To many, Der Tod und die Landsknechte has been seen as a spiritual successor to the time you were fronting Absurd, do you agree with that point of view or would you prefer to see it as a whole new and separate entity?
WOLF: You can’t separate one from the other. I just carried on where I left off with my own ideas in ABSURD. I didn’t want to make a secret of the fact that I’m the former ABSURD singer, so I knew that we would play a lot of ABSURD songs at any live performances, that was a clear logical step for me.
With every EP you’ve released with Der Tod und die Landsknechte there’s been a cover from some very big names from the 80s. How did this idea come to fruition and why record them in German? Do you believe that using your native language you could give those songs some new identity which would be more fitting to the kind of music you’re making?
WOLF: The starting point was this cover version of VENOM that ABSURD had been planning for a long time. Bolt Thrower, Satanic Warmaster, Carnivore, S.O.D., all of them were chosen by Bile. He has to be able to play it. For example, I would have liked SLAYER’s “The final command” (“Blitzkrieg tactics of the German command, Born with the power of God in his hand”, that would have made for a nasty translation of the lyrics, oh yes), but Bile didn’t trust himself to do the guitar solos. It must also be clearly stated that the use of cover versions takes some of the pressure off, because you do not need as much of your own material to achieve the desired duration of a release. It still took us two years to write and record all the songs for a full album. Musically, Biles’ selection was completely fine for me, and as far as the German reinterpretations of the lyrics are concerned, German is my mother tongue, a hard language in which I can express myself much better than in a foreign language, there are always nuances that are difficult to convey in a foreign language. I think it’s a bit of a shame that our S.O.D. cover version only made it as a bonus song on the extremely limited CD box edition, which has not been available for regular purchase until now. The German lyrics are pure hate, and my singing is also pretty crazy poison and bile spitting (what a play on words in English for “Gift und Galle”), I can only shake my head at so much madness.
How do you perceive the reception for “Wir fürchten weder Tod noch Teufel” so far? Are you satisfied with the results and the impact the album has caused in the underground? How about the next step? Are there plans for new music or live appearances?
WOLF: I am very, very pleased with how the album was received, you always hope, but when hopes are fulfilled, all the better. A lot of people declared the album a hot candidate for album of the year, one fan even flatteringly said that for him it might even be one of the most important black metal albums of the last ten years (Cheers, Baphovomit /OPOSITOR), funnily enough we were the only metal album to make it into the top 10 in a readers’ annual poll of a German “niche market” rock magazine, at number six to be exact, with three times as many votes as ABSURD’s “Das Heer aus dem Dunkel”. Bile obviously couldn’t complain about sales with Blasphemous Terror Records either. Although he produced more records than ever before, demand was all the greater, and there was more criticism and grumbling than ever before about the insufficient number of records on offer. Since he runs his label as one of his hobbies, besides his probably well-paid full-time job in industry, he was not willing or able to fully exploit the commercial potential of the release. A bitter pill to swallow for me, because I see the album as the high point and crowning conclusion of my career in the music scene. I would have liked a more triumphant farewell on all levels, to simply make the most of it. Because there will be no more releases with me, you should stop when things are at their best. I do not see how this achievement could be repeated, let alone surpassed by me. As my old buddy Balor just wrote to me with a Lemmy quote: “If you think you are too old to rock & roll then you are.” The train with live performances has now left the station, we played a secret gig at a private birthday party with around 80 people in attendance in April 2023, and somehow I had the feeling that this could be my last live performance. It was particularly nice for me that my eldest son, now 23 years old, dared to go to one of my concerts for the first time. Over time we had a lot of offers for performances, often as headliners, Germany, France, Finland, Mexico and wasn’t there also an offer from Brazil ?, South Tyrol (I would have been really interested in that because of the Alpine location, but Bile had his own event that day as an organizer and musician), and we were also asked to headline Apocalyptic Rites X, GBK now have the spot. In the end, we rejected these offers one after the other because there was always something that didn’t fit for someone, and we never even got to the point of discussing any fees. I’m not even sure if Bile even replied to the organizers of Apocalyptic Rites or if they didn’t get a response at all. Now that more than three years have passed since our last official appearance as headliner at Eternal Hate, I would say the motivation is somehow gone. I would have loved to have had another nice official performance in Germany, the country with our most fans, preferably in an atmospheric place, e.g. a forest stage, in front of a few hundred shaggy rascals, as a farewell concert. But due to the domestic political situation these days, Germany is the place where it is most difficult to realize above a certain size. So book me the Knights’ Hall in Dracula’s Castle, or never again.
