Interview date: August 29, 2008
After the organizer kindly let me into the grounds of the 14th annual Twin Horn Beach Party festival in Pula, it wasn’t even five minutes before I was sitting at a table backstage with the legendary Axxis vocalist, founding member and currently the only original member of the lineup, the man who has kept Axxis standing all along, Bernhard Weiss. He’s an incredibly positive and charismatic guy, always up for a good joke and a good time. At the same time, he comes across as remarkably level-headed and realistic. Soon after, the band’s new guitarist Marco Wriedt joined us, and in a seriously lively atmosphere, with all kinds of background noise chirping away around us, as you’d expect at a biker festival, our marathon interview finally got going, for real this time…
RockLine: How are you guys feeling?
Bernhard: Great!
Marco: Great! It’s my first time in Croatia. The weather’s awesome, the girls are beautiful, what more could a man want?
Bernhard: Today we tried octopus salad and sat on the shore soaking up the sun. Back home in Germany the weather is absolutely disgusting right now. Fifteen years ago I was near Pula, in a place called Novi Vinodolski. And fifteen years later I’m playing here in Pula. That’s truly unbelievable. Pula is a really beautiful city.
RockLine: Today is the first day of your summer tour. What can you tell us about it?
Bernhard: Actually, it’s not a tour. We did the tour in winter, together with Helloween and Gamma Ray. This time it’s just individual shows at a few festivals. After a month the festival season is over for us, and then around Christmas we’re planning a few one-off acoustic shows in Germany
Marco: and Spain…
Bernhard: And Spain. Spain is really important for us. Again, it won’t be a proper tour, more of a mini tour, with the dates just strung one after another.
RockLine: Your current studio album “Doom Of Destiny” came out last fall. What was the main musical direction you stuck to on it, and what was the basic idea that guided the album?
Bernhard: We’ve got a whole bunch of directions. Especially at the very beginning, when the album is in its earliest stages. And at the start it’s actually really hard to decide what to tackle.
Marco: On this album we tried to mix together as many different colors as possible. Hard heavy stuff with bombast, represented by songs like Better Fate or Doom Of Destiny. We also recorded a great ballad with a sax solo called The Fire Still Burns, and a really fast metal song, Father, Father,… So basically, you’ll find all kinds of directions on the album. It was my first album with Axxis, I was super inspired and felt a huge drive and excitement while we were recording it.
Bernhard: I hope your drive stays like that in the future too.
Marco: I’ll give it everything I’ve got!
RockLine: The band’s musical style has changed a lot over the years. What was behind that?
Bernhard: Right from the start, with “Kingdom of the Night” and then the next album, “Axxis II.”, when we recorded Touch the Rainbow, for example, which has a touch of reggae, all the way to a fast speed metal song. Throughout our whole career we’ve stuck to the idea that we like to try lots of different things. Today we sound much more metal, and we’re also adding extra female vocals; on “Doom Of Destiny”, for instance, the female vocal has an equal role alongside the lead vocal. I think it’s boring for any musician to copy their own CDs over and over again. For us, trying new things is the challenge. At the start you don’t know whether something will work or whether some idea just won’t. Take the album “Voodoo Vibes”, which he (read: Marco Wriedt, editor’s note.) likes a lot. For our fans it was already the straw that broke the camel’s back, too experimental an album. But during that “Voodo Vibes” period we learned a huge amount. It was really important for us to put out that album. It was the kiss of death for us in terms of our relationship with EMI Records. It was the last CD we released for German EMI Records. With EMI Records we were a really big band in Germany, we made a lot of money and we were always very well known there. But as soon as you hit the German border, everything stops. Even in Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Nobody knows Axxis. And now that we’ve been working with smaller labels like Massacre Records and AFM Records for seven years, we’ve gotten the chance to play in places like Croatia, Romania, Spain, Italy, … that’s a completely new situation for us, and one we feel better in. But times are changing now. Tons of bands today buy computers and release CDs, so the market is flooded with a lot of bad releases too, and heavy metal is kind of losing its meaning because of it. The natural thing for a band would be to take a small step forward every year. That’s how we developed, and playing live gave us a lot of motivation to keep going.
Marco: Being in Axxis is something where I can honestly say I don’t want anything more than this. I listen to really varied music. A lot of bands stick to one and the same style, which is a shame, because over time they can get boring. Of course that doesn’t go for all bands, but like Bernie already said, every Axxis album is different. You can’t even compare them with each other, really. In general, we in Axxis are very open-minded when it comes to trying different things in music.
