German Thrash Metal pioneers Destruction are still going strong, more than 35 years after their debut. The highly influential band released their latest record, Born To Perish, last summer and were set to embark on a long string of shows this spring, before Covid-19 hit us all. Ever the warriors, they are set to resume playing in what may be the first post-confinement Metal show, on June 3rd, in Switzerland. Most of us who cannot attend can resort to their new live album, Born To Thrash – Live in Germany, available on streaming platforms right now. The limited edition physical version comes out on July 17th and is available for pre-order through Nuclear Blast. We spoke to founding member and bassist/vocalist Schmier a few weeks ago.
What have you been listening to the most lately?
Mostly, I’ve been busy with my own shit. We’ve been mixing and mastering the album and then you have to listen a lot to your own music. But when I’m listening privately to music, I basically listen to a lot of 80’s stuff. The 80’s have been an amazing time for memories, especially the first years in the very early 80’s, there was a lot of amazing US Metal, a lot of amazing New Wave Of Heavy Metal coming out. The German scene was just started so those are times that I always love to dive back to and listen to albums that I’ve been listening to for a long time and it still amazes me. My girlfriend is a lot younger than me so I play her sometimes my favorites old albums that she never heard. She’s a Metal fan and she knows a lot but she doesn’t know all those crazy old bands that I know. Sometimes it’s funny to see the reaction and the impact this music has. I’m sometimes amazed by the quality that the music had back in the day. Sometimes you forget about it. Nowadays, it’s easier of course to find all those records again that you have in the cellar because of streaming. When I’m in my car, I’m streaming also and then I can find a lot of my old favorites. Not all of them but most of them.
What are some of the lesser known names that you were super happy to find again? Bands that never got popular for one reason or another?
So many amazing bands back in the days, it’s unbelievable. Some that I just showed to my girlfriend was WILD DOGS, and CULPRIT, some of the American bands like HAWAII. It’s US Metal that never made it basically. So many great bands and they completely vanished. It’s kind of sad because some of those bands made amazing albums and it just disappeared. I’m at this phase where I’m diving back into history and I’m like, “Okay, what did we have back then?” and then try to find it. Of course, that’s a good thing about the internet nowadays. You can have quick information and nothing is lost. If you don’t find it on the streaming sites, you can sure find it on YouTube.
What was the biggest local band in your area, growing up?
It was a band called Destruction! *Haha* No, seriously, there were no other band. We were the first Heavy Metal band that made it from here. We live close to the Swiss border and in Switzerland, there was some other Metal bands that were really good at that time, but they never made it. On our side of the Rhine River here, there was not many Metal bands, we were one of the first ones and basically the band and our friends, we were the beginning of the Heavy Metal scene. It’s a small town scene here. Friends of ours that started along with us later, the band called NECRONOMICON from Germany, they were also a Thrash band. They’re kind of known in the underground. There’s also a Canadian band by the same name.
Can you name five records that had a strong impact on you?
Only five? It’s not enough! I mean, if you want to go back, it has to be the first Rock And Roll record I ever discovered. It was my father’s singles collection and I found ELVIS PRESLEY Jailhouse Rock. It was the first Rock song I ever heard when I was a very young kid. It kind of woke me up for Rock And Roll and then I started to buy Rock And Roll bands. My first real vinyl that I bought as a young kid was STATUS QUO Live!, double live album. I think that was the first two records to influenced me. Then AC/DC came. I think for Heavy Metal, it was in ’79 when I discovered JUDAS PRIEST Unleashed In The East. It was even before IRON MAIDEN. Priest was the band that kind of showed me what Heavy Metal. I knew DEEP PURPLE and AC/DC but this was more like Hard Rock at the time in the 70’s and Priest kind of had this Metal sound already. From then on, I was hooked on Metal but at the same time, I also liked some Punk Rock, like GBH. I definitely got into a lot of albums at the time, it was very special.
Into the newer times, I think when you get older, music is not influencing you so much anymore because you already found your identity as a musician and your style, your preferred direction, I guess. So bands that impressed me in the last years, there was not so much that I thought was very interesting. I’m a big fan of SYSTEM OF A DOWN, I thought they were interesting because it’s a crazy, crazy mixture of many styles and trying to make something else. I think I’m pretty open to everything in Metal and I like to listen to young bands to see what they do but my favorite bands are from the the early times. So yeah, I think I’m an 80’s kid and I’ll always be one. When I hear young bands now, supporting 80’s sounds, of course it’s also interesting. From a musician’s perspective, I’m also trying to find interesting aspects of new sounds, like System Of A Down, it was well done. Maybe not typical Metal music, but I thought that it was executed very well. Their way of creating their style.
What would be the record that you’ve listened to the most in your life?
I think it was definitely The Number Of The Beast by IRON MAIDEN. Then followed by Kill ‘Em All by Metallica I think. Then, there must be some SLAYER stuff, Show No Mercy maybe or Hell Awaits. It’s also one of the albums that I played the most. Of course, now that you’re older you still bring back those old albums and hear the memories again also. It’s three albums that had a major impact, but there’s more.
What are some of the most memorable concerts that you’ve seen in your life?
Of course, the first shows that you see have an impact. The first time you hear a band live, the action and the attitude that live shows have, I think these are the most memorable shows I ever seen. Over the years, you get impressed by different things. By how the production is or the musicianship of the band but in the beginning, it’s very pure. For me, the first very important show was SAXON, in 1981 I think. Around the same time was ACCEPT live, in ’82 or so, that was very impressive. I saw RAINBOW also, which was really disappointing at the time, because after my first two shows, Rainbow was kind of boring. Over the years I don’t know what I thought was very impressive. The KISS show I saw was pretty impressive. I’m not the biggest Kiss fan, but to see them live once before they stop. It was kind of interesting in terms of production. I mean, to me also, every time I play a festival, it’s very impressive too because of the big stages of the festivals and the logistics behind it. All those people working for the one moment when you go on stage. That’s very impressive. This is 20 years now on the circuit of festivals and it still impresses me how the whole thing is organized. Playing there, this is just a big adrenaline rush.