Speaking of Heldentum specifically, the last release was around 5 years ago, with “Das Vermächtnis”. Are there any plans to revive the band at some point or do you want to focus entirely on Der Tod und die Landsknechte from now on?
WOLF: “Das Vermächtnis” was not a new recording, but essentially a studio rehearsal from January 2000, the CD version supplemented by the band’s complete recording archive from the 90s. This studio rehearsal was recorded live in the studio by the entire band line-up at the time, primarily to simply have a performance test with our current songs. We would most likely have used these songs for the planned “Kyffhäuserreich” split with ABSURD, although not necessarily in the recording from January 2000. From the middle of 2000, for various reasons, there was no band anymore, we could have been considered disbanded. For the album “Waffenweihe” in 2003, Managarm and I got together again, supported by Unhold, but then it was basically just a studio project. Not long ago, Unhold met the barely recognizable Managarm (short hair, emaciated) in person again at an anniversary birthday party. He had been isolated for a long time, partly due to experimenting with mind-altering substances, and was unreachable, or so I was told. Managarm said he had a lot of new songs and was really keen to make a new album. I didn’t categorically refuse when asked by Unhold if I would be on board again, but I was skeptical. And I haven’t heard anything more from them, as expected, so I consider HELDENTUM to be a dead and buried band. Or slumbering in the Kyffhäuser?
About Wolfsburg, the project was short lived, with only two demos and a split, receiving a compilation later in 2018, all of them with a very lo-fi production. What can you tell us about it? How was the creative process for it and how do you see your evolution as a musician since then?
WOLF: The possibility of recording in a friend’s home studio, where I had recorded “First winter of bloodred snow” and the S.S.J. demo, no longer existed. HELDENTUM didn’t exist yet or was only just starting to emerge in 1996. So I got together with a new acquaintance who recorded music with a multi-track recorder, with programmed drums, which I liked because I was really into MYSTICUM’s demos. In his basement I then recorded the vocals to my own lyrics, and from time to time I also contributed completely amateurish guitar solos, to his incredulous amazement. It was simply an underground story with a black metal underground lifestyle and completely non-commercial, and the cassette print runs were also quite limited. Simply to make dark music, get drunk and work up a berserker frenzy. The photo on the “Trollkraft” demo was taken at night when I was parading through a pedestrian zone with a (blunt) practice sword, bare-chested, to start a fight with someone. Luckily (for whoever), nobody came.
I also had the opportunity to experiment with my screaming in WOLFSBURG, because I never had singing lessons for the individual voice, I just screamed it out from the bottom of my heart. I was repeatedly criticized for out of control vocals, there are even opinions that I had ruined ABSURD albums with my singing. I take note of that with sadness, on the other hand, if my shouting is too harsh for you, you are too soft, haha. Since musically these are completely irrelevant releases from today’s perspective that nobody needs anymore, I had already turned down an offer for a WOLFSBURG re-release EP that my brother had sent me from a third party. Then in November 2018 I invited several friends and companions to my birthday party in a rented farmhouse, and that’s when Mr. Rabensang approached me with the offer for this compilation CD and I said yes, drunk and in a nostalgic mood, although I still thought that nobody needed it, but in contrast to me, who hardly had any contacts in the scene anymore, he, as a label owner, has completely different possibilities to assess any existing interest, and then it is his business risk. I would like to make one more comment on the subject of WOLFSBURG. My brother had written in his liner notes for the first vinyl release of “Werwolfthron” that it was a title that GRAVELAND wanted to use for an album and thankfully Rob Darken had agreed to forego it for ABSURD. I don’t know anything about that, but the song “Sitzend Auf Dem (Werwolf-)Thron” was on the WOLFSBURG demo “Trollkraft” from 1997. And that was it.
In 2018 you have started Der Tod und die Landsknechte, after saying farewell to Absurd one year before. Did it ever cross your mind, in 2017, to continue Absurd with Bile (who was a live session member for Absurd anyway) or did you want a fresh start with a band that is similar but still different to Absurd?