RockLine: Andre Hilgers, your drummer until now, has left you. Now he plays with Rage. Have you found a replacement for him yet?
Bernhard: We’re looking. Right now Dirk Brandt is helping us out. The guy has made loads of DVDs and books for learning to play drums. Andre bought a lot of his DVDs too, actually Andre learned from Dirk. Personally, I think we work great with Dirk, and on the other hand Andre also fit in really well with Axxis, but we ran into conflicts with scheduling. Lately we’d had a lot of shows that overlapped with another show on the same day. And since Andre was already playing with Rage, we were fighting with scheduling headaches around the gigs. At some point we just couldn’t handle it anymore. Coordinating all the shows, even tours, got way too complicated, it was taking too much energy out of us. It’s better for Andre now to play with Rage. There are only three guys in the band, top-notch musicians, and it’s a great solution for him.
Marco: Rage is the right musical fit for him, totally “balls to the wall” style, practically every song sits on the double bass drum pedal, he feels great there now and that’s really good.
Bernhard: Andre recently quit his job and became a professional musician. He wanted to keep his membership in both bands. In Axxis and in Rage. That way he’d get paid by both. But like I said, it didn’t work out.
RockLine: And how was the tour with Helloween? RockLine came to see you at the show in Kaufbeuren (Germany)?
Marco: Kaufbeuren?!?!?
Bernhard: Kaufbeuren?!?! Ha, ha, ha, ha,…!!!
RockLine: Yep, we went all the way there from Slovenia, we even did an interview with Kai Hansen…
Bernhard: Unbelievable…
RockLine: We’re probably a little crazy.
Bernhard: Yeah. You really are crazy, ha, ha, ha….
Marco: The tour with Helloween… was pretty crazy too, ha, ha, ha… You know, when you’re on tour and playing big cities like Paris, London, Rome, you step into a completely different world. It actually happened to me after just three days. It was honestly wonderful. The vibes between the bands were great.
Bernhard: Picture it like this: the Axxis bus we traveled in was basically the party bus of the tour. Everyone, Gamma Ray and Helloween, sat in our bus. Everybody was giving each other weird looks like, what the hell are the opening band’s guys doing on our bus, but in this case we didn’t feel that at all, because the guys from both bands have known us for almost 20 years. And Henjo from Gamma Ray, for example, really loves Axxis, and around the time our ballad Stay Don’t Leave Me came out, he met his girlfriend, and that song became their song.
Marco: Yeah. That song holds special memories for him. Before the last show of our tour we played it at soundcheck and he was crying next to us.
Bernhard: Yeah, really. And in this case it was actually a kind of miracle, because exactly five years later, on this very day…
Marco: Not five, ten…
Bernhard: …his girlfriend called him. On the day we played that song. That’s honestly a kind of miracle. A kind of magic.
Marco: Musical magic.
Bernhard: On that tour it wasn’t just friendship. We were a family.
Marco: It was like a vacation on stage. And a great chance for Axxis to show ourselves in different corners of Europe. We grabbed the opportunity and gave it everything at the shows. Every night.
RockLine: In my opinion that was a great move. Your venues were totally packed.
Bernhard: It was a great combination of bands on the bill.
Marco: Yeah. Like, two nights in a row in Paris were completely sold out. For a band that’s not from France, it’s really hard to play in France. There are tons of French bands playing there that basically never leave France, people are very attached to their local bands, so the feeling was really something else…
RockLine: Some of us on the team saw Helloween for the first time on their last tour back in November 2007 in Belgrade, but you guys weren’t playing there…
Bernhard: See, at first we got an offer to play the whole tour with Helloween, every single location across Europe. But the problem was that our little budget purse was pretty poorly filled. So we weighed up, for example, whether to play the Scandinavian countries or, say, Slovenia. Everybody in the band agreed that this time we’d hit the Eastern European markets, because the crowds there are especially fiery and especially attached to the bands that come play. The problem was that our label said: “Fine, but Axxis don’t sell records there!” And I told them: “Okay, but it’s still important for us, because we sell more official merch at those shows, ha, ha, ha…!” We had a little war with the label over it, but in the end we all agreed to head off to the north of Europe, to Scandinavia.
