Location: Backstage / Munich / Germany
Interview date: 03.03.2010
Victor Smolski is the guitarist of the by now almost legendary German heavy metallers Rage, whose roots go back to the first half of the eighties. The Belarusian multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso, and lately the main architect of Rage’s arrangements for the past 10 years, talked to RockLine about the new Rage album “Strings To A Web”, which came out at the beginning of February this year. Rage are the kind of band that has never let anyone down with an album release. Every album is special, every one is different. At every point in the band’s evolution, their sound has always authentically captured the creative chemistry between the different lineups.
Victor joined the chat for RockLine with a guitar in his hands. While answering, he kept warming up his fingers, running scales on the electric guitar, unplugged of course. Like he was chewing gum….
RockLine: The new Rage album “Strings To A Web” is doing great. In its first week after release, it landed among the top 30 best-selling albums in Germany.
Victor: Yes. And that’s not all. Usually an album like that lasts a week or so near the top, then disappears from the chart. Our new album stayed on it for three whole weeks. That’s a really nice success for us.
RockLine: I see you’re already warming up (comment on Victor’s constant playing on the guitar)?
Victor: Yes. Actually, I’m doing it because today is pretty stressful for me. And for the band too. We’ll be playing completely new songs, a completely new setlist, with completely new gear. This is our first show on this tour. It’s well known that this venue where we’re playing today is notorious for its really bad acoustics. That’s an extra complication, because we’ll have to work hard to get the sound dialed in properly at Backstage.
RockLine: But you did get together right before the tour for a rehearsal, I assume.
Victor: Yes. Absolutely.
RockLine: As the main arranger of Rage songs, can you explain the process that leads to the creation of a song you compose?
Victor: When I get an idea, I bring it to rehearsal and then we basically jam on it. And that’s how a song develops. It’s an old-school, classic approach. And it works well. We keep polishing it until the thing sounds okay to everyone and we like it. When Peavy brings an idea, it’s more in a raw form, a melody with a few chords. I add the arrangements to that. So generally our music develops through jamming, and it’s only the orchestral arrangements that I add completely on my own, after I’ve written out the sheet music.
RockLine: How did your father shape you as a musician? It’s well known that he’s a composer and conductor, among other things.
Victor: My father is a classical composer, he literally lives with an orchestra. I’ve been learning from him ever since I was a kid.
RockLine: The new drummer in the lineup is Andre Hilgers. How has he fit in with Rage?
Victor: Everything’s under control. Andre found his feet in the new situation, just like Peavy and I did. Andre definitely contributed a different kind of drumming to the new album than to the previous one, “Carved In Stone”. Back then, his first and only job was to play the drums according to the ideas that Peavy and I brought for “Carved In Stone”. For “Strings To A Web”, though, Andre got more actively involved and contributed some really interesting drum arrangements. At that stage it also turned out that Andre understands music in a similar way to Peavy and me, so the whole thing came out even more intense and successful in the end. That’s why we’re all the happier with the new album, and with it Andre has finally settled into the lineup for good.
RockLine: How would you describe the basic differences between “Carved in Stone” and “Strings To A Web”?
Victor: Before we started writing songs for “Carved In Stone”, we’d been on tour with an orchestra. We played a really huge number of shows with the orchestra. When we faced the task of writing the new material that ended up on “Carved In Stone”, we all felt the same way: we were, to put it mildly, fed up with orchestras. So we went for harder, more direct song structures. “Carved In Stone” is a much punchier album, without a lot of complication. But then two years went by and the opposite happened. We started missing the orchestra, ha, ha, ha… So we invited an orchestra to work with us again. Generally, though, we don’t think much about what our albums are going to be like. We just do what we like at that moment and want to express through music at that moment. That’s what makes this situation so much more interesting for us, because with every new album we offer something different, something new. We’re not afraid to try new things. Bands that always sound the same on their records are boring to me.
RockLine: You’ve also got a really recognizable sound as a guitar soloist. When someone hears your solo, they know right away it’s you behind the guitar and nobody else.
Victor: When I get down to writing the solo sections or the transitional parts, I experiment and improvise a lot. I especially try out lots of different sound effects and try to squeeze as many new, different sounds out of them as I can.
RockLine: The new album took you just two years.
Victor: We write music really fast. For the whole “Strings To A Web” album we needed only two months. Then we simply said: “Stop! That’s enough!”, ha, ha… We’re a band that has no trouble coming up with new musical ideas. In the studio it took us just three weeks to record the album and finish all the sound work.
RockLine: When did you discover this ability in yourself to combine classical music with metal? Was it spontaneous, or was there a conscious decision at some point?
Victor: It all comes from the fact that I really love both classical music and heavy metal. The turning point was when my father got the idea of composing a symphony for electric guitar. That was in the early nineties, 1992 or 1993, and we composed a symphony for electric guitar together. I later used certain parts of that score for writing my solo albums too. Anyway, the feeling when you compose classical music or heavy metal is exactly the same. It’s all the same. You just use different instruments.
RockLine: And then it happened that you brought these ideas to Rage.
