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BIO | INTERVIEW
2008 - Stephan Gebedi about '...Of Frost And War'
Hey! The feedback to your debut album ‘…Of Frost And War’ is pretty overwhelming. Surprised?
Well, we knew we have come up with something good, but still we’re surprised by the impact the album seems to have. Needless to say we’re very happy with all the great reviews and enthusiastic reactions from Death Metal fans worldwide. We get the idea that a lot of people were fed up with the hyperspeed death metal thing and were longing for something with more groove and focused on good songs instead of only speed and brutality...
Your demo EP has been Demo of the Month in mags like Metal Hammer Germany and Rock Hard Germany. Did it put some pressure on you when you wrote the other songs of the new album?
No, not at all. Most songs for the album were already written when we heard about that. It did put some pressure on us to make the album sound even better and heavier than the EP though. But together with Dan Swanö I believe we succeeded in doing that. We also wanted our performance on the album to be better than on the EP. So I guess, there was more pressure on the production and performance side than on the actual song writing....
’…Of Frost And War’ is a concept album about World War II. Why did you choose World War II as main theme?
First of all, Martin, our singer, wanted to do a concept album about this topic before, but it didn’t feel right to do this with his previous band DEATH BY DAWN. When we had written the first couple of songs he immediately knew that this music would fit his concept perfectly and vice versa. WWII is the mother of all wars in our recent history and especially the battles at the Eastern front have been often overlooked in movies and documentaries. Nevertheless the German-Russian war and those battles mentioned were crucial for the further development of WWII. You could see the album as some sort of history lesson. There’s no political message whatsoever! We’re simply describing the events that happened and all horrors and atrocities that occurred there based on historical facts. The music, lyrics and artwork go hand in hand and the biggest compliment we get is that people actually feel like they’re out there on the cold wasteland whilst listening to the album!
HAIL OF BULLETS is all about old-school Death Metal. Do you listen to old-school stuff only when it comes to metal music?
Personally I listen to a lot of stuff, both old and new. I like classic hard rock and metal like PRIEST, SABBATH, MAIDEN, QUEENSRYCHE, but obviously I’m a big fan of old school Death and Thrash Metal bands like INFERNAL MAJESTY, POSSESSED, DEATH, MASSACRE, CELTIC FROST, SLAYER. But I also love some of the newer Black and Death metal stuff like SHINING, SEAR BLISS, BEHEMOTH, DARK FORTRESS, 1349, WATAIN etc... As long as it’s in the range of metal/ hard rock I’m open to it...
HAIL OF BULLETS obviously is an all star band. How did the idea come up to form this band?
An ‘all star band’ sounds like something from American Idol or ‘Deutschland sucht den Superstar’, haha. But actually I already wanted to form a band with Ed Warby on drums many years ago. It never happened though. A few years ago I met Martin and I mentioned the idea to him. He was enthusiastic about it and I got in touch with the other guys who were all friends of mine and one thing led to another... Obviously the line up of the bands did gain us some extra interest but in the end it’s the music that counts and not the reputation of the band members. That’s why we decided to make the 4-track demo. Let the music do the talking!
What can you do with HoB that you can’t do with your other bands?
For me personally HoB is the outlet for my love for pure old school Death Metal and I guess that goes for each and everyone of us. My other band, THANATOS, is more focussed on Thrash Metal which is my other great love in metal. For me these two bands are outlets for two of my favourite subgenres in metal. GOREFEST for instance is less old school-orientated than HoB. So Ed can use all his old school orientated ideas for us and work on more modern stuff for GOREFEST.
On June 6th you played your first HoB gig. How was it?
It was awesome, but it was soooo fucking hot there! Really unbelievable. The place was sold out and the crowd was amazing, but I heard a few people actually had problems with breathing due to the insane temperatures, no joke! Of course we were a little bit nervous when we got on stage, but when the crowd started a mosh pit after 2 seconds in the first song, that tension immediately disappeared! We had great time!
In August you will play Party.San and Summer Breeze festivals. What can the fans expect?
We will do our utmost best to give everyone a show to remember and not to disappoint anyone. We give it 100% on stage and once the crowd gets going we go for 110%. It’s our intention to make people feel like they’re being run over by a T34 tank. The hardest thing will be to decide which song(s) to leave out of the set, since we’ll have a playing time of 40-45 minutes on those fests.
Last question: Is HoB just a real band or just an all star project with musicians that have known each other for years and wanted to do something together?
HAIL OF BULLETS is definitely a band and not a project! There will be more albums, more live shows, maybe even some short tours. All our bands are important to us, but at this moment HoB has our priority. We’re already writing down ideas for new songs and we’ll start writing new material after the Summer.The war isn’t over yet. It has only just begun!
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