 |
||||||||
| Pan
Lead Vocalist of Chimaera (Germany) Interview By Susi (SugarBuzz Correspondent - Germany) September 6, 2005 SugarBuzz Magazine |
||||||||
| Hello Pan, thanx a lot for making this interview possible for me. So please let us start with the following questions. Hello Susi, I´m very pleased to answer your questions. Hope that you will get to know everything you want! 1. Well, the first thing I´d like to know is: Was it difficult to form a Heavy Metal band back in 1993 and what about getting all your musicians together? Well, CHIMAERA were formed already earlier. The name exists since then! 1990 the band was formed under the name "Dragon Force". As we considered the name to be too stupid (no offense to the UK-Band...) we changed again to "Midlife Crisis". Hahaha! Well, a bunch of 14-16 year old (or young) guys named "Midlife Crisis" is kind funny thing, eh? So we again had to find a new name. One day, after having played too much roleplaying games, I came to rehearsal room and decreed that we`ll have the name CHIMAERA. About forming the band: That wasn`t too hard at that time. We wanted to do some rock music, become famous rock stars so that we can screw all the rock and metal ladies in the world! Hahaha! As we were in school together, it was easy to find the members. No one knew much about his instrument and we made some terrific nose! Over the years it became far more difficult to find the right members for the band! 2. I know that there are still some people out there who do not already know your band. Please tell them in a few sentences all about your band and style. We play Heavy Metal. We don`t put ourselves in specific folders. The songs range from Heavy Hard Rock to Speed Metal. We love hearing and making Heavy Music in general. Right now, I listen to "Out in the cold" from Priest`s killer-album "Turbo" Whoah! That rocks! Generally Priest has many influences on our music but not exclusively. It`s a new mixture of old music with new spirit! Gotta listen to it! As far as I know you like our music, eh? Susi: Well..... yeeeeah surely like your music. But dunno who told this to you.. ??? 3. The last time I saw you play was at the Hard `n Heavy`s VIII Summernight Open Air in Euskirchen/Germany. And I think it was a great success for you. Please tell me everything about this event and your gig there. The event is fantastic! One of the best festivals!!! Free entrance, free camping... The event is financed by sponsors and by the consumption of beverages and food! All the bands play there just for the sake of good music! Our gig there.... well... Actually, it was good but we had many problems. The monitor system had a bad contact and so we heard nearly nothing on stage! That `s the reason why I had strong vocal problems. Try hitting the right note if you cannot hear yourself! Hahaha! The fans were nevertheless amazed and we had a formidable reaction! Especially the two young fans (roundabout 10 years old, banging, screaming... Wow!) |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
| 4.What are your future plans with Chimaera? Are you still searching for a bass player? Well, we just got to get the tour with Rebellion (news on our homepage). For this tour and the other gigs we have a bass player! But sadly no member! We`ll have to seek one as we will have to find another guitarist as Izzy will have to take a break of at least a year with no guitar due to health reasons. If he will ever return to playing guitar (not only with Chimaera but overall!!!) isn`t sure. He has the same problem that forced Demonaz from Immortal to quit playing guitar! We`ll take the tour, play the last concerts and then we`ll have to look what we do but I`m sure we`ll find a good solution! 5. Have you already written new songs or ideas for another CD? And what are you guys doing at the moment? |
||||||||
| We have already written new material! We have finished 7 songs and are working on more. These songs are a bit more broad from their range. There is also one very dark one included. I don`t know yet if we can ever make this song live but I think the studio version will be great! What we are doing by now? Working! With all our power for we would reach one day to this point when we can dedicate all of our time to the music as it can feed us! Sadly that`s a hard goal!
6. Now let us talk about concerts again - which was the best gig for you and which was the worst? Please explain this to me. The best gig? Hummm... I think that was in 2001 in Riegelsberg. We were playing there in front of over 600 people who ran totally mad about our show! Sadly short time after that gig the old line up split because of internal problems we couldn`t handle anymore. The worst gig was probably in the year 2000 together with Entera. The guys had invited us to play with them on their 10 years anniversary show. Well, we told some of our friends to come to help us a bit in front of the new crowd that we thought would come for the others. Well.... our 35 people were the only guys being there! Entera had 3 people watching... In a hall that can contain up to 400-500 people that's very bad. Well, they hadn´t done nearly no advertisement for the concert... Well.... okay, no further discussions `bout that! 7.Well - now on with some non band related things ... I think your fans want to know more about the metal scene in Düsseldorf/Germany. So what`s going on there at the moment? Düsseldorf`s metal scene isn`t very strong. The problem is, that many of the guys rely too much on the old glory. A "Onkel Tom" concert drawing only roundabout 120 people is something very bad! We`ll try it again with making a good concert here... We`ll see the result... Sadly many of the so called "Metalheads" are more interested in drinking and partying than going to events or concerts! 8. Please name your 5 favourite albums of all time and why they are your favorites. Wow! Difficult question! That will take quite a lot of time to name but 5 albums... But these I will name will be in no order of importance!!! 1st Iron Maiden - Seventh son of a seventh son 2nd Judas Priest - painkiller 3rd Witch Burning - You 4rd Skid Row - Slave to the grind / Same ( I cannnot choose, sorry!)' 5th Yngwie Malmsteen - Eclipse 6th Böhse Onkelz - Heilige Lieder 7th Stryper - In god we trust 8th Manowar - Kings of metal 9th Blind Guardian - Somewhere far beyond 10th Falming Entity - Three years of darkness Sorry, I couldn`t choose! There are too many good albums. It was even difficult to name just ten! I think it`s on you to pick up five from them. Susi: Skid Row, Skid Row, Skid Row.... yeeeeeeeah. |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
| 9. There are surely some unfulfilled wishes you still have - do you want to share them with us? Then please let us know. Surely I still have unfulfilled wishes! One of them will come true on 18th October with the beginning of the tour with Rebellion. It is a miracle that the tour starts just on this day as it is my fathers fifth dying day. I am sure that he has drawn some strings from beyond to get things better for us! This tour I will dedicate to him! Well, other wishes we have a lot! Getting signed by a major label, having the possibility to dedicate all of our time to the music, having a lot of shows... |
||||||||
| 10. And now please leave a message for all your fans out there! We are glad to have that many fans. When we started making music, we couldn`t imagine that our dream come true! You make it true and we want to give you everything back in the language that is ours: Heavy Metal! So keep on drinking, partying, bangin` your heads proudly! As we`re going on tour soon I can say: See you on tour! Cheerz! So bye bye for now and I thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions. Wish you and your band a fantastic weekend and all the best for the future. Also I hope we keep in contact. Cheerz Susi Editor's Note: I want to also thank Pan and Susi as well for an excellent interview and for giving me a dose of much needed Metal! You ROCK!!!! |
||||||||