WOLF: I hadn’t had any contact with Bile for a few years, then Unhold created a Telegram group for ABSURD in 2019 and added Bile and me, and suddenly there it was, the contact. My brother had been operating under the name ABSURD since the end of 2017, but hadn’t recorded anything new yet, Unhold didn’t want to give up ABSURD either, but hadn’t recorded anything new either, and my ideas for the phantom album “Ad Astra cruentus” that never came to fruition were still rumbling in the back of my mind. Since I knew Bile to be an extremely capable musician, I approached him, initially asking whether he would dare to realize the cover version of VENOM’s “Buried alive” that was once intended for ABSURD, for which I had made a fairly free text translation into German. That seemed like a good starting point to see whether a collaboration could bear fruit. Yes, of course I also considered the idea of presenting the whole thing under the name ABSURD, who would have wanted to stop me? But on the other hand, firstly, that would have seemed like a purely commercial consideration, which I didn’t want, secondly, there would probably have been three ABSURDs (ok, that was just a joke, of course it wouldn’t have happened ), because neither my brother nor Unhold would have given up their own plans and demands, thirdly, Unhold is actually in a way a tyrant of the German black metal scene, and a lot of people, even in anticipation of obedience (they would probably rather call it loyalty), don’t want to act against his wishes, so it would have been possible that Bile would have refused to work with me, so as not to anger Unhold, and fourthly, I had tied my fate at ABSURD to Unhold, who had in fact torpedoed my own ideas through total ignorance. It was a somewhat liberating feeling to be able to actively help shape something again, that would also be realized in a timely manner, just like it had been fifteen years earlier with ABSURD. Bile was ready for takeoff..
You once said that with Der Tod und die Landsknechte you want to record all songs for which you wrote the lyrics when it was still supposed to be for Absurd’s “Ad astra cruentus” album. You announced this album in 2014 but it never was recorded, why?
WOLF: I thought I could advance the recording of a new ABSURD album if I contributed more ideas. I wrote some lyrics, chose another “traditional” to re-record, translated the lyrics of “Buried alive” in a way that I liked, arranged the “songs” in a suitable order as I imagined them musically, commissioned a 3 ft. by 3 ft. oil painting according to my visions to match the album title I had chosen, and presented all of this to Unhold, who I wanted to encourage to get moving again with this, as well as with the (admittedly futile) attempts to simply book a joint studio appointment. But Unhold… and he didn’t move. A few years later I found out in a malicious way from an internet forum that Unhold had completely ignored my ideas and had also communicated this to other people, such as our long-time live guitarist Deimos, that he couldn’t do anything with it/that it simply does not suit him. But not to me personally. Out of politeness or consideration for my fragile mind, or for whatever reason, he simply kept quiet about it, which I could also, therefore wrongly, regard as tacit consent. Since I had made a complete fool of myself by announcing the album too hastily, I learned from it not to put myself at Unhold’s mercy any more. After the release of “Grabgesang” he repeatedly asked me to contribute lyrics, which I was absolutely no longer willing to do, but this time I simply kept quiet about it.
The last recording session between you and Sven must have been in 2007 for “Der fünfzehnjährige Krieg” and “Weltenfeind”, the last concert with Absurd that you two played was in 2012. What happened after this, or rather, why did nothing happen anymore?
WOLF: Even the rehearsals for our last joint performance in Milan in 2012 were a challenge. I had recruited a young, enthusiastic bass player who lived almost in the same town as me, so that he could drive me for the two-hour round trip to rehearsals. The concert offer came through Unhold, who had told me that there would be a fee of EUR 2,500, plus accommodation and food, and that we could split it nicely. For various reasons, the details of which I don’t want to bore anyone with, that didn’t work out (the organizer did his part, though), and it caused dissatisfaction. The concert took place under somewhat adventurous circumstances. We played at a very short notice arranged alternative venue that was approved for a maximum of 500 (or even just 350?) people, but 700 people were squeezed in, so that the barriers were pushed right up to the stage and people were still standing in line outside at the entrance when the second support act was already playing. The fans were thrilled, but we didn’t have our best evening, there were also technical problems. After this exhausting experience, Unhold and I agreed to record a new album first before accepting any new live offers. And then the years went by. Why Unhold kept presenting me with sound snippets, but, particularly with reference to my brother, who would always rob him of his motivation with his antics, then let a total of 11 years pass before we went to the studio together again, this is a question that only he himself can answer, if he even really knows the answer himself. And I had just got into the swing of things with DER TOD UND DIE LANDSKNECHTE when suddenly and unexpectedly the “Grabgesang” songs appeared. Unhold is actually always good for a surprise, as we would see later. He always says “I told you so”, but as the years went by I lost faith in it. I’m too old to keep waiting half a decade or more for something.