Marco: That’s important for us too, because a lot of talented young metal bands come from Scandinavia…
Bernhard: But everything there is hellishly expensive,… Everything. From the ferry to the hotels…
Marco: We stayed in Oslo for four days, because there were no shows for us right then. With nothing to do, we wandered around Oslo and in one day I spent as much money there as I normally don’t spend in two months.
Bernhard: You know, that kind of annoys me. Because for those five Scandinavian shows, we could have played ten in Eastern Europe. Anyway, this time the label beat us, ha, ha…
RockLine: And who’ll be handling the female vocals at tonight’s show here in Pula?
Bernhard: Nobody. After the experience with Ana from Romania (singer Ana Mladinovici, from the band Magica, who accompanied the band on the last tour, editor’s note.), we decided to play without female vocals. Axxis is basically a band without female vocals. We only used them on the last two studio albums. We work really well without female vocals. Then again, when I’m not in the studio, I do still miss a female voice on stage. I enjoy that stage play, the little battle with a girl up there. While singing, or whatever else fits the show.
Marco: After the tour with Helloween we told ourselves we’d go back a bit to our roots. We got some ideas we’d like to use on the next album, we don’t know yet what it’ll look like.
Bernhard: We’re in talks with two female singers we might use in the studio for the new album, but as far as live shows go, Axxis shows work very, very well even without female vocals on stage.
Marco: Yeah. You’ll be able to see that for yourself tonight.
Bernhard: And it’s extra costs anyway. And a girl on tour and on the bus! Oho-ho-ho…
Marco: They always bring trouble…
Bernhard: You get it. Ha, ha, ha, ha…. It’s a different chemistry. Put a girl on a tour bus and the whole situation changes completely. My feeling is that our road trips are more relaxed and chilled without girls traveling with us on tour. Well, except once in a while, ha, ha…
RockLine: Okay, you’ve survived almost 20 years on the scene. How do you see the situation for heavy metal and hard rock today, compared to the days when the Axxis career was just getting started? Say, what’s the German experience?
Marco: In my opinion, after all these years Germany has the best selection of bands today. All the most important labels are also coming out of Germany right now.
Bernhard: And Scandinavia too.
Marco: Scandinavia too, but Germany is still number one. Take Whitesnake or Alice Cooper, really big names from the eighties scene, all of them have now landed with German labels.
RockLine: SPV Records, right?
Marco: SPV, yeah. And on the other hand we’ve got the Wacken Open Air festival, the biggest open-air festival in the world. So it’s good for us to be based in Germany.
Bernhard: Even though most of the great young bands are coming from Scandinavia right now, most of the biggest deals get made in Germany. I don’t know why that is…
Marco: Honestly though, the music scene in general really pisses me off. I hate it. I think ninety percent of it is artificial, fake… You don’t need to know how to play an instrument or sing, because you can fix everything on a computer. Tours are open to anyone,…
RockLine: The age of internet downloading arrived…
Bernhard: Bands that can actually play and perform on stage don’t have the money to invest calmly and risk a tour, and so come play in Slovenia, for example. We can’t brag about that either, so right now we’re waiting for some “crazy” enough promoters to call us, like in this case today here in Pula, so we can play in countries outside Germany and Scandinavia too. When Axxis started our career, computer recording techniques didn’t exist yet. We used recording tape. So you had to play, play guitar, you had to know how to play guitar. That was really important. You could use certain tricks, sure, but you still had to have a very good command of your playing. Today you can get a virtual guitarist, a virtual bassist, and you don’t even know where it all comes from.
Marco: And the problem with that is that music lovers no longer tell the difference between authentic and fake playing, because a lot of things are hidden under good production. It couldn’t get any worse than it is right now. And all the media, from MTV to Viva, lie to people. I hope bands like Avantasia with Tobias Sammet and similar ones, who turn to the methods of the late sixties, will eventually turn things around and put them back in the right place. Right now the media controls everything…
Bernhard: Five years ago we played the Bang Your Head!!! festival. We played Axxis normally, with no backing tracks, while a lot of bands performed with extra recordings running in the background. It happened that such a band sounded better than us, who played as musicians, really playing without the help of extra recordings. It was mostly about additions on the vocal side. If you want to be honest with the fans of your music, you have to face the fact that a band member might not be in the mood before the show, and a disaster can come out of the stage, or else you sell out and equip yourself with laptops in the background and other artificial crutches.
Marco: That’s a nightmare.
RockLine: Okay, let’s change the subject…
Marco: Okay, but what you’ll hear from us tonight is playing live.
