INTERVIEW: Mem Von Stein – Exumer

Legends of the German thrash scene in its formative years, EXUMER came smashing back into the scene with 2012’s Fire & Damnation a full 25 years after their previous offering. Since then, the returning legends have been firing on all cylinders, following up Fire & Damnation with arguably the crowning glory of their career, 2016’s The Rising Tides. Three years on, they’re back again with their third album from Metal Blade Records, Hostile Defiance (read our review here). We spoke to founding frontman Mem Von Stein about the latest EXUMER offering and the titanic German thrash scene.

Hello Mem, thanks for taking the time to talk with us today. Following the release of Hostile Defiance, how is everyone in the EXUMER camp doing?

Mem: Everything is okay, we had a pretty rough week or so in Spain on our tour which got cancelled due to our contracts being breached by the agency that booked us. But other than this, everything is great, the new album is doing really well.

Hostile Defiance has only just been released – how has the response been, both critically and from the EXUMER fanbase?

Mem: It’s been insane how the press and the fans have welcomed the new record, we really are blessed. People are super positive about it and we feel positive about it. That was a pleasant surprise, really, that people really dig this new record the way they do.

Hostile Defiance is the first EXUMER record to not follow the “fire and water” theme in its title and artwork. What was the inspiration behind that theme previously in your discography, and why did you decide to move away from that for this album?

Mem: The idea for the new record, we’re not stuck in a thematic scheme really, if you think about it. Our first record on Metal Blade Records, Fire & Damnation, was actually our comeback record. [We chose] that title because we went through fire and damnation to come back on the other side. And for The Raging Tides… Our first two records recorded in the ’80s – Rising From The Sea and Possessed By Fire – had those fire and water themes, and it kind of fit with the first two in the 2000s – but each of the records in the 2000s has its own theme. The first one was a comeback record, so a lot of the lyrics and the concept around it was based around us coming back, and what I was thinking about back then. The lyrics for the The Raging Tides were of political nature, and I wanted to write about how I felt about the rise of ISIS, the election of Trump, and politics in general, and how politicians manipulate entire populations to gain things for themselves on a personal level. That was the theme of The Raging Tides.

Lyrically, what concepts and stories did you want to tackle with this album?

Mem: The lyrical concept of Hostile Defiance is informed through my almost 20 years of working in the field of Psychiatry. I am a master social worker by trade, worked in New York – Manhattan and in Brooklyn –  with the mentally ill population. I wanted to have this record centred around that because I felt strongly about what has been happening in the past five or six years with all the mass shootings, especially since Sandy Hook, which is not too far from New York. The first thing that always pops up when politicians talk about mental illness, in relation to shootings, is untreated mental conditions, and it always give a bad connotation. I’ve been working with mentally ill people for almost 20 years, and I have maybe encountered maybe five really violent people. Of course, if you go and mow down 50 folks, you have emotional problems. But I wanted to get a conversation going and steer this in a positive direction, rather than negative, and sort of normalise it by talking about it. So every song revolves around some form of mental illness, and our mascot, the masked guy, is experiencing these symptoms. So Hostile Defiance is about oppositional defiant disorder – that’s found with younger people so with our video clip you see this young guy experiencing the factors that lead to his emotional outbreak. And with the song Raptor, I’m talking about depression. The symptoms of depression are talking to the protagonist that is experiencing these symptoms. So each song is around one form or another of mental illness.

The cover art for Hostile Defiance is very striking! What was the concept behind the artwork?

Mem: The cover is absolutely connected to the lyrical concept behind Hostile Defiance. When I talked to Costin [Chioreanu, artwork], I told him lyrically what the concept of the record is, and I sent him all the lyrics. He really liked the song Trapper, there is a passage where I‘m talking about demon eyes – the mascot is experiencing hallucinations, visual and auditory, and he is seeing these demon eyes swallowing him in the fire. And so you see him in the straight jacket on the cover, and hes got these eyes piercing through his hands. That’s were the artwork came together with the concept for the record.

The masked figure has been a mainstay in EXUMER’s artwork since your debut album, Possessed By Fire, and has become a mascot for the band, similar to IRON MAIDEN’s Eddie or MEGADETH’s Vic Rattlehead. Is there a story behind the mascot at all?