Your brother JFN reformed Absurd in 2017, there are many rumours about him returning to Absurd, one says you and Unhold were offered big money for playing “Asgardsrei”-festival but you turned down this offer and he decided to go on stage to take this money instead. Is that really how it happened?
WOLF: One day my brother approached me and made me an offer to play with ABSURD at the “Asgardsrei” festival in December 2017 and the following spring at Hot Shower, for a package price of 5000 EUR for both shows. He was connected in one way or another with the organizers of both festivals. 5000 EUR isn’t really a lot of money compared to what other bands sometimes ask for, but if you put it together it would have been the biggest sum we’d ever received for live performances. But mathematically it’s only 2500 EUR per show, which is how much we got for our concert in Milan in 2012. Either way, now I’m staring at a chunk of money and then I realise how much effort it would take to prepare for such headliner appearances after half a decade, especially when you know that “Asgardsrei” with over 1000 visitors would have been our biggest show, which would also be professionally filmed, so you don’t want to embarrass yourself with a half-baked performance. And Unhold and I had agreed not to accept any more live performances after Milan in 2012 until we had recorded a new album. But in 2017 there were still no signs of that on the horizon. So it would have come down to me having to put together a live band. With possibly new strangers, I was offered to find musicians for me, even the “Asgardsrei” organiser had offered to help me. But after some thought, time and my brother also urged me to make a decision, I decided that this bridge was too far away for me. The effort of rehearsing with new people seemed too much for me, I would have broken the agreement with Unhold and didn’t want to start a new chapter at ABSURD without him, but nothing was happening with him either, so I threw in the towel, very tired of the situation.
Let’s look back in history. In 1999, “Asgardsrei” was released and more albums (“Kyffhäuserreich” as well as “Totenlieder”) already announced. But JFN had to leave Germany (or go back to prison, as it eventually happened anyway) and DOOM didn’t carry on with Absurd on his own. The band was dead for all practical purposes, but then you entered the picture in 2001. How did that come about?
WOLF: DMD and JFN had both turned their backs on the band, albeit for completely different reasons. I co-founded the band on 02.01.1992, gave it the name, secured the record deal with No Colours in 1996, at the band’s first live performance on a stage in front of an audience in September 1998, I was on stage as singer and bassist, just to list a few important details. Over the years, I have always been involved with the band in one way or another; it was a matter close to my heart. And now it was all supposed to be over when things were only just getting going again after the prison years?
Not yet. Not yet !
Surt, the third member of the “Satan’s murderers” group had already been released from prison in 1997. In prison he had taken the handwritten documents of a lot of DMD songs, most likely in the aftermath of the aborted recordings for “Facta Loquuntur”. He travelled around with me for a few months in 1997, for example we went to the 1997 MAYHEM concert in Bischofswerda with free tickets from Misanthropy Records that my brother arranged, but then Surt met a young, good-looking woman who lived in the same apartment block as him, started a relationship with her, was also disappointed by the scene and the petty arguments that were already going on at the time, he had probably imagined it differently, so he left the scene and turned to a middle-class life. His parting gift to me was the handwritten notes of DMD, which I could certainly do something with, since he thought and wrote in acoustic guitar chords just like I did back then. So that was the starting point for this unfinished business. I had got a new record deal that also included a studio budget.
Freshly turned, three times in a circle, / here it begins, the miracle journey.
„Frisch gedreht, dreimal im Kreise,/ schon geht sie los, die Wunderreise.“
It is said that DOOM actually promised to you in 2000 that he would still finish the work on “Kyffhäuserreich”, because that one was planned as a split with Heldentum, a band of which you were a part of at that time. Why did this not happen?
WOLF: Who is the shining knight of the Grail and who is a shabby scoundrel is something others can decide for themselves, if they feel like it.
Yes, DMD was present with his future wife at an Ostara celebration in the spring of 2000, and the two even performed a fire jump together. We were in a good mood and talked about the “Kyffhäuserreich” album. DMD shook my hand and promised me that we would still make this album before he finally moved on. Bearing in mind previous events, I said in passing that he should think it over carefully so that he wouldn’t back out later. A few days later he wrote to me and said that I had told him to think it over carefully and that he had now done so again and had come to the final decision NOT to do it. I was speechless at first and then really angry. One hand chops off the other. For a reasonable person, there were certainly obvious reasons why DMD stopped recording “Facta Loquuntur”, why he left us in the middle of rehearsals for our live performance as ABSURD in 1998, why he took songs he had written for ABSURD, such as the great “Auf den Schwingen des Drachen”, with him to Wolfsmond, and why he backed out of “Kyffhäuserreich”. But I am often unreasonable and I saw this as a betrayal of the cause. Even if perhaps above all of my own cause. In any case, I thought it was only appropriate not to compensate DMD financially in any way for his songs, which I would use from “Werwolfthron” onwards. Why should betrayal be rewarded? Understandably, this led to great displeasure on his part, which I was not willing to remedy, and that was the end of our friendship, although I had at least been invited to his Polterhochzeit shortly before.
