offers to play in Turkey, or in countries such as Georgia or Armenia, which are more or less reachable for your Russian fans?

That’s good that you asked about live opportunities. We’re just starting again at the moment. We’ve just got an offer from Mexico. When you come out with a new record, it starts again with everything that’s connected with live shows and festivals. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to play in some places where people from everywhere that want to see us can go and visit. That’s a sad situation we have at the moment because of the political crisis: people who want to be together and have no issues with each other are held back. We all agree that it’s not a pleasant situation for everyone. Let’s hope that the whole crisis fades away, the sooner the better. I really prefer when we could play in Russia and everywhere we wanted to without any problems, that was always very special, I can tell you that. I have friends in Russia, I have friends in Ukraine, we have two crew guys from Ukraine, and they couldn’t come over and tour with us anymore because they are not allowed to leave. It’s really heartbreaking to see all of that senseless stuff going on.
I think the leaders have not learned anything from history. They always talk about “in the past” – well, they should learn from happened in the past. When the Iron Curtain was going down, I was thinking that this would never come back. Everybody was hoping at least that there would never be this kind of issue anymore. I had a really good feeling that we would do away with it. My family was partly, on my father’s side, from East Germany, but I couldn’t go to East Germany. When I was 18 or 20 years old, it was the first time that I could go where my father was coming from. On top of that, I said that I would be the first guy making a death metal concert in East Germany - and I did. We organized a tour, and it included the German Democratic Republic, we were the first death metal package – Carcass, Atrocity and Pungent Stench – playing in Dresden. For me it was super special.
I also remember when the Wall was coming down, I was organizing concerts as a young kid. I organized a Godflesh concert or something in Berlin. I couldn’t believe that the Wall is going down, so I actually went to the Wall and was climbing up at the Brandenburg Gate. And there was a policeman from the East coming and shouting at me that I should leave. I said, “No man, fuck off! You are history!” Then a Western policeman came to me and said, “Hey, young gentleman, climb down the Wall. You may be right, they are history, but they still have guns!” (everybody laughs) Then I explained to him that I’m half Eastern German. And that’s what this new tragedy also does – it’s dividing families and friends. That’s why I can relate so much to it.

Leaves’ Eyes on the Internet: https://www.leaveseyes.de/

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

Interview by Roman Patrashov, Natalia “Snakeheart” Patrashova
Photos courtesy of AFM Records
February 21, 2024
© HeadBanger.ru