Feuerschwanz: Here Comes The Fire

The metal genre isn’t really known for its humour. Aside from maybe Adam D of metalcore legends KILLSWITCH ENGAGE prancing around on stage in a pink tutu, you’ll be hard picked to point out somebody else from the genre to elicit more than a small smile. Artists from the power metal generally get laughed at not with in their artistry, from the likes of ALESTORM and their pirate metal to EVIL SCARECROW‘s metal cabaret. Along come someone like FEUERSCHWANZ who actively embraces both being laughed with and at. Taking their musicality deadly seriously but using their artistry to have fun with the fact band members are dressed like extra’s from the Middle Earth series of films. The band are on the cusp of releasing their ninth album Das Elfte Gabot (The 11th Commandment to the non-German speakers) and we here at Distorted Sound managed to sit down with fearless leader Hauptmann for a fireside chat about all things folk metal.

We find Hauptmann in a tentative mood as, with English being his second language, the answer provided may not come across in an intended manner. We quickly break the ice by speaking a small amount of German and all is well in the world as we digress and tell Hauptmann his English is pretty much better than this interviewer’s own. We ask if after 15 years and nine albums do an artist ever become nervous around an album being released into the world? “Not really, its really difficult knowing we can’t present the new music in the way we want to and it’s a little different this time due to the world events recently with Coronavirus but we always put all of our energy into our art, our online release party gig (on June 26th) is something we are heading towards and concentrating on that. Freddie Mercury once sang ‘The Show Must Go On’ and we firmly believe in that!”

As with anything, all music is subjective and any reviews are there only to guide a listener to form their own opinions. We ask Hauptmann if reviews play any part in the formation of an album. Do they take stock of reviews from previous albums and do they read their own press? “With the magazines, we do a lot of interviews so that must be good if we have lots of them, that must be good right?”

Stories are the beating heart of any piece of art, why did a painter pain that picture, why did a sculptor sculpt that statue and why did a musician write that song? We discuss that in-depth. “The title song The 11th Commandement came very early in the creative process and songwriting. We are very deeply touched by this song so we decided to make this the title track of the album. The track is quite deep and normally we are a party band and this particular track is quite fragile. With its meaning of living your life in the moment, it came from the soul and was very special for FEUERSCHWANZ. This song and this album are very special, we still have the party and drinking songs though so don’t worry! We are 15 years old this year, we have matured, but only a little bit!”

When it comes to an overall package of art, bands sometimes go all in and keep everything in-house but sometimes they leave certain aspects to outside forces, like artwork for example. Folk metal bands have a propensity to have vivid artworks here, not an ounce of the canvas is missed, here lies no negative space, we find out how the vivid artwork of the album came to be.”We are very proud to have Peter Sala who does SABATON‘s artwork as well. Its the first time we had very strong and detailed artwork. With every album, we are heading towards the Medieval folk metal genre and we wanted that to be reflected in the artwork. A dragon really symbolises the band in a sophisticated way!”

As with anything, an artist creates a record for a reason. Nothing is imagined into this world without a purpose, to expunge some internal demons, to tell an out of body experience, or put yourself in someone else shoes. We find out what the band hopes this record does for the band. “We simply hope that the album is strong from front to back. We didn’t want any filler whatsoever and we fought really hard for that and we wanted to get our music further out there in Europe. Within Germany, we are making steps going above 1,000 capacity venues, and we want that for our European fans!”

Lastly, in the age of Coronavirus, we find out what plans FEUERSCHWANZ has in terms of the rest of 2020. “It could be that we start thinking about another album simply because we have no live concerts and we need to keep that creative muscle flexed!”

Das Elfte Gebot is set for release on June 26th via Napalm Records.

Like FEUERSCHWANZ on Facebook.