DOOM gave an interview in 2004 where he publicly disowned Absurd and said he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the band, because it’s “too Nazi” and he is opposed to it. How did you feel about this when you read it? Did it surprise you?
WOLF: To be honest, I can’t remember such an interview, and in 2004 we hadn’t had any contact at all, which could sometimes lead to a strange situation. At one of the Hell’s Pleasure festivals we passed each other, stared at each other and neither said a word. Unhold asked me: “Sebastian is here too, have you seen him yet?” I answered: “Yes, I have.” “And have you at least said hello?” “No, we haven’t.” Unhold laughed and said: “You’re both really such specialists, unbelievable.” So whether DMD found something “too Nazi” or his opinion of ABSURD at the time was completely irrelevant to me. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the band anymore, or with me either, and that was completely fine with me.
You were no stranger to playing in bands before, for instance you have had your own project Sacrifice Slaughtered Jesus, later Vargavinter / Wolfsburg and eventually Heldentum too. You never played on any Absurd recording in the 1990ies, though (other than contributing “First Winter of Bloodred Snow” to “Facta Loquuntur”), but did you not consider starting to write songs (for Absurd) yourself when now there was the chance to actually do it?
WOLF: Basically, I’m a lazy bum and certainly not one for self-promotion. If there’s someone who does something well, or better than I could (ever), then I’m happy about it. DMD had enough songs that I liked, enough lyrics that I liked, Unhold is an excellent musician, my brother wrote nice lyrics, a lot of great lyrics on “Blutgericht” were written by a good friend of Unhold’s named Freki, he used to be the singer of HELLFUCKED. I can’t play metal guitar, that limits my options. And I didn’t bother to learn it either. Very, very rarely, I get into it. In the 2000s, I thought up the music for “Der Scharlachrote Tod” and recorded the guitar for it in the studio, my way of scrubbing without a pick until my fingertips bleed always contributed to the benevolent amusement of the professionals. “Über die Weiten Midgards” is also mine, lyrics and music. My musical input written directly by me can be counted on the fingers of a severed hand. I simply didn’t see any reason to do more when there was already so much great material available. This shows that you can still get far as a talentless non-musician, with total dedication to the cause and because I was simply a person who, with my excessive drinking and fighting behavior, fitted in perfectly with the “Thuringian Pagan Madness”. And one or two groundbreaking ideas, not least this infamous slogan, are my invention.
Unhold joined Absurd when you invited him for the recording of “Werwolfthron” in 2001, is that correct? Did he and DOOM actually know each other at this time? Would Unhold have considered joining Absurd if you didn’t invite him in, was this a band he would really want to be part of all along?
WOLF: To record a new album, I needed competent musicians, because I wanted to reach a new level of professionalism. I’ve known Unhold personally since 1999, and he was a young, dynamic, multi-talented guy who I got on very well with. There might have been a better drummer, for example, but I didn’t want a hyper-speed blast beat, and I didn’t want to bother with the personal idiosyncrasies of a hundred people, and Unhold was better on every instrument than anyone who had played for ABSURD up to that point. He had no reservations about my plan and was highly motivated, I would say, because he was personally interested in the band as a music listener and extreme black metal fan and and wanted to ensure through his active support that a new level of quality would be achieved, especially after the botched final mix of “Asgardsrei”, which sounded to some listeners as if ABSURD hadn’t used a studio at all and had therefore once again not exploited the musical potential. Would he have come to ABSURD if I hadn’t invited him? How could that have happened? The band wasn’t exactly lying on the street for the lucky finder to pick up.
Anyway, we first recorded the song “Über die Gräber hinweg” in 2000 and that really blew people’s hair out of their faces, much to their surprise. So we were off to a good start. I can’t say exactly when Unhold met DMD. When we recorded “Werwolfthron” the two of them hadn’t had any personal contact, because Unhold was already wondering back and forth how he should play the songs or how the author might have thought it would work with his acoustic guitar chords. He could have asked him if he had been able to at the time, but he couldn’t due to a lack of contact. In later years he did it, so that Unhold even had the idea of re-recording “Werwolfthron” according to DMD’s actual intentions, which I found pretty unnecessary.
