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 THE FINAL VICTORYGerman heavyweights Heaven Shall Burn are gearing up for the release of their 6th full length „Invictus“ which is coming out on May 21st; we got the promo copy from their label Century Media and it is one mighty fine albm but you will have to wait until May to hear it for yourselves. Drummer Matthias Voigt was so kind to answer our questions and prepare you all for imminent coming of „Invictus“!
Greetings from Serbia, Heaven Shall Burn! How are you these days? Hey, we are doing great. It feels good to be done with the album at last. So the promos of „Invictus“ are sent out to the press and the first impressions that I saw are quite good. Do you personally feel that you have topped „Iconoclast“ (which was quite a task, if I may add)? It’s a difficult question to answer at the moment. We are satisfied with the result for sure, but we’re also still happy with „Iconoclast“. We need to wait and see if we can still say the same about „Invictus“ after 2 years. But, for sure, we’re quite confident that the new one is another strong album. Things simply worked in our way. Speaking of „Iconoclast“, I feel that it has pushed you to the next level popularity wise and spread the good name of Heaven Shall Burn even further. How do you see that situation and are you OK with it, do you think that your music can reach even bigger scales? As I know, you are from the same area as Rammstein, maybe they have inspired you... We’ve reached so much more than we could ever dream of. I mean for someone who always ran the band as a hobby, we became very popular. Some years ago I already thought that we’ve reached a limit with our way to work, but things still got bigger. So I can’t really tell how things are going to be. We’re originated in East Germany and that’s what we have in common with a band like Rammstein. We all grew up in the same system, but not really in the same area. They have inspired us for sure, especially in our way to integrate electronical elements in our music. But there also had been bands like Think About Mutation or Pitchshifter who definitely had an impact on our way to write such music. OK, moving on to „Invictus“ now... I feel that the album is much more intense than its predecessor, like you had something to prove here. Do you agree with this statement? If it sounds like we had something to prove, it’s fine with me. That means that we still sound „hungry“ in some way, but we didn’t really think about that. We always try to deliver intense stuff and after all these years, we know even better what we want and how to achieve it. Even if people won’t like the album, we definitely did what we thought is right. That’s what matters to us. While we’re at the intensity, I must comment that Matthias’ drum parts are truly good, it seems to me that he has bettered and tightened his playing, especially in fast parts which gave the band extra boost. Your comment... Since I’m Matthias, I can say „thank you“ at least...hehe I think it’s mainly we know better and better about our strenght and we try to focus on that. We’re also able to take enough time in the rehearsal room and in the studio to write stuff that suits our playing abilities. We all just try to focus on our strenghts, instead of trying weird things...hehe The album is very tight as I have stated above, but it is also varied indeed. Whose idea was it to incorporate hard electro and Black Metal parts in the same time in „Combat“ and „The lie you bleed for“? We always had influences like that. There had been a few Black Metal parts on our first record already. It’s just now that we have the chance to really integrate those things in the way you can hear on „Invictus“. To us, an album and a live show are two different stories and live shows are about the energy and not about sounding like when you put a CD into the stereo. But now we also know how to use all the electronical elements in a live show. I guess you can say that now we’re even more encouraged to write songs like that. We don’t need to think if an album version would be too far away from playing the song live. Of course, this opens new opportunities, concerning the song writing.  One of the most prominent songs for sure is „Given in death“, where you had the guest female vocals of Sabine from Deadlock. Explain to us that cooperation and creation of that duet... We’re friends with Deadlock for many years and after the song was written, we just thought that her voice would be a perfect match and definitely add something to the song. We even had a version with Marcus singing the whole song, but we felt that there is something missing. It also matches with the lyrical content, since mercy killing is such a touchy topic. „Given in death“ features very heavy lyrical content about mercy killings. So let us talk about the themes on „Invictus“, as your lyrics were always very important part of your sound. Give to our readers rundown of the most important themes on „Invictus“. Like you said, mercy killing is a a heavy topic and we are trying to question the role of the church and their view on that. Even today there are still many people who never question and just follow. There still is the same Iconoclast-concept. We are telling stories about heroes and legends. Some of the stories seemed to be forgotten already or untold and, on the other side, there are some popular legends that we question. We’re trying to make the listener think. That’s actually the overall topic...again. It’s the concept of Iconoclasm. In our case we just don’t destroy images of idols literally. The talk about them, pushes people to gather information. So, afterall, people can decide if they still want to follow ideas that might be wrong. Since Heaven Shall Burn involves very heavy topics and I come from very turbulent area, I want to ask you how much do you know about the recent problems in Serbia - death of Milosevic, separataion of Kosovo... Seems to me that your gig here would