Interview mit Chris Martin von Shrapnel

How is the feedback to your new, second SHRAPNEL-album. Are you satisfied?
Couldn’t be happier, the reviews have been amazing and the reactions from people actually buying the record has been phenomenal. There are still a lot of people who haven’t heard of us or the record so the mission at the moment is to get it as far as we can get it.

As your debut, the new album seems to be pretty influenced by bands like Destruction and Exodus – would you agree with that, or which other bands would you mention here?
Those influences are always going to be with us. The reason we started this band are because of those bands and bands of that era. I think we are able to pull in enough influences from other places to make this record a little different though.

Thrash is a very conservative genre, I think – many fans prefer traditional songs to new approaches – what may be the reason why thrash is so conserved, with only few innovations those days. What do you think about that? Is it good, that thrash stays thrash, or does that also have it’s bad side?
I think that can be true but also fans want to hear something they haven’t heard before, I think that’s why Vektor have done so well for themselves. Besides the fact they’re an amazing band, they’re original, however much destruction has played a role in their sound. It gets a little confusing as to which albums actually ARE Thrash and not just influenced by it. I hear a lot of new bands listed under the Thrash genre and don’t hear it so maybe I fall into the conservative type as well in some respects.

What makes SHRAPNEL different to other thrash-bands, where do you see your special skills?
I think we are finding our feet. On first listen to this record you might hear a Thrash album like many others but there is so much going on. I think the more you listen to this one the more you will appreciate the modern elements, the black metal influences, the death metal flavours. It’s a busy record and I honestly think our guitarist Nath is a force to be reckoned with in terms of ability and song-writing.

How would you describe your new album in one sentence?
Everything we love about Heavy Metal.

The album is entitled „Raised On Decay“ – what’s the idea behind that title?
The idea is that we live in a world built on convenience and our daily lives are affordable for most, food is easy to get and cheap and we’re kind of spoilt in so many ways but behind the scenes people suffer so we can have everything we want or need. In order to be wealthy someone else has to be poor.

What is the album about, is there kind of a concept behind the lyrics, and is there any context to the artwork? What can we see here?
The artwork is based on the lyrics for the title track about the topic I just mentioned. Eliran Kantor did an incredible job taking my ideas and the lyrics and creating this cover that we all love. As ar as a concept goes there isnt one that runs through the album. In each song we try to cover something different so we have historical, mythological, fictional and social topics, mostly things that piss us off.

Who is responsible for the nice sound/production?
The legendary Russ Russell who went above and beyond to help us finish this record. we owe him big time for this one.

Will you go on tour with that album, or asked otherwise round: When will you see you on german stages?
It’s one of our main goals this time around. We were never able to get over to Europe on the first record so this time we want to make sure we do. We are looking at festivals in the summer but want to play as much as we can.

Thank you for the interview! Please let us do a short brainstorming in the end of this interview. What comes in your mind first reading the following terms:
Angela Merkel: Brexit
Brexit: Fucked
German Thrash: Sodom
Festivals: please
Christmas: booze

Once again thanks for your time. The last words are yours – is there anything left you want to tell our readers?
Thanks to those who already got the record! Even more so if you pledged and helped us finish it. If you haven’t got yours yet… What are you waiting for?

Publiziert am 2. Dezember 2017 von Moritz Grütz