Mem: Our mascot is important, we’ve been lucky enough to have him. There’s no real story behind the mascot, other than our demo was called A Mortal In Black. I wanted to have our debut album called “The Mortal’s Return”.  But we couldn’t come up with good artwork. And then this guy, Martin [Appoldt], who drew the first and second covers for EXUMER, he came up with the mascot and we said “Wow, well why about we call the record Possessed By Fire?” which was one of the songs, and he just threw some fire in the background and that’s how the mascot came about.

You are touring in Europe at the moment in support of Hostile Defiance’s release. How have the shows been for you?

Mem: Well the tour was great until we hit Spain, but we’re gonna come back to Europe with a full tour probably in the fall, because the Spanish dates don’t work out, we have to make up these dates.

Which tracks from the new album are working best in the live environment?

Mem: In the live set, I think what really works well is Hostile Defiance, the song Descent works really well, Rapture works well. Kings End… people actually listen more than anything else but its all good!

You also have a run of festival shows booked over the summer in Europe – do you have touring plans in place already for the rest of 2019/2020? Is there anywhere in particular you really want to bring the Hostile Defiance tour to?

Mem: We’re gonna do some festivals over the summer in Europe and then we’re just going to keep on trucking. We are gonna try and hit all the markets… 2019 and 2020 will be quite busy for us, then after 2020 we gotta start working on the new record. The next two years are all about Hostile Defiance, and we wanna hit all the markets, Europe, South America, North America – it was planned to hit North America in the fall, because of the financial setback that we experienced with this bullshit promoter in Spain, we probably have to go back to Europe first and make up for some time and money, so that’s the plan right now.

Upon forming in 1985, EXUMER dived straight into the German thrash metal scene that was already in full swing. Looking back, how was it being a part of a musical scene that has become so important to the history of heavy metal?

Mem: Back then in Germany, thrash was king! And I mean, I think thrash metal always has been a vital part of metal anyway and I think besides the US bands, German bands definitely were important to form an identity of this music. We’ve been lucky enough to be part of that thrash seen and people were feeling that music. I think it has to do with, even though thrash is rooted in metal, the attitude is a punk and hardcore attitude, and I think that really talked to a lot of people in Germany. It’s a little rougher than your regular metal and I think it’s a lot more real.

The German style of thrash has always been a bit more visceral and aggressive than the big names from America. Do you believe there’s something in the German psyche that lends itself to that harsher, more aggressive sound, or was the similarity in the early days of the German thrash scene simply down to shared influences?

Mem: I don’t know if the German bands are more aggressive sounding. But I think the German bands of the ’80s had their own sound. And we basically looked to the United States or England at the start with VENOM or whatnot, we took certain elements of that and made it our own. We were a little more rudimentary as well, so because of that and because of the simplicity of some of the bands, the sound evolved in a more visceral and abrasive fashion. But then once we all started to be better musicians and to learn our instruments, we kinda caught up but I‘m glad the sound of early thrash in Germany sounds the way it does, it has its own identity. So when people talk about thrash metal, they talk about the Big 4 – but they’re talking about the Big 4 of the United States but you cant really count out our Big 4 – especially SODOM, KREATOR and DESTRUCTION.

Are there any up and coming bands in the German thrash scene you are particularly impressed by these days – or any forgotten bands from the ‘80s that you feel more thrash fans should be aware of?

Mem: Yeah there’s a couple of [new] thrash bands coming from Germany – I like that band VULTURE a lot, they’re a really cool thrash band. And then forgotten bands, VIOLENT FORCE maybe, and LIVING DEATH – [but] I don’t know how forgotten those bands are. I think the younger generation that really enjoys the music now is really, they know what they’re doing, and they’re so well informed, obviously because of the internet, but it’s amazing that people are so versed and knowledgeable, and its really cool to see that they know their history really well. I don’t think we really had the opportunity back then to be the same way, but we were reliant on the post office, I guess! That had its challenges. But the younger generation knows whats up! They know how to educate themselves about the past. I think whatever bands I throw in the mix people already know, or they know more bands than I do.

Hostile Defiance is out now via Metal Blade Records. 

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