Bernhard: Except for the prerecorded female vocal.
Marco: Yeah. Four seconds or something like that.
RockLine: In the intro?
Marco: No, in the song Doom Of Destiny.
RockLine: Now for some more personal questions. Bernhard. How do you look after your voice? It’s still really explosive and powerful after all these years…
Bernhard: Mostly loud, really loud…
RockLine: Rob Halford, for example, has completely lost his voice.
Bernhard: Yeah. Rob is already very old.
Marco: Bernhard is one of the few singers today who has kept his range intact. Lots of bands, like Dio, have to tune their instruments down, even a whole step. Dio is actually one of my favorite vocalists, and yet …
Bernhard: Maybe smoking and drinking help me, ha, ha….
Marco: Bernhard is better than ever.
Bernhard: Ah, come on. I’ve got a strange feeling tonight. I feel like I’m on vacation, acting like a tourist, but I’m actually on duty.
RockLine: Marco, what would you say about yourself as a guitarist? Who’s your musical inspiration?
Marco: First of all, the vast majority of people don’t understand me or follow me as a musician. It started with Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Queen,… Then Meat Loaf, Madonna, Prince, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Dream Theater, and among the newer stuff I really like Coldplay, I like Avantasia too,… A really wide range when it comes to soaking up music. I also listen to quite a bit of jazz, like Al Di Meola. Then Journey, and AOR bands like Boston, Chicago. Christina Aguilera too, I respect her as well, she’s the real deal. She’s an artist. And my first big inspiration for playing guitar was Megadeth.
RockLine: So it started with Megadeth?
Marco: No, no. I fell in love with music through Queen. Queen had a really wide musical spectrum. They didn’t stick to just one or two things. They played everything. None of today’s musicians can even come close to them in that respect. Anyway, I soak up everything that has soul. I also really like Testament or Symphony X. Music has to touch you when you listen to it.
RockLine: How did you join Axxis?
Marco: That was really strange. It was destiny. I was 21 at the time. And I was working in a guitar shop. Rob (Rob Schomaker, the band’s bassist, editor’s note.) was one of our customers. He came by the shop at least once a month. I didn’t know he was a member of Axxis, because until then I only knew the first two albums, “Kingdom Of The Night” and “Axxis II.”, and “Matters Of Survival”. Then one day the shop boss came up to me and said: “Hey! Do you know this guy plays in Axxis?”, and that Axxis were looking for a new guitarist. I was convinced he was joking, since I was barely 21. I mean, you know, I figured I was too young for the guys, or that they were too old for me. Depends on your point of view…
Bernhard: Ha, ha, ha…
Marco: I figured I wouldn’t be able to deliver what the band would demand of me anyway. Then I met up with Rob and we talked. Apparently I didn’t leave such a bad impression, because he gave me Harry’s phone number (Harry Oellers, the band’s keyboardist, editor’s note.) and Harry said: “Alright, come on over!” So I went to the studio. I was two and a half hours late, because I’d driven in the wrong direction.
Bernhard: Well, as you can see, even at this age we’re still very patient in Axxis.
Marco: Then I found myself in the studio. From here on Bernie can pick up the story…
Bernhard: It was very interesting in the studio. Of all the guitarists who’ve played in Axxis, Marco reminds me a lot of our very first one, Walter Pietsch. In his playing style. Then we played some of our demos together, new material. I thought it was very good, Harry thought it was just good. We talked a bit more, and then Marco tackled the riff of Kingdom Of The Night. A lot of the guitarists we’d tried had trouble with it. Not with the notes, but with the feel. Marco played it with perfect feel, as if I were listening to Walter at the start of Axxis’s career. So we told ourselves we’d try to take a risk. We had the same problem. For us Marco was very young at the time, and we were mainly worried about how we’d build a relationship with Marco. But we’ve already done a few tours together and it works great. With Marco’s arrival, I myself also started paying more attention to the current music scene. He introduced us to new bands, because I haven’t read music magazines or watched or listened to music shows in ages.
Marco: When I joined Axxis I wanted to coax out a sound in the old songs as close as possible to the original. I’m the same as a fan: at a show I want to hear songs played as close as possible to the original recording on the record. Even when I came to Axxis, when they tried me out, I thought: “Alright, I have to do this so it’s as close to the original as possible!” On the other hand, I wanted that once I was in the band, I’d contribute more bombastic influences, even more guitar passages that call for more soloing, while always keeping in mind that all the solos have to fit the basic structure of the song. The song itself is the most important thing, more than any solo. A solo has to be composed so it settles into the song. If you want to show you’re the fastest guitarist in the world, that’s not good for the song. That means nothing to me personally. The point is to solo in a way that fits the song. Feel is the most important thing. I also try to get better day by day, to progress, so I’m constantly playing and practicing.
