Finsterforst – Interview met Olli Berlin & Simon Käflein
Simon Käflein: ‘Finding an end and coherence in a long track is sometimes a pain in the ass, but it is rewarding. It is worth it in the end, because ‘Leere’ is one of my favourites on the record now.”
Vijwel elke artiest is mede gevormd door de streek waar hij vandaan komt, zeker in het pagan/folk metal genre. In het geval van het Duitse Finsterforst is dat het Zwarte Woud waar de natuur een mysterieuze, donkere uitstraling heeft. Al meer dan twintig jaar is het de voornaamste inspiratiebron van deze zevenkoppige band. Ook op het zesde studioalbum ‘Still’ heeft dit geleid naar een werkstuk boordevol indrukwekkende songs vol melancholie, een epische majestueuze sfeer en ruwheid. We hadden een bijzonder leuke zoom meeting begin juli met zanger/tekstschrijver Olli Berlin en hoofdcomponist/gitarist Simon Käflein om hun Zwarte Woudmeesterwerk ‘Still’ wat extra aandacht te geven, want dat verdient het!
Vera Matthijssens Ι 30 juli 2026
How are you doing? Last weekend you played a pre-release party show…
Olli: ‘It was a nice concert. We played an extra long set. It was amazingly hot (laughs). When I got there in the afternoon it was like 21 degrees. No fun, but it was fun at the end. We played ‘Stille Nacht’, ‘Im Wind’, ‘Herbstwanderung’ and the Immortal cover.’
How do you look back at the writing process and when did you start focussing on writing new material?
Simon: ‘I don’t really remember when I started to write the new material, but it must have been during the last three years. It was not really easy to write, mainly because we all have other stuff to do during daylight. We all have a family and then it is sometimes a bit stressful to use the small amount of time we are free to focus on completing songs. It is a hobby, that’s why it takes some time. Weeks or months where we can write a few songs in that time, but spread on one to two years until it is finished.’
I think that is smart, taking your time, because most of the songs have a considerable length. A lot of things are happening in them. One of the features of your music is the fact that there are many diverse vocals. I know that many of the members are contributing vocals, but this time there is also a choir as special guest. Can you tell something about that?
Simon: ‘Right before the corona pandemic started, I was in a theatre here in Freiburg, in my hometown, and it was a play/musical theatre, because there was some male choir included and it sounded pretty amazing; deep and epic to me and I did some simple research. I wanted to check out who was doing this whole choir. Since few years we wanted to include choir vocals and all that stuff. So we have a new element in our vocals, not only our own vocals. A few years after I watched this play, it was in the beginning of 2020, I did the research and found out who was in charge with the choir work. I contacted him, I explained him who we are and what kind of music we are doing. He checked us out, he was very amazed of this idea and so we managed to use them on this new album.’
What about your comeback as a live band on stage after the pandemic, did it happen rather smooth or not?
Olli: ‘The corona time for us as a band meant a big break, especially when it comes to the live activities of course. It sucked pretty much and it kind of threw us back also.’
Yet you created the EP ‘Jenseits’ during that period…
Simon: ‘Yes, because we somehow tried to use the break when we were not able to perform anywhere and came up with the idea: ‘okay, we cannot do anything, let us ask the listeners, our fans, if they would be interested in some crowd-funding campaign. If they were supporting this whole thing, we could realize this project and the feedback was quite positive, so we simply gave it a try and we succeeded. It was a pretty exhausting job to do, to create the whole thing.’
Olli: ‘Let’s do just one song’. (laughs) (‘Jenseits’ was one composition, split into four parts – Vera)
Let us shine a light on the first single and video ‘Stille Nacht’. Why did you choose this song as an introduction to the new album?
Olli: ‘I will start with the lyrics. Simon sent me the stuff as guitar pro tool files, then I listened to it and I felt like there was this underlying brutality in the song and some kind of melancholy as well. This song sounded like war to me, so I started writing lyrics about war. I wanted it to be from the perspective of people who try to live during war, not exactly fighting. It just developed and in the end it says ‘finally silence’ and I thought about ‘stille nacht’, like the Christmas song. That one is a little word play. We have never lived through war in our generation before and now it feels like it is closing in from everywhere. Obviously it does something to my mind as well.’
You cannot ignore it anymore indeed…
Olli: ‘No. We played in Ukraine before, four times. There are people who you know from there. When you contact them on Instagram or on Facebook, you see them wearing camouflage and having a gun in their hands, because it is war there. It feels really frightening. Absolutely.’
Simon: ‘We have chosen this song for the video as well, because the theme is impressive, so it is a really great choice and also from a musical aspect, also in my opinion, this song is pretty hard, pretty heavy. It starts right in your face, it has an extreme aggressive verse with Olli’s vocals, then you have this very epic, melodic chorus and also this silent, melancholic sad part, before it starts again. As Olli said, it fits really great to the theme he chose and for us it was clear that this would be the number 1 song to reveal.’
The second single is ‘Obduktion’…
Olli: ‘Concerning the lyrics, ‘Obduktion’ means ‘autopsy’. I am social worker in my day job. Like two years ago a pretty young guy died after years of heavy psychical problems and overuse. He had an accident and fell from a big height and did not survive that. When Simon sent the song, I felt like ‘okay, I think I can do something with it’ and at the same time I could write it off my chest. It is also a little criticism on society. We treat the weakest in our society really bad. We don’t care about them and we don’t want to see them walking around, because they remind us of death. That is our society right now: they press every little cent out of the poor people, while they are living in luxury. There is actually a big theme behind that, based on very personal experiences.’
Simon: ‘Olli worked with that guy for years and years.’
Then you build up a kind of relationship with that guy…
Olli: ‘Yes and you begin to really care for those people and save them all.’
