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Coming from Hamburg (Germany), the band Todtgelichter can be considered one of the biggest german Avantgarde/Extreme Metal bands. With almost 15 years active the band has 5 Full-Lenghts and shows an admirable progression over the years.
Its a band that YOU MUST HAVE in your collection and the latest album “Rooms” is without any doubt one of the best releases that I heard this year so far. We talked a bit with Tentakel P. (Drums) one of the band’s founders.
To warm up, tell us, how everything started?
Although I deem origin stories at the point of the 5th album in 14 years pretty much useless as this has been covered again and again in various media, let me give you the quick breakdown: Two friends planning to start a band over many a beer – putting that threat into operation – being too lazy to rehearse cover versions they star to write their own material – demo released, getting a label contract, gathering more members for a live setup – so five albums, many live gigs, many member and style changes later I guess here we are, haha.
What are your influences?
Good, honest music with soul. We don’t care what style as long as it moves us. This happens on a subconscious level, there are no bands we try to copy; we rather ingest everything that has feeling and give our music our own feeling as well. I said in the last answer we never did any cover versions of anything, I guess that’s part of what we are. There’s too much output coming from ourselves luckily. So, I can’t name any concrete influences for the band. As for me personally, while we do something completely different music-wise, I feel inspired by artists such as GENESIS, ENSLAVED, ULVER or SOLEFALD – bands that have changed and reinvented themselves constantly.
The band exists since 2002 with 5 Full-Lenghts, one compilation and one demo. Talk a bit about this trajectory.
Had you asked me about the future 15 years ago I would have never imagined what has happened. At that time it was the best thing to hold your own self-produced demo in your own hands. Never would I have thought we’d tour with the likes such as PRIMORDIAL, FINNTROLL, or KATATONIA; or play in front of 2000 people on festivals. Or, as happens more frequently, getting referred to as influence for younger bands or even mentioned as one of the most important bands of German Avantgarde/Progressive/Extreme Metal. Than honors and at the same time humbles us. With each release we bettered our skills, as musicians and as songwriters; and I think you can hear that from output to output; plus on each album we had the chance to work with more great guests the more renowned we got. Those 15 years have been a hell of a ride with great moments and I am looking forward to another 15 the very least, haha…
Since the first releases the band showed a solid and mature sound. What changed in these 14 years of existence?
I wouldn’t call the first album “mature”. It wasn’t. That was no joke, you can hear us evolve as musicians and songwriters from each album to the next. We weren’t able to play jack shit when we wrote the first demo, and with each output we got more and more experienced and better with our instruments. Frederic and I (and to a certain extent Marta as she has been around from the beginning) always had interests besides (Black) Metal and the better we got with our instruments, the more we were able to reflect that in our songs. So the style change was only a matter of time I guess. People tend to think we changed style deliberately, while this is far from the truth – with increasing abilities we were able to integrate more and more of our original influences in our music, and that is what lead to what we appear to are now.
The band released this year the amazing Full-Lenght “Rooms”, can you tell us a bit about the concepts behind this release?
The “Rooms” are metaphors for change, memories and nostalgia in a way. With rooms it is like this, they change as people move through them. The way you remember a room is strongly dependent on a specific era or period a certain person lives in it. When a person moves out or dies, the room is emptied and redecorated. The association you may have made with this room is gone – if you want to visit it again, you can only do so in your head. Everything around us changes. I deem it important to keep memories and I tend to dwell in them to put my mind at rest sometimes, but at the same time I acknowledge that everything is in a constant flux, nothing remains the same, some things will never come back. Even if you recreate something from the past – you can never have the same feeling again, something “real” is always missing.
How is the composition process of the band? Do you have a main composer, a main lyric-writer?
It is done together. Mainly the guitar players bring one or two riffs that string together, sometimes our bass player too. Then we jam away in the rehearsal room, arrange and change things together until it fits. Easy as that (except it is not easy most of the times, haha…). As for the lyrics, as of now most of them come from me. But every singer tries to incorporate at least one or two each album. Even Frederic tries to write one each album. It’s not really carved in stone but it must fit the concept of each album.
You started with songs that were sang in German and since the Full-Length “Angst” you started to mix with some English lyrics. Why this change happened?
First, because we put great importance in the lyrics and we wanted to have our international audience understand them too. And second, the main input for English lyrics was me – we thought it was time to try something new and at that time I felt I had better ideas in English. What’s more all of a sudden I had a whole word of new words to use. It was like painting and realizing you only use a small portion of the colors available. But the most important reason: It just felt right. So we keep it for now.
