Hello Ralf. What’s new in the world of Metal? Over the last 20 or 30 years, a lot more styles developed in the Metal scene. I also think that there are a lot more bands publishing an album as modern technologies make it very much easier to produce a CD. Getting a recorddeal was something ‘holy’ in the early 80’s... Thanks to the Internet, the access to music is much easier and for that reason you got much more to choose from. Today’s musicians are much more educated on their instruments and songs are more complex and better produced than in the past. Unfortunately sometimes I have the feeling that some songs sound a bit ‘mathematically’. 80’s Metal was often simple, but very honest... Something that never changed is the outfit of the fans - if I go to “Bang Your Head” today and look at the fans, they pretty much look like the guys I saw back in 1982 at “Monsters Of Rock”...
Vampyr isn’t your first band. I know you’re one of founding members of Tyrant. What was the real reason of leaving Tyrant? Maybe a desire to create more brutal music was the cause ? It was back in 1983 - my Mum died very young - and I had a pretty bad time. Tyrant got an offer for a record deal and they thought they would need a ‘better’ guitar player for that.
So I left, and Markus and I joined the Sterzikbrothers band and founded Vampyr. We raised the heavy- and speed-level but that was never a reason for the splitting. Unnecessary to say that the guitar work on “Cry Out For Metal” sounded better than on the Tyrantalbums, maybe except “Fight For Your Life” with a great Phil Zanella on guitar, who unfortunately stayed only for that record.... Vampyr was formed in 1983, two years later you have released your debut album “Cry Out For Metal”. Did you record any demo stuff before that? How did you attracted your label’s attention? Back in those days there was a really hot metal-scene around Ulm. There wasn’t only Tyrant, there were bands like Gravestone, Stormwitch, Stranger and many more. When Gama started to make money with the first metal acts from Ulm, they looked for more bands out of the