If I am not mistaken, then Unhold was not part of Absurd in at least the year of 2004. “Raubritter” was recorded without him, and Absurd played many concerts all across Europe without Unhold. What happened this year, and how did he come back?
WOLF: In autumn 2003 I wanted to make another attempt to perform live with ABSURD, starting with a short special guest appearance, just a handful of songs, as part of a concert we had organised, including Kristallnacht and Magog. A written ban on the concert had been delivered to me at very short notice by two detectives at home. Thanks to the great support of the TOTENBURG gang, another venue was found and the police officers of a riot squad, who were supposed to prevent the concert by force if necessary, were misled about the location of the event …at least for a while. I had rehearsed with a live line- up several times, but due to the distance, without Unhold, who was supposed to just play along second guitar on the old classics. But Unhold was always very precise about playing the songs faithfully to the original, arrived very late that evening and wanted to go to the rehearsal room and rehearse with us before the performance. The rehearsal dragged on like chewing gum because Unhold didn’t like this or that detail and he treated the other musicians unnecessarily, in my opinion, because I wasn’t so much interested in a faithful performance but in an energetic live experience. So after the last official band had performed, a good hour and a half had passed before we returned to the venue. Too late. Informed by journalists on site, the police had regrouped their troops and had already surrounded the venue. The game was over, our performance was impossible, the music system had already been moved to safety in a daring move before the police marched in. When I was told later that the evening before at another concert Unhold had told some of his friends that he thought our performance was a stupid idea and that he didn’t want to do it, I couldn’t help but feel that he had deliberately sabotaged the gig with his delaying tactics. I really took offense at that and then possibly overreacted. If he didn’t feel like it, nobody forced him. So we went our separate ways for a while, out of necessity. A 4 song EP, like “Raubritter”, with a folk song, a new version of “Green heart” and just two newly written songs could be realized with another very talented guitarist, but a new full album was a completely different caliber, especially because the new guitarist felt that being part of a notorious band like ABSURD was counterproductive for his future career, and after one year already said goodbye. So I swallowed my pride and talked to Unhold and made up again. Never change a winning team, right?! Most likely I needed him more than he needed me.
In hindsight it is surprising to see that Unhold wrote way less songs for Absurd himself than what people usually think he did. Did he ever give you a reason why he relied so much on the former songs of DOOM instead of writing new ones himself? Was it just convenient to do it that way, or did Unhold – for whatever reason – try to keep DOOM close to Absurd?
WOLF: Yes, he may have written fewer songs for ABSURD than many people think, but on the other hand I can’t throw stones out of a glass house because there are also people who thought that all the singing on the albums was mine, including the heroic clean vocals, and were then really disappointed when they found out that I wasn’t responsible for these. In any case, he didn’t have to give me an explanation for that, for me the main thing was always that we had enough great songs, whether they were written by him, DMD, or the Holy Spirit, whether we used cover versions or folk songs, I didn’t give a damn, the end result was what counted for me. You could also look at it this way: while I was enthroned above things in my arrogance, Unhold tried to make right what he thought was a mistake I made. He got to know DMD and paid him for his songs, he also bought that “Kyffhäuserreich” material from him, and DMD recorded it as a demo for Unhold. The two seem to get along well, and Unhold is a traditionalist who always seems to be interested in the origins of the scene like a kind of archaeologist, even though he himself was active as a very young man in the 90s, playing with LUROR, when it was still a real band, as the opening act for DISSECTION and BEHEMOTH. There must be some kind of special connection between DMD and Unhold, a solid male friendship, like the one Unhold has with T.T. / Abigor. And like the one I probably had with him once, after all he was my best man at my wedding 11 years ago, and now we haven’t met in person for almost five years. Time waits for no one.
Now it’s Unhold turn to say he’s “the true Absurd” even without you. From your perspective, can someone who was not a founding member and joined a band only 10 years later somehow “earn the right” to claim this band for his own?
