Brainstorm – interview met Thorsten Ihlenfeld (guitars)
Thorsten Ihlenfeld: “I would call Andy an original band member as well. I mean, he is in the band for over 25 years now (laughs). Of course, Milan, Dieter and me started in 1989, but since the ‘Ambiguity’ album, this is how people know Brainstorm”
Voor de krachtige heavy/power metal van Brainstorm mogen ze ons altijd wakker maken! Deze band vond zijn oorsprong in Duitsland, het metal land bij uitstek, en heeft intussen ook al aardig wat op de palmares staan. Weldra is album nummer 14 ‘Plague Of Rats’ verkrijgbaar en op deze opvolger van ‘Wall Of Skulls’ (2021) keert men zelfs in enkele songs naar de roots terug met fraaie thematiek uit de Indiaanse mythologie. We vroegen wat meer bijzonderheden aan de immer vriendelijke gitarist Thorsten Ihlenfeld over dit nieuwe werk.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 6 maart 2025
When did you actually start having ideas for new material?
Well, ideas are always flowing back and forth. It is not that we stop searching for a good riff or good song ideas when we released an album, but the real song-writing process always takes about – I would say – about a year. But it is different when you are just collecting ideas or if you are just recording riff ideas, that is different from the real song-writing process. This time one of the main and most important song-writings thoughts was the album cover. We had it at a very early stage of the song-writing process. When I saw the album cover, when Andy came up with what he was planning with Gyula, our cover artist, I was so impressed and it was like a kick-off, especially for songs like ‘Garuda’ and bring that oriental flavour into Brainstorm’s music again.
With an album title like ‘Plague Of Rats’, I was thinking that the lyrics were probably written during the pandemic and consequently pretty dark…
They are pretty dark, yes, because since we are not a concept album band, we always write about what is happening around us, what is happening in the world, or with ‘Garuda’ and ‘The Shepherd Girl’, it are stories of Indian mythology and history, so this is something Andy is very interested in. All that different cultures and all that stuff and with the album cover it was right away very clear that we would have something like we had on ‘Soul Temptation’ back in focus again, but not only because of the album title ‘Plague Of Rats’. Rats have a very important meaning in many cultures, but also, to connect it with the here and now nowadays, sometimes you wake up or you watch TV and you get the feeling that you are surrounded by rats. So that is why we found that this is a perfect album title.
Rats have quite a bad reputation in history, the cause of the plague for instance…
Not only, but mainly. Every animal exists for a reason though, no animal exists only for bad reasons. That is for sure, but it has of course – as you say – a very dark meaning in general.
The former record, ‘Wall Of Skulls’ was released in 2021 during the pandemic. Did the band manage to collect enough gigs afterwards to recover from these hard times? How did it become a normally functioning band again?
That was quite difficult. ‘Wall Of Skulls’ was released in September 2021 and of course all the tours had already been booked, because you book already one year or at least nine months earlier. We released ‘Wall Of Skulls’ and it was the most successful album for Brainstorm and everything looked wow and now we are going on tour… nothing happened, because nobody was allowed to go on tour anymore. We had to postpone the tour which was planned for September 2021, we had to delay it until end of September 2022. So it was almost about a year that nothing really happened, because there were no shows happening at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. That was a very, very strange feeling. What we usually do, when we release an album, we go on tour, we play the Summer festivals and then we start all over for the next album. It was a very strange feeling, not to be able to go on tour immediately when we release an album. We weren’t even allowed to meet or to rehearse. So it was a hard year, but starting again with Brainstorm tour in the Fall 2022, we felt like getting back to normal, but there was still a long way to go. We have been one of the first tours that happened at the end of that covid-19 pandemic and people have been very uncertain if the shows would happen, because you had many short-noticed cancellations often, because one or two of the band members got tested for covid-19. It was very difficult because you could not read the presales as you are used to. In my memory it has been really one of the first tours that really happened from start to finish. It was very difficult, because most of the people showed up in the evening to buy tickets and go to the concert. Not as usual, you have presales you can count on. That was very different and we have been very grateful for all the people that really showed up. People told me that many of them still had five or six tickets for shows to come, they didn’t know if they will ever happen or not. In 2023 everybody was looking where the shows happen and go to this with tickets from two years old. I think it started getting back to normal around April/May 2024.
Fortunately it is getting better now…
What we have now is that every existing band is going on tour the whole year. You can go to a concert every day of the week!
Overkill…
Absolutely, the prices raise, the costs raise… There is nobody to blame, except maybe the government. At least it is a part of our cultural life and that is very important for everybody. Whether it is music or cinema or books or whatever, it is such an important thing for people. For me with people that have the same interests, people just cannot afford it to go to five, six, seven, eight shows a month, because for smaller shows you have at least 50 euro to spend. Ticket, buy a shirt and then maybe something to drink and for the bigger shows it is about 100 euros. You cannot force the fans to go to ten shows a month. Now they have to decide what to do. It is not a question of not wanting to go, it is just a question of how many money they have to enjoy as much concerts as possible.
While concerts are food for the brain, it is also necessary for feeling well…
Yes, absolutely.