Victor: Yes. That was in 1999. Peavy called me and asked me to help him finish the album “Ghosts”, because all the band members at the time had left him. So the CD wasn’t finished. Peavy came to my studio and together we finished the album. Then came Peavy’s invitation to join the new Rage tour. After that tour, we decided to join forces and keep creating together as Rage. The funniest thing about it all was that back in 1994, when Manni Schmidt left the band, Peavy’s manager had already told him about me. But he decided otherwise at the time. Later Peavy even regretted that decision.
RockLine: Whose idea was the cover of the new album?
Victor: That’s entirely Peavy’s idea. We always use the “Soundchaser” skull and squeeze it onto the covers somewhere. This time it ended up as some kind of monster for the cover, a cross between a spider and the “Soundchaser”.
RockLine: As a professional guitarist, you’re busy with lots of things. Besides Rage, you teach guitar, produce albums for other bands and projects, write your own music, and you even race fast cars. Is it ever hard to organize yourself to pull off all these plans?
Victor: My schedule is really packed. I’m always really tight on time. But everything I do, I ultimately do for fun and for my own enjoyment. My day always consists of doing things I love. It’s not really a job for me, because I simply enjoy all of it.
RockLine: Is there perhaps a new solo studio album of yours on the horizon?
Victor: Yes. Maybe as early as this summer, when I’m planning to record both a solo album and a DVD. The DVD will be a follow-up to the first part, “School Of Metal”. That release was an unexpected success for me. In Germany alone, that DVD sold 20,000 copies. A literally crazy number. I can barely wrap my head around it myself, ha, ha, ha…
RockLine: For the Japanese leg of the tour you’ve joined forces with Gamma Ray. Are you looking forward to those shows?
Victor: Yes. At first both bands were planning separate tours. Then talks started with Kai Hansen and it seemed to make sense for the two bands to team up for a double headliner tour. That lets us cut tour costs and opens the door to playing much bigger venues. I already know it’s going to be a lot of fun for me.
RockLine: And summer is probably festival season for Rage?
Victor: That’s right. Our show at the Bloodstock festival in England is confirmed. We’ll also play festivals in Russia and Norway, and the show at Germany’s Summer Breeze festival is set, but that’s certainly not the final list of our summer festival shows.
RockLine: Victor? Can you play us a Rage song?
Victor: Sure, why not (the guitarist launches into the intro of the new song Empty Hollow)?
RockLine: On this leg of the tour you’re supported by Jaded Heart. They were supposed to play here in November 2009 with Primal Fear, but something went wrong. How did you hit it off with them?
Victor: I don’t know the background on why Jaded Heart couldn’t play the tour back in November. We in Rage never make a fuss about support bands. They asked us themselves whether we’d take them on our tour. Generally, we in Rage are very flexible and we always get along really well with all the bands on our tours.
RockLine: If it’s not too big a secret, can you explain the circumstances that forced Mike Terrana to leave Rage?
Victor: Mike is a very strange person. A very difficult person. He went overboard with his desire to be a rock star in Rage. To us that’s nonsense. I mean, what does being a rock star even mean? Mike was a guy who was under some kind of stress the whole time. He was tense. As a result, we felt that tension too. Everything revolved around his drum solo. You can play a drum solo when your time is unlimited. Usually Mike played his solos on our own headlining tours. Then he demanded a drum solo spot at festivals too, where you’re limited to 45 minutes. Tell me, who needs a drum solo in the short time you get at festival shows, when you can barely play 7 or 8 songs for the people? And in those circumstances we’d burn 20 minutes on Mike’s drum solo… That just doesn’t work. It even happened once that he spat in Peavy’s face. He was a very aggressive person.
RockLine: I remember one of your shows where he flipped out and you ended the set earlier than planned.
Victor: Mike always flipped out. The moment there weren’t at least five beams of bright light pointed at him during a show, he flipped out. And then something wouldn’t be right, and he’d just stop playing. He didn’t want to drum anymore. In the middle of a show. In front of the crowd. That’s called rock star syndrome. Peavy and I agreed that we really don’t need any of that. Looking back, I can see it was totally unnecessary nonsense. And it did damage to the band.
RockLine: How do you experience the crowd reactions when you play at different venues around the world?
Victor: There aren’t many differences in the end. The effect is the same. In Spain or Italy, for example, our crowd is always really loud and reacts with a lot of temperament. Then you end up in, say, France, where the audience is very calm and quiet during the show. But with the difference that this kind of audience concentrates much more on what you’re doing on stage. Watching these different reactions from our fans around the world is really interesting and special to me. Basically, the effect is the same for me. With both ways of following our shows. Personally, though, I like playing smaller places best, like clubs. There you can feel the contact with the audience even more intensely. When you step onto the stage at Wacken Open Air, for example, it’s nice to see a sea of thousands of people in front of you, but the feeling isn’t as personal.
RockLine: What are the plans for Rage after this tour, and your plans as a musician?
Victor: After the tour we’ll take a short break, and I’ll start writing a new solo album.
RockLine: Will you invite any well-known names to collaborate on the new solo studio album?
Victor: Yes. But nothing’s official yet, so I can’t confirm any names right now. I’ve decided, though, that for the new studio album I won’t write just instrumentals, I’ll bring in vocalists as well. And I have it in my head that this album will be harder and more direct, with less reliance on classical arrangements.
interview by: Aleš Podbrežnik and Jani Mihevc
photos: Jani Mihevc
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