WOLF: Didn’t something similar happen with a very well-known band? IMMORTAL were founded in 1991, the drummer Horgh played on an album for the first time in 1997, but not on the three classic albums before that, and despite this he did not want to be excluded from the name rights, but at least wanted to have an equal share. A court even granted him this, but not sole rights (which he did not want either) as a non-founding member. With ABSURD we are entering heavily mined territory here. Yes, a few years ago I publicly “granted” Unhold the right to cook his own spicy soup under the name ABSURD because of his immense, undeniable services to the band, without his involvement there might not even be a band left whose legacy we could even argue about. I still stand by that opinion. And then we have founding member DMD, who pulls off the acrobatic balancing act of officially not wanting to have anything to do with the band for 25 years, but still having the authority to pass on and sell “his” ABSURD to Unhold. When I refused to contribute vocals to “Werwolflicht” and Unhold realized that I was serious and that this wasn’t one of my tasteless jokes, he was visibly annoyed and angry and explained that I knew that ABSURD only existed for him with me as the singer and that I would see/hear that there was nothing to hear. And by that he meant that this album would not be released. He has obviously changed his mind on the matter. It is good that he now stands up for himself in this regard, I welcome that. To be a straw man for him is an unfortunate position, and how quickly straw can catch fire. I am not innocent in this whole mess. I first seriously considered leaving the band in 2008, to focus my main attention on being active as a Muay Thai fighter and trainer (yes, I had completed an athlete’s degree and a trainer’s license by then), but in the long term I was too unsuccessful as a fighter and too misanthropic to be a trainer. In principle, I had already finished with the topic ABSURD or at least imagined that this was the case, then I withdrew my resignation, Unhold convinced me to contribute vocal recordings for “Der Fünfzehnjährige Krieg” and the “Weltenfeind” split. But then a serious blow had already been made, our cooperation has never fully recovered from my resignation acrobatics. After his release from prison, my brother also began to develop an astonishing life of his own, entirely in his own way. I was only nominally his older brother, he didn’t let anyone tell him what to do. So my dwindling influence on band matters became more and more apparent over the following years. If you don’t hold on to something, it will be snatched out of your hands by others who are more interested in it. One distinction that I would no longer make, however, is between a wrong and a right version of ABSURD. This may seem to some people like an annoying attempt on my part to come across as Solomonic, but so far I can appreciate both the music of one and the other, and I am not the arbitration court to decide or dictate anything here. 20 years ago I said in an interview that ABSURD is more than the sum of the people involved, and that still applies to me. ABSURD was never a solo project. Let the music do the talking.
“Werwolflicht” was recently released. You were supposed to record the vocals on this album but you did not. Is it because you refused to become part of it or did you just have no interest anymore and wished Unhold good luck with that?
WOLF: When Unhold presented me with this extensive demo recording in the spring of 2023, completely out of the blue, with vocals that were much more than just placeholders, but full of passion and intensity, especially in the details (“Fettruß”, I can literally see it in front of me), I was downright overwhelmed. Even though it seemed as if none of the good ideas that he had sent me as sound snippets before 2022 had been processed, the whole thing gave me a very cozy, comfortable feeling when listening to it, so familiar, simply Unhold, as he lives and breathes. Strong, it really touched me. With some songs I could very well imagine that I could give the thing the right acidic coating with my vocals. With other songs, however, it was pretty clear to me that there was a high probability that the result would be like “Grabgesang”, which is what a less than generous critic attested to at metal archives: “The first three songs have Wolf on vocals and it’s not great. He does a growl but it’s somehow nasally and sounds kind of whiny. Especially on the first song which is really wordy and he’s practically scream-rapping over the music… he sounds annoying.” I was now spoiled by singing my own lyrics at DER TOD UND DIE LANDSKNECHTE, and was preparing for the last of three vocal recording sessions for our album in spring 2023 anyway. I just wasn’t in the mood to sing other people’s weird lyrics about werewolves crawling through the thorny undergrowth with beetles and worms, instead I wanted to praise cognac-soaked shock troopers, rampaging through trenches with bayonets and hand grenades to smash up the enemy. And after careful consideration I came to the conclusion that there was nothing to improve vocally here, and that I had reached the end of the road anyway.
Instead you recorded the guest vocals on one song of “Das dunkle Heer”, the so far latest release by Absurd run by your brother JFN. This took many by surprise, how did it come about and is there more to be expected from “the Möbus brothers”?