Germany has a long story with metal bands and in Brazil we know a lot of them. Now that I am based in Germany I have contact with different things in your musical scene (I have to say that I hated Schlager hahaha). In Brazil the metal scene is something really complicated and its not uncommon that people think that in countries like Germany the things are easier or better, to demystify this, can you explain a bit how is the Germany’s metal scene?
I don’t think I can fully answer that question to be honest. I don’t feel like being part of a scene because everything we do revolves around the band, that’s my scene; we have friends amongst other bands in Hamburg and every time I go to a concert I meet up with them. I can imagine things being different in Brazil. One of my longtime friends, Nachtgarm of NEGATOR, who was touring South America as the then-vocalist of DARK FUNERAL in, I think, 2012 or so – he told me stories you wouldn’t believe about the maniacs out there, haha. It is completely different here. I guess that’s because in Germany you are overfed with concerts and festivals, and it gets commercialized to no end, see what has become of Wacken for example. So, being “Metal” these days is no feat and comes with no difficulties, and German Metalheads have the money to buy a lot of releases too. And it even got to mainstream media, so, sorry but I guess I can’t demystify anything here, I guess things ARE really easy, if you have a band you can get a label, gigs, and so on, with just a little effort… Aaaand at this point I must admit I forgot what the question was, but I hope that answered some of your curiosity anyway, haha.
We are in the internet era, where people can download almost everything for free. What is your opinion about it and towards which direction do you think the music industry will march on?
There will always be a small group of physical worshippers. Including me. I love thoughtful artwork and the knowledge I can put something physical in my CD rack. But nowadays the number of unpacked CDs grow, meaning I listen to albums on Spotify and when they finally are out, I tend to buy them and put them neatly in order but there is no need to unwrap them anymore. I think things will change towards digital even more, there are already bands out there that don’t do physicals but digital albums on bandcamp. Sad, but as times change, you have to move on. You can’t stop progress – unless you want to become a bitter old man who keeps nagging that the older times were better times. Which is inevitably true the older you get anyway.
Recently you supported Ne Obliviscaris with their Patreon, nowadays we have lots of new tools like Spotify, Crowdfounding websites and many more. What you think as advantages and disadvantages of these services?
Apart from NE OBLIVISCARIS being an awesome and hard working band – AND great guys to hang with -that totally deserves every penny they can earn this way, to be honest this was just posted because we know each other, they are former labelmates and I have regular contact with Xenoyr about this and that, we tend to exchange ourselves about our bands and value the opinions of each other. So I wanted to raise awareness of what they try to do. As for the second part of the question, I am totally on board with every renovation and invention and times are definitely changing. As for the better or worse, I think thin depends – as so many things – on how it is going to be used. I love the new possibilities of legal streaming etc., but I can see where bands struggle with making a living from it nowadays. To me it’s not those services that are the problem, rather the way they are monetized and whose pockets are filled… This is something that needs to be changed. More power to the bands that fuel these services I say. And I am not blaming labels here too.
What the name Todtgelichter means for the band?
Roughly translated it means “kin of death”. It is unique and unmistakeable. And it resembles the unity and connection between the members. I know, this is hard to believe looking at our line-up changes, but still it is true for each era of the band. But the beating heart at the core, the contrast between the driving forces throughout the years – that is Frederic and me – is kind of a Ying/Yang sphere around which the other members arrange themselves and try to fit where they can, haha.
What are the band’s future plans?
Let’s put “Rooms” on the stage, shall we? We’re looking at three tours in the planning right now so we’ll be busy playing it (and the other albums of course), and a title and concept for the sixth album is already set to go as well. We’ll be starting on that after the live season.
Thanks for the interview people, now the space is yours to talk with our readers.
We love to do exactly that – so come meet us on tour in 2016, we’ll be busy! Keep up with the dates on www.facebook.com/Todtgelichter and make sure you’ll catch one of those dates!
20.05.2016: DE, Oberhausen, Helvete Metal Club
21.05.2016: DE, Stuttgart, Club Zentral
22.05.2016: CH, Zürich, Dynamo Zürich (offiziell)
23.05.2016: DE, München, Feierwerk
24.05.2016: AT, Salzburg, Rockhouse Bar
25.05.2016: DE, Würzburg, Cafe Domain
26.05.2016: AT, Wien, Viper Room Vienna
27.05.2016: DE, Leipzig, Hellraiser Leipzig
28.05.2016: DE, Wenheim, Café Central