What would be the band you’ve toured with that impressed you the most? The one that you just had to watch their set every night.
No doubt, MOTÖRHEAD. We had the same management for a while and we had several tours with them like, I don’t know, 120 shows with them in the 80’s in two or three years. Those were very impressive shows because we learned a lot from them and from the crew. They were really nice to us, treated us really well. Very good teachers in terms of how to behave in the Rock And Roll business. You also learn from Motörhead how to treat your support band. Later on, we were with other bands that treated us like shit. Motörhead really treating us with respect and you know, we were just some young kids from Germany at the time, but we learned a lot from them.
Can you name three songs that you would consider to be perfect, and tell us a bit about what makes them so special to you?
To me, as a musician, it’s a whole cosmos of interaction that makes a song a song. I’m interested in how the songwriting work, and how you write different songs. A classical perfect Metal song would be 22 Acacia Avenue from IRON MAIDEN because the way the arrangement and the dynamics of the song work. It’s a perfect Heavy Metal track. It’s melodic, but it’s not cheesy. It has a great introduction and it has great dynamics, the song just explodes.
Then to go with something based on a very easy idea, but the song still has a lot of depth and a lot of crunch will be MOTÖRHEAD, Ace Of Spades. It may be one of the easiest riffs ever played to become so famous. But the arrangement of the song actually is not so easy because the repetition of the riffs, the way it’s put together, you think it’s repeating itself all the time, but not in certain patterns. Anybody who ever covered the song will know what I mean. But yeah, sometimes an easy song is not an easy song in terms of the way you feel it. I think that’s a very easy Punk-ish song that amazed me still the way it’s written.
Then maybe we go to something that goes deeper, YYZ from RUSH, that’s a progressive song where all the instruments really melt together, and there’s a communication between the drums and the guitars. It’s not jazz, but it’s definitely talking between instruments and that’s also of course, a very nice, interesting thing as a musician that you have. For Heavy Metal bands, for Destruction, it’s more about the aggression getting out all the power and a song like Rush of course is a totally different mindset. So for me, as a musician, I always try to look into songwriting and behind the harmonies and what makes a song so special. Nowadays, songwriters sometimes only use one riff for a whole song, so the same basic thing, the chorus and the verse and the bridge and the outstanding melody over the same riff. That’s something that is very much driven from the Pop music of the 2000, which is kind of really weird to me because I grew up on harmony changes and certain resolutions that makes a song a special song. So yeah, I think music is a wide field and it never gets old. It will always stay interesting.
Is there any artists or bands that you really love in a genre that you typically do not listen listen to?
Yes, I’m totally not into Rap, it’s not my genre, although I like some crossover bands that mixed Rap and Metal in the 90’s that worked the songs, like CLAWFINGER from Sweden or RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. Basically, that’s as close I get to rap normally. When it comes to totally far away from Metal, maybe KATE BUSH because she has a very deep way of writing and singing. I really like FRANK ZAPPA because he was a crazy genius. He was never so famous in Europe, while people in North America think he’s a God. I actually discovered him in Canada, when I was in Montreal. My friends back then were listening to Zappa and I was like, “What the fuck is this?” So they explained everything about Frank Zappa and since then, I became a fan. It’s way far away from Metal but on the other side also, if you listen to it deeply, there’s a lot of interesting ideas. Like, the Sheik Yerbouti album. The song I’m So Cute might be one of the first Heavy Metal songs. The roots of Metal are everywhere. So yeah, I’m not so much into Pop music, I don’t remember the last Pop album I liked. I like guitars, it needs to have guitars.
Do you have any unpopular music opinion that you’d like to defend? Something that you really love but get can hardly find anyone to agree with you?
I mean, I like underground music so that makes me already being somebody that likes music that nobody else likes. I think it’s funny to see that normal society doesn’t know shit about Metal, they don’t know those bands exist. A lot of my friends have kids nowadays and when you talk to the kids about music, they don’t understand what you do and what Heavy Metal is. Sometimes, they don’t believe that you’re a Rock musician. It shows me how little the world of Heavy Metal is compared to the rest of the world.
But albums that I like and nobody else like, Oh, my God…Certain albums that I really hated when they came out, it became better over the years and I started to like them. One example is the Turbo album, JUDAS PRIEST, which I really hated when it came out. It was to poppy for me, too much American mainstream. Nowadays, I think the album is alright, but I would still not consider it being a great Judas Priest album. But I know a lot of people love this album and I love the song also.
I think METALLICA, the Black Album divides the world. On one side, from a songwriting aspect, it’s really good songs but it’s just not Metallica anymore. They changed completely the sound of the band, from a Thrash band to kind of a Rock band with Pop attitude. The ballads are really well done and I feel that Hetfield’s hook lines are amazing but it’s just not the same band anymore than they used to be. So I guess I have a divided mind, a love/hate relationship with this album too.
Is there any up and coming bands that you’d like to recommend?
I’ve been working and producing an album for a band from Switzerland called BURNING WITCHES, which is a female Metal band, with an 80’s sound. It’s young girls from Switzerland and they are friends of mine so I’ve been supporting them for the last years and I think they’re doing really good nowadays. They’re starting to build a very serious fan base. If you like old school Heavy Metal and beautiful woman, then I can really recommend you Burning Witches. I think it’s good stuff.
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