Chad Bowar: You have a new drummer since your last album. What led to Seven's departure, and how did you decide on Roland Navratill as his replacement?
Tosso: Seven is a great drummer and he added some great drumming and percussion to the new album. Nevertheless, it was hard to keep things running since he livies in Sweden. At a certain point we felt that it would be better to go different ways because he and also the rest of the band weren’t happy with the situation.
We already met him on our European tour with our second band Leaves Eyes this year in Stockholm and there are no bad feelings left. We wish Seven all the best for his further career. We got to know Roand on the Beauty and the Beast tour 2009, where he did the drums from the special guest band Sirenia. Roland is a great drummer and a really great guy. We feel that he fits perfectly to our band. He already did the European tour 2010 with Leaves Eyes, as well as tons of European festival shows with both bands throughout this summer.
How did you decide to do an album featuring additional vocals from Yasmin?
Alex: Actually it all started when Yasmin sang on our third record Blut back in 1994. She was doing guest vocals on two songs, “Calling The Rain” and “Land beyond the forest”. That time it was completely unusual to use a female guest singer in a brutal metal band. The fans and we as the band loved the cooperation so much so we decided to release the Calling The Rain CD in 1995 with more songs with my sister Yasmin, who is a really great artist and singer. Around 2000 we made another track called “Desert Land” for a famous compilation here in Germany and we decided to do a full album again in the future without any time pressure.
After Werk 80 II we decided the next album will be with Yasmin. And, well, it’s a timeless piece of music on which we combine ethno, world music and metal elements. We use a lot of natural instruments to create a very atmospheric sound with tons of complimentary rhythms. We recorded everything live, every little detail. The recordings have been a big challenge but also great fun. The whole record sounds organic, real and authentic which is very important for us.
What did her presence add to the album?
Alex: I think Yasmin is really an extraordinary singer and she has her own style. The only singer I could compare her with is Lisa Gerrard. Her spiritual lifestyle, her multi cultural Oriental roots (we have different fathers) and her being an artist underlines her style of singing being absolutely authentic and real. That is exactly what we were looking for the songs we wrote for After The Storm or Calling The Rain, it gives a very special note to the music.
Was your writing/recording process any different from the usual Atrocity album?
Tosso: We started to write most of the songs in early 2008, right after we moved with our studio from Stuttgart to the country. Yasmin got these demos at her home in New Zealand where she prepared the vocal recordings. That took part in summer 2009. The drum and percussion sessions were pretty intense this time. Like Alex mentioned, what we are really happy with is that every instrument and sound is handmade on this record. Violins, cellos, string instruments, flutes, percussion, all add up to an album with depth and atmosphere.
What inspired the album title?
Alex: There are a lot of global legends of how the world and humanity was affected by a catastrophe like the great flood which is described in the Bible. It's something we already incorporated in our work with Atlantis, by the way. After the Storm is taking you to the new beginning when everything was devastated before and the world gets the chance for a new start which is the only hope. If you look around nowadays we are not far away that humanity will bring on the storm itself by destroying the planet. It seems the warning signs of the past are still unheard and unseen.
Did you write all the lyrics, or did Yasmin contribute as well?
Alex: Yes I did the lyrics for After The Storm. Yasmin created some ancients lyrics for “A New Arrival.” Lyricwise each song tells its own story and has its own atmosphere. The red line is the background of the global mythology, these old legends and the secrets of our past. So we enter the world of mythology which fits perfectly to the combination of world and ethno music in combination with metal.
I’m very interested myself in global myths, legends and mysteries. On After The Storm you find a lot of mystic legends. Like “The Otherworld,” when we bring an old Celtic legend back to life. “Silvan Spirit” is a homage to the ancient mythical creature Faun who hides in the deepest forest. In a song like “As The Sun Kissed The Sky” we tell one of the ancient Egyptian legends and join the sun god Ra on his nightly trip to the underworld and back with his night bark Mesketet.
What are your expectations for the CD?
Tosso: First of all we are very happy with this record the way it is. The ambition on the musical side was to take metal and ethno music elements and mix them up to create something new. You could call it ethno metal. So far the reactions have been really great. This is maybe our richest and most colorful album in our history.
How was your 25th anniversary show at Wacken?
Tosso: This show took a lot of preparations as well as a lot of crew people on the show day. We had four cage dancers onstage, lots of fire and a metal logo from Atrocity that was powered by 84 L.E.D. lights. It looked a bit like the old Kiss logo. The only bad thing was the volume restriction on the stage we played. It just felt different onstage than usual. But still we had a great party with the audience and it was really exciting to play a lot of the older Atrocity songs like “Necropolis,” “Blut” or “Willenskraft.”
Alex: It was great to celebrate the band’s anniversary at Wacken. We will bring out the whole show which will be a part of our upcoming DVD. The DVD release will include a full package of Atrocity containing a movie about the history of the band with a lot of people out of the metal world like fans and friends, many musicians, journalists, people of record companies etc. Besides that you will also get specials, video clips and of course the big Wacken show with tons of pyro and the special stage set, nice go-go dancers and a best of set list.
Do you have any upcoming tour plans?
Alex: We would like to play with Yasmin, but this will not be so easy because she’s living in New Zealand. There are also lots of requests regarding shows for the band anniversary. We will see what we will do in the next couple months.
As you look back on Atrocity's 25 years, what have been the high and low points for you?
Alex: Wow, that’s a good question. The Atrocity history movie will actually deal a lot with that stuff because more than the half of my life was a big adventure and challenge with this band. When I look back we had some really great moments like for example when we recorded the first album Hallucinations at Morrisound Studio together with Scott Burns and all our friends showed up: Obituary, Morbid Angel, Incubus, Nocturnus, Deicide. After that we returned to make our first big Euro tour with Carcass.
There were so many great moments, but of course also a lot of troubles on the other side. This year's 25th anniversary show at Wacken was something special for everybody, but we had also bad luck one time in 1998 when we also wanted to make a really big show with Werk 80. At the end we couldn’t play because of the curfew. Some bands were just not on time and we could not go on. But on the same night we solved it with the promoters of Wacken and we set up a fantastic show for 1999 which turned out to our great 15th year anniversary concert. Sometimes bad and good times are just very close to each other.
Give us a preview of Liv's upcoming CD Skintight.
Tosso: Its a really cool album with straight forward rock and pop songs, but also some nice piano songs. Imagine Nirvana, U2, Johnny Cash and Pink Floyd team up to write songs with Liv Kristine. That may be a good explanation to the album. There is also a video for the song "Skintight" that you can check out on Liv's YouTube channel.
What's the timetable for the next Leaves Eyes album?
Alex: When we return home we will finish the production of the new album. Some recordings like the orchestra have to be done. I guess the mixdown will be a lot of fun again, one million tracks to mix. (laughs)
Have you produced any other artists recently at Mastersound?
Alex: One band I did not long ago was Satanic Syndrome which are a German black betal act singing in German. They are sounding really cool, check them out on MySpace.
What are your hobbies or interests outside of music?
Tosso: I am very interested in history, historic places and also social science. To relax I love to go to the mountains or nature in general.
Alex: I’m very much into history and secrets of the world and a lot of other stuff I have never time to do. But I like to spend as much as time as possible with my son Leon, so my hobbies are turning into Tom and Jerry movies to Star Wars model space ships!