The good thing is that you are still with three original members, but the bass playing always seem to be bit tricky. A new one is introduced on this record…
I would call Andy an original band member as well. I mean, he is in the band for over 25 years now (laughs). Of course, Milan, Dieter and me started in 1989, but since the ‘Ambiguity’ album, this is how people know Brainstorm. For the bass player, there are no scandals. We had Tony Ieva for more than sixteen years and he just had to leave because of his daily work and then Andreas Armbruster joined us between ‘Walls Of Skulls’ and ‘Plague Of Rats’, but he needed to step back because of his family. He’s got another child, so it is not easy to combine family and small children and the touring schedule that Brainstorm has. They did not leave with arguments, we are still in good contact. These are two great bass players and two great persons. And then we had – of course – to search for another bass player. Jim Ramses, who is originally from Greece, from Athens crossed our minds. He moved to Germany two years ago, exactly in our hometown. It was a very easy thing. We just gave him a call and said: ‘well, do you like being bass player for Brainstorm?’ and we arranged rehearsals and an audition and he is a cool guy and a great bass player. So he is a great addition to the band.
That is a great coincidence. You have been such a long time at AFM Records and now finally you have changed label to RPM. Why?
Simply, no not simply (chuckles). Luckily we had good record labels in our back for all our career. Starting with Metal Blade, AFM Records… but sometimes things just change. And AFM and the companies behind AFM changed and they had plans we did not feel that comfortable with. What we see was not so good and we needed to talk. We talked, we had fifteen great years there and we talked about what shall we do, what are our possibilities or what are the plans for the future and at the end of intense, but really good talks, we decided to part ways and to look for a new label. Although we are not with AFM anymore, it was very respectful, so no bad feelings. It is just sometimes things change. RPM and the people working there we all know for a very long time and they know the band very well and they love the band. For us it feels like a very good decision, working with people we know for a very long time and we know it’s all metal people working at a metal label, working for a metal band like Brainstorm and that feels good.
It is a pity that the digital world prevails to the physical product…
That is the way things develop, you know. At least in our metal scene, the physical product has at least a fundamental meaning, but all the young people, they are changing their listening behaviours. Most of the young people don’t even know what a CD player is. They just listen from the mobiles. You cannot stop developing. Streaming is growing every year.
Please tell me something about your cooperation with Alexander Krull on the record… That is a guy you know for a long time and he contributes in ‘From Hell’…
Yes and this was 100% a perfect song for Alex Krull to do his amazing growls. As you say, especially Alex and Andy, they know each other for a very long time. They live in the same area, they went to the same clubs when they were younger, so… they know each other really well and really long. When Andy and me were sitting together and discussing song writing ‘From Hell’, he said ‘this song, it feels like there should be some growls in’ and Alex is definitely one of the best growlers I know and he did a perfect job on the song. What and how Alex contributed to the song with his growls, it is such a level up for the song and I love listening to it, because it just sounds great.
Eline Siirala, the female voice of Leaves’ Eyes, is another guest on the album…
It is the first time that she is singing on a Brainstorm album. Again it was Andy’s idea and again when Andy and I sat together and discussed the songs while working on the arrangements, it is always a very good exchange of ideas and he said that he was always hearing a female voice for that song. We really would like Eline singing, because we all love her voice. She is such a great vocalist. I get goosebumps every time I listen to the song, because it fits so perfect and we are lucky that Alex and Eline are part as guests on our album.
Who played keyboards this time?
As always, the keyboards are done by Miro Rodenberg from Avantasia. Miro is our long time partner when it comes to the keyboards, almost from the first CD on. I love working with him, he is such a great guy, such an amazing talented musician and he has such a great knowledge of music and different instruments and every time working with him and talking with him is always a big pleasure.
Avantasia… they also have a new record…
They release it the same day as we do. You better go into the shops and buy both albums! (laughs) Everybody!
What is ‘The Shepherd Girl’ about? I expected something folky, but it is different…
It is different yes. Actually it is Sanskrit and it was written in the 12th century, it describes a love relationship between the Hindu god Krishna, his brother and the Gopi’s, these shepherd girls. So it sounds like a love story somehow, but it is a Sanskrit poem out of the 12th century and it will be the upcoming single. It will be released on Friday 14th of February, Valentine’s Day, so what better than having a song about a love relationship on that day? I think it is the best video we have ever done. It was very, very much work to make it as it looks right now. When you go to our social media, we have a first single trailer out today, it gives you a nice prequel of what will come out on Friday. We really hope that our fans will love it, we all love the song. It is one of the favourites from all the band members. It is a great song and a great video. So hopefully people will love listening to it and watching it. There will be another video on the release date and that will be a nice one too, a pretty dark one, but a very cool one.
What are the plans for the near future with gigs and tours?
What we do different this time is we go on tour immediately with the album release. We don’t wait another four or six weeks as we usually do. That is because it is three and a half years since ‘Wall Of Skulls’ and we really love to go on stage again and present the new songs to our fans. The next tour starts February 27th, the album comes out February 28th. So we do a short release show run and on March 8 and 9 we are in the Netherlands, in Harderwijk and in Gouda. We are very looking forward to this. We have a great band supporting us, Signum Regis. Hopefully we see each other there.