be much logical move. I think we all follow the things that go through the media and we all know that the media is just a tool to spread propaganda for few people who benefit, even in our so-called Democracy. There are no real independent sources. It’s all about the interest of certain people. Even sources like Indymedia are not 100% trustworthy. There is not only black and white and the only thing we can do, is to gather information from as many sources as possible. That’s the only way to get your own picture. You know, there were things happening in former Yugoslavia that could have made it on our album as well. I think there are many stories about heroes and massmurderers around and you can question all of them. I stick to the quote: „The first casualty of War is the truth“. Even here in Germany there had been a big controversy about Milosevic and about the War against Serbia and people are questioning the information they got via TV and the newspapers. Don’t get me wrong, everyone knows that some fucked up things went on in ex-Yugoslavia and that Milosevic was trying to push nationalism to distract from economical and social conflicts, but, in my very personal opinion, the NATO was wrong by bombing Serbia in 1999. There is not even a need to discuss: The NATO includes countries like Turkey which don’t care about human rights if they can get a benefit from it. Besides having no legal base for starting an aggression against a country, I wonder why they never bombed Istanbul for pushing an ethnical cleansing in the territory of the Kurds. I mean, actually I don’t really wonder why... Everyone knows the NATO didn’t need Serbia as a member, but Turkey for building military bases to reach out for Iraq and maybe later Iran/ Persia or, at least, for flying over. In general, no one here knows about details, but some things are obvious. One can easily see that things went wrong in an conflict where there has never been just black and white. All the parties included are probably grey, so to say. Speaking of themes, the full name of the album is "Invictus“ (Iconoclast III)“. Are your two albums linked in some bigger way? What is the story behind Iconoclast saga, does it end with "Invictus" or will it continue? Like I said before, it’s all about questioning myths, legends, heroes, icons, religious dogma. With telling stories, we want to show that you can see things in different ways and not take everything for the only truth. The first taste of the album is given to the people with „Omen“. Do you think that it represents „Invictus“ in a good way? Have you heard any feedback yet? The feedback had been just amazing. But, to be honest, we all know that „Omen“ ist just a more or less typical HSB-song. It doesn’t really represent the album, because there is more diverse stuff going on there. With the first teaser, we just wanted people to understand that we didn’t whimp out or got softer, with clean vocals or stuff like that. This song was more like a statement to make people see that they don’t need to worry...hehe. Just now we released a second song, which is a little different and the feedback is even better than it was for „Omen“. So we’re quite sure that people will like the new album...at least if they liked us before. No covers this time, digipack will feature Therapy? track. I have always wondered, what is it with you and covers? You have lots of them and most are very well done, so how do you pick the songs, do you like to play them live (aside from „Black Tears" which became huge hit)? We like to record a cover from time to time and people also seem to dig it. Sometimes it’s even a song that can add something to the album. If you have one song in between that sounds a little different, it can make the whole album sound more interesting. We don’t have any special way to chose the right song. Most of the time someone comes up with an idea and then we decide if we want to play the song or not. It’s simply something that comes into our minds suddenly. Right now we only play „Black Tears“ live. Tue Madsen, Maik and Alexander were again responsible for sound of the album, so I guess that you won’t change the winning team soon. Do you maybe fear of stagnation with the same people over and over? Tue Madsen understands our sounds and what we want. We are 100% satisfied and there is no reason to change something. Concerning stagnation, we will always play the music we like and we don’t really care about being innovative. We don’t see ourselves as „artists“. We simply do what we want. It might look like stagnation for other people sometimes, but, to us, the differences are more obvious. We’re discussing little changes in the sound for hours or even days and, in the end, to some people it doesn’t sound so different...hehe. So, to us, each record is a huge step...even if people can’t hear it. We always see things that we can make better and work on next time. Are there any plans for new video for some tracks from „Invictus“ and if so, which ones will be chosen? It will be for the song „Combat“, but we’re still discussing details. I guess that some big tours are being planned to promote „Invictus“ the best way possible... are there any plans yet, have you chosen the bands which will support you? No, we didn’t plan any tour yet. It seems that we will just play some bigger festivals during the Summer and play some single shows here and there. We’re not really a touring band, but we will try to play new places where we hadn’t been before. Hopefully we’ll also play Serbia soon. Well that would be all for now, I wish you all the best and hope to see you guys someday in Serbia. Your last words... Serbia still is a white spot on our map, but all the places where we hadn’t been before can be the next one...hehehe. Seriously, we really hope to play there and to meet new people who never saw us before. So watch out for news concerning that!!! Thanks for the interview! Answers byMatthias Voigt |
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