RockLine: And what about Axxis’s upcoming musical goals? What areas of music do you want to explore and try out in the future?
Bernhard: Interesting question. The next step we intend to take is reworking some of our classic songs into acoustic arrangements. We’ll do it for our own enjoyment, see how it works, and try it out this December on tour. We’ll only do a few acoustic shows there, because I really like it when we add a lambada rhythm and the like to a song like Touch the Rainbow… Tonight we’ll play it in an acoustic version on stage, by the way Marco, did we bring acoustic guitars with us?
Marco: Nobody has one with them.
Bernhard: Ah, I see, so we’ll….
Marco: I’ll use an acoustic, clean sound on the electric guitar, Dire Straits style, ha, ha…
RockLine: With fingerpicking, ha, ha…
Marco: Ahhh, no… I’m not too good at fingerpicking,….
RockLine: And is there any plan on the horizon for releasing a live DVD or CD?
Bernhard: Our 20th anniversary is coming up and we’re looking for ideas on how to mark it.
Marco: And the new studio album will be out in 2009, that’s for sure.
Bernhard: The DVD is a problem. It costs more, you have to invest more in it, and you sell fewer of them than regular CDs, since their price in the shops is higher. We can make a CD completely on our own in our studio. Working with film material is harder for us… But we’re thinking about that milestone and we’re collecting material right now. And at the end of next year, so in 2009, we’ll play a few corporate shows.
Marco: With the next album, I personally want Axxis to broaden our musical reach on all fronts. We already surprised people with the incredible bombast on our album “Doom Of Destiny”, and personally I’d like its follow-up to be upgraded by at least two notches.
Bernhard: Well.. I don’t know, too much experimenting isn’t exactly the best… The point of it all is good songs.
Marco: Of course. We’ll try to find the balance, it’ll be a hard, heavy album again, a proper Axxis album.
RockLine: And so the next tour will be with King Crimson, then?
Marco: Ha, ha, ha,…
Bernhard: Ha, ha, ha… I wouldn’t have any problem with that either, because I like them a lot. They’re our friends. The problem is you can’t offer that to our fans. Personally I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Marco: Excellent. King Crimson. You’ve got good taste.
RockLine: This last one is a totally general question. What do you expect from tonight’s gig?
Marco: I’m expecting good ćevapčići, because I haven’t eaten anything today at all. I’ve never been as starving as I am tonight.
Bernhard: Considering we’re playing a biker festival tonight, I assume people aren’t here for Axxis tonight, but for their motorcycles,….
Marco:..and for the girls and the beer.
Bernhard: For me personally, a gig at a biker festival is a challenge, a challenge in the sense of how to pull these people up to the front of the stage. How to get them interested in you.
RockLine: When I arrived, I already spotted a few metalheads in the parking lot…
Bernhard: But you don’t know whether they know Axxis…
Marco: With Iron Maiden it’s no problem, everybody knows them…
RockLine: And finally, anything else you’d like to add?
Marco: Come to an Axxis show, experience us live.
Bernhard: I agree. You have to see a band live. And we’d really love to play in Slovenia too. I’ve heard you’ve got lots of clubs and good promoters over there (they’re only as good as they themselves want to be, editor’s note.)…
RockLine: So you’ll play Slovenia again next year, exactly 20 years after your show in Ljubljana opening for Black Sabbath…
Bernhard: Oh right, ha, ha, ha, ha…. Are those guys still going?
Marco: Yeah, but as Heaven And Hell.
RockLine: Maybe before Heaven And Hell then…
Marco: That would be cool. Just let me shake Tony Iommi’s hand, and then I can die.
Bernhard: Definitely, that would be cool.
RockLine: Thanks, guys, for this marathon chat…
Marco: Oh no problem, we like talking.
Bernhard: Yeah, thanks to you too. Time for me to go to soundcheck. Marco, have you tried out your guitars yet?
Marco: Yeah. Everything’s totally fine on my end.
Bernhard: Okay, see you later then, bye.
RockLine: Bye.
Marco: Bye, see you.
Photo Gallery