Then we have the lengthy track of 24 minutes, called ‘Leere’ which means ‘empty’…
Olli: ‘Yes, emptiness or void.’
Simon: ‘This track was the hardest to write, not only because of the length, because it is not only about the length of a song, but also the content of it and I really was struggling in the end to be able to finish it. When it comes down on longer songs, you cannot just stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere, because you already let evolve it in so many directions. It is like a huge tree and you have many branches. It is like a big tree, growing and growing and in the end I have to try to find an end, like there is a frame to it, around the whole piece. When you just keep on creating new parts and nothing makes sense, then it is kind of boring and very exhausting to listen to. So I tried that somehow the different parts of the song fit together, no matter if there is a tempo change or another theme. You have to include several variations otherwise it gets too repetitive and then we can listen to techno music. It was really difficult to find the end, but that was already the case when I wrote ‘Jenseits’ or the song ‘Ecce Homo’ which was on ‘Zerfall’ or any other long song. The end is sometimes a pain in the ass so to say. But… it is worth it in the end, because it is one of my favourites also.’
Olli: ‘And then I have to write lyrics on that… it is also different, making lyrics for a long track, because you cannot just start, you have to plan. What is the story I want to tell and go with the flow. Writing lyrics for those long songs is also a pain in the ass, because of the mood and tempo changes.’
Johannes Joseph, the one who plays accordion, was gone for a while. He was there in the beginning, but then ten years he was gone… What happened?
Simon: ‘Johannes was kind of there from the beginning with us, but around 2014/2015 he decided to cut. His life was a bit changing. With his study he moved to Switzerland and then he had a job, met his wife and his first child came and so on and he did not feel the motivation or power to simply proceed with us, especially live at concerts. He proceeded being there with us in the studio for recording accordion and do some vocal parts and so on, he only cut off the live activity. Now, more than ten years later, I was busy with the writing of the music and it was clear that something or someone still would be missing to fill in the particular vocal parts. I mean, myself or Olli could have done that somehow, but I had something else in mind and then we came up with the idea and then Johannes was playing one concert with us and we were talking a bit and I was also asking him; ‘would you be interested in general to get back with more focus?’ and he was like ‘well actually I was thinking about it anyway’. He missed this whole thing, so he decided to join us as a full member again, and that will work because we are also not so free with too much time because of having families and so on. It is not possible for all of us to tour all the time.’
Olli: ‘He played a gig with us before, one night only. He just got in, was there maybe two hours before the show, played the gig, he left early and now it was different. We drove all the way together, we did a lot of talking and it felt different compared to the years before. I thought he wanted to come back and then Simon said: ‘I want Johannes to be back’ and it happened.’
A while ago you split ways with Napalm Records and now you are on AOP Records. What is the story behind that?
Olli: ‘Napalm and us, we had different ideas. When we joined them – in 2011 I think – they were a big label already, but they grew a lot since then. We did not grow in the same vein. So I think we kind of became a second choice, which I cannot blame them for, I mean, they just grew bigger and bigger and had all those number 1 bands on their label, and we kind of stuck where we were. There is no bad blood, it is just a business thing. When we recorded ‘Jenseits’ by crowd-funding, we realized distributing is not our strength and we needed some help with that. Sven from AOP Records listened to it and was like ‘I don’t know, an EP… it is already by crowd-funding, there is not a lot to do with it’, but one or two days later, he was like ‘I have listened to it again, I really love it, I want to do it’. He wanted to do something with it. He has the right kind of energy for us, he is into the music first and foremost. That feels good to us and is what we actually need, because we will never be that big chart buster band, that will never happen. I want to do this kind of music.’
Let us have a chat about the two cover songs you included. Why did you choose them?
Simon: ‘Why did we choose Immortal? Well, because in Finsterforst there is certainly some black metal influence. We can discuss about the question if Immortal is black metal or not, but it is definitely coming from darker metal stuff. I believe – at least I can speak for myself and for Olli – we are very much into Immortal. I think it was pretty fast here that we would love to cover a song from Immortal, which meant that we had to decide which one. Since ‘Beyond The North Waves’ is kind of very fitting for us, because it is very epic, slow and heavy. It would not really fit to us on this album ‘Still’, if it would be very fast blastbeats and stuff like that. So the very slow and epic, almost Bathory atmosphere of this song fits us. What would you say Olli?’
Olli: ‘Well, actually there is a moment on every album we are part of, where we feel like ‘oh this guitar is like Immortal’. It is always in there. The same kind of feeling. When it comes down on the song, well I think it was mainly you and me who discussed that, I think we are the biggest Immortal fans here.’
Simon: ‘The choosing of the Pink Floyd song – we have to be honest, why not – not everybody was really impressed. It is kind of difficult to agree with seven blokes who have a different opinion. I was a little bit unlucky in my opinion to choose this one, but it was pretty difficult to agree on that. So we ended up somehow in the classic Pink Floyd, choosing from the whole universe in classic rock, maybe it does not fit too much, except the ending of the song, because I turned it somehow into an Immortal-ish vibe in my opinion, because it gets a bit epic and huge. It was a very exotic excursion for us (chuckles).’
Are there still other video clips in the pipeline?
Simon: ‘This week, actually the third single ‘Im Wind’ will be released, but without a video clip, like we did with the song ‘Obduktion’. Then there will be the performance at Wacken Open Air at the first of August. This will be kind of our highlight, because it is also one day after the album release. We are already quite excited for it and discuss what we can or shall play there and what not. After that we will see how Autumn will be and I think this year will not be so busy with touring or many other gigs, but we think there will be great opportunities next year, for 2027 we also hope for several festival gigs.
I hope you will play in Belgium…
Olli: ‘Belgium is Graspop, isn’t it? Okay, Graspop would be ace! (laughs).’
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