WOLF: Not instead, one has less to do with the other than it seems. I was at odds with my brother for years. That hurt me, because brothers don’t have to be friends, but in our case, I shared a childhood bedroom with him for well over a decade until I moved out of our family home as a young adult, and while he was in prison, I visited him once a month for another ten years. He is a very intelligent person with a high level of knowledge, and I always read his clever written statements with great interest, because they were brain food for me. I missed that during our years of radio silence (from his side). So in the summer of 2023, I approached him with an invitation to settle our differences, and he did me the favor. The malice of some people who took pleasure in a family dispute also made me more and more uncomfortable, and I no longer wanted to grant them that pleasure. In order to make a visible statement, a musical collaboration seemed to me to be the option with the greatest reach. Bile did not agree with the idea of a split EP. So my brother suggested guest vocals for a song on his planned mini-LP, and I could choose the song. I also wanted to use the opportunity to say an official goodbye. Farewell is a sharp sword, but this time there is no turning back. No Möbus Allstars, I’m retired.
Now that we can listen to “Werwolflicht” and see what it is all about and how it looks, what is your impression? Is that something you might have wanted to be part of after all, do you regret not singing on it? Is this AI generated artwork anything you could approve? Or are you glad your name is in no way linked to this release?
WOLF: When I held the final product in my hands and listened to it, I thought about it again. This CD could have been made with my singing. But what’s done is done, ifs, ands and buts, you don’t need to worry about that anymore. Can I get upset about artificial intelligence while I’m sitting here using Google Translate? And that’s despite the fact that I’m an inactive certified foreign language correspondent for business English, but I’ve probably already forgotten more than other people ever knew. I can understand why Unhold felt in a hurry and thought he couldn’t wait for an illustrator. On the other hand, the CD design now looks as dangerous as a children’s book entry about werewolves. Thinner paper for the booklet was certainly not available either, otherwise it would tear just by looking at it. But everything has its advantages and disadvantages: cheap CD production, no money needed for a visual artist, no profit share for a singer. That could make the ratio of income to expenditure quite advantageous for Unhold, and it’s not as if he couldn’t use the money. With the high-quality trve okkvlt black metal productions that he realizes on his label, there is certainly the possibility of getting into the loss zone from time to time, with high expenses for studio budgets, advances and cardboard-thick LP booklets. It’s good for him if this is a sales success, he deserves it. Perhaps there will be a more solid LP version of it at some point. Or maybe not, see the vinyl version of “Grabgesang” that has been announced for several years and, as far as I know, has long since been canceled internally.
Absurd used to be radical and uncompromising, also with Der Tod und die Landsknechte you took no prisoners lyrically. “Werwolflicht” is rather inoffensive, though. Without the Absurd logo on it, it could be an album released by many other bands singing about werewolves, demons, deep dark forests but avoiding “hot topics” altogether. According to your own standards and what you want to accomplish with an album, does “Werwolflicht ” have what it takes or does it fall short of it? Should Absurd of all bands do what other bands did before, and forsake former extremism to reach a wider audience and be commercially more successful than the band already does and is?
WOLF: Dogs that bark don’t bite, and there are already so many barking dogs, do you have to domesticate a werewolf to bark with the dogs? I don’t think so. On closer inspection, ABSURD actually have much less radical lyrics than is given the impression in public, and if there were a standard for NSBM, then only a handful of ABSURD songs would meet it lyrically, if you ignore the hints, whether accurate or not. Nevertheless, what do you expect from a band with the status of enemy of (almost) the entire world? If you want to hear horror stories that let a pleasant feeling of rotting damnation trickle over your pale body, then “Werwolflicht” is exactly the right thing for you in terms of lyrics and music. If you want to indulge in the radicalness of heroic realism in a hopeless but upright sense of pride, “Schwarze Bande” is for you. The music is not everything, but it is the most important thing. You can recite an Oswald Spengler treatise for me, if the music is rumbling from the storeroom, then I’ll just read and turn the music off. As for the lyrical approach, it’s no longer my decision. But I can say that one reason for not continuing with DER TOD UND DIE LANDSKNECHTE is that for my taste everything has been said, and not just once. These self-referential lyrics, themes that keep repeating themselves, what is becoming increasingly obvious, not least in DMD’s lyrics, does anyone really need this anymore? Hence my self-ironic touch in the song “Weder Tod noch Teufel”: “Und wenn Du denkst, ich singe stets das gleiche, dann lache ich laut, und pisse auf Deine Leiche / And if you think I always sing the same thing, then I’ll laugh out loud and piss on your corpse”. There are textual approaches, f.ex. I also had an idea for a crusader text about the events in Jerusalem in 1099, but there are things that I shy away from, for legal reasons, and since I am currently not prepared to face the ultimate consequences of knife attacks in the open street. So for me it’s: shut up, monkey dead.
