Beyond The Black – interview met Chris Hermsdörfer
Chris Hermsdörfer (guitars): “Communication is such an important topic nowadays, more than ever before and everywhere in the world.”
Stap voor stap heeft het Duitse Beyond The Black het succes uitgebreid. Hard werk en talent liggen aan de basis van deze roem en ook nu de band zopas het zesde studioalbum ‘Break The Silence’ heeft uitgebracht, werd alles op alles gezet om dit te laten samengaan met een uitgebreide Europese tournee. Enkele weken voor die van start ging, praatten we met de man die het leeuwendeel van de nieuwe songs geschreven heeft, gitarist Chris Hermsdörfer.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 20 januari 2026
I think it is safe to say that Beyond The Black became a rising star since the previous album ‘Beyond The Black’. You started doing headline shows and played at the biggest festivals. Can you tell a bit about this era of bliss and joy?
Indeed, with the self-titled album we did a big step in the right direction. It made us more self-confident than ever before. I think that’s why we chose the self-titled album title for that, something to say ‘hey, this is Beyond The Black. This is the most Beyond The Black we can show and that we want to be at the moment. We found ourselves way more than before and in this process, from ‘Beyond The Black’, the self-titled album, to the current new album ‘Break The Silence’, I think we just followed these steps. ‘Break The Silence’ gave us the right direction to be able to do this and of course, now, to be on a headline tour straight after the release of the new album, that is great. It is perfect timing. It is with all the power and the good feelings of doing a headline tour throughout Europe. I think there is nothing better than this.
Indeed, you will start touring pretty soon after the release date 9/1. I think you must be prepared right now, isn’t it?
Yes, we are in preparation at the moment. It is a busy week: interviews, rehearsals, I am just on my way to one of our storage places to build something for the show. There are so many things to be done at the same time. That is always, when there is a tour, things go crazy.
I wish you a lot of luck…
Yes, we will have fun. It is just the first two or three days, these are always crazy, but after that it is just fun, enjoying the people, enjoying the audience and enjoying the new music we play live.
‘Break The Silence’ is a kind of concept album. What can you tell about that?
We were sitting in my studio and just thinking: what is a current topic that pushes us, something that influences us all or that we are all struggling with. Usually we try to take things that are happening to all of us in our daily life, feelings that we are experiencing every day, and so on. Then we came to the point of communication, resilience, talking, hearing, talking to each other, hearing what others say… all these things are so important topics nowadays, I think more than ever before, due to the mass, due to the rush of communication or elements of communication. So we were taking this topic for the new album and bring our stories – I would say our experiences – with that in the songs. The fun factor was that one of the last songs I was writing in the studio for ‘Beyond The Black’, for our self-titled album, was ‘Break The Silence’. We had this song already, but it was not really finished, but it was already there. We decided to not use it for ‘Beyond The Black’, let us maybe use it for the next album. Now it is a match, it is a perfect song and it is a perfect title for the album, so…
Communication is really easy these days, but on the other hand it estranges people…
Yes, it is overwhelming everybody. It is so hard to follow all these communication elements, to do all that stuff and also think about yourself, because everything starts with yourself. If you teach yourself to listen better, if you read better, if you concentrate more, if you try to be just more and more yourself, and then I think you can start more honest. You can start talking more honest, you can listen more honest, you can communicate, you can use the tools you really want to use and all those things. This is a circle I think that starts with resilience and all those elements we put in ‘Break The Silence’. We want to motivate the people to focus on that, way more than ever before.
What also leaps to the eye, is that there are more ethno influences in the music. Does it refer to one world, where we are universal?
Yeah… somehow… of course when you write an album about communication, we were thinking about using different languages and such things. We had features in Japanese, we have an African singer in ‘Rising High’, we have a Bulgarian choir’ in ‘Let There Be Rain’ and so on… also a German lyric in ‘Weltschmerz’. Communication is a world thing. It is not a thing for Germany only (chuckles). I can talk to you right now and somewhere else in the world. Maybe the next call will be someone in Japan or in Australia. So we all read the same news, we all communicate in social media into the world. So we need all languages and we need to show that it is a world topic, it is not something that we do exclusively in Germany or in Europe. It is something the world feels and that is why it was important to have also these ethnic influences in vocals and stuff, but we have started the sound experiences already on the former album. For example, in ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’, we had ethnic elements and also in other songs. We had fun using this stuff on the album before, and now of course, we have a way bigger topic where we were able to push this even more.
It works well, some different flavours…
Yes that was done on purpose (laughs)
Chris Harms, the main man of Lord Of The Lost is guesting in the song ‘The Art Of Being Alone’… that’s a nice one too…
We have a closer relationship now, surely after the collaboration. We knew the guys from Lord Of The Lost already for a longer time, it was a pleasure to have him as a guest and with a proper song. Of course the song had to fit, it was not just ‘hey we want to have Chris on our album’, it was more like ‘is there a song that would fit for him?’ With ‘The Art Of Being Alone’ it was just an amazing match and we are so happy. Great song, great performance.
‘Ravens’ and ‘Weltschmerz’ turned into ballad-like songs. I think that ‘Ravens’ has an interesting lyric to talk about…
Maybe you know that we have this ‘The Ravens’ club, that’s how our fans are called since many, many years, because the raven itself, it was all the years over the symbol of Beyond The Black. So we called our fans ‘ravens’ and if you write an album about communication and resilience and all that stuff… but it is also about community, about being together, so we wanted to dedicate one song to our fan base, to our community. That is why we wrote ‘Ravens’, which fits perfect of course with the whole topic and which is just a dedication to our fan base. The lyrics are of course all about those elements.
How did you ever join the band? I know it was in 2016 and you are also playing in Serenity…
I still do. The thing is, I am living here in Southern Germany and let us say that is a fountain, the place where so many musicians come from, like Feuerschwanz, Subway To Sally, J.B.O., Emil Bulls… there are so many bands coming from the southern region of Germany and so this is a well connected place. One day I was sitting at home and I got a call from the management of Beyond The Black, the management is also based, people come from this area, and they said ‘hey, we are looking for a guitar player who is able to scream and sing. We need some new musicians, because we split with former guys and I just know you are from this area and that you are already playing in Serenity, that you toured, that you are a professional musician. Are you interested in doing that?’ I was honoured to get this offer and so happy to be part of Beyond The Black.
What are your biggest influences when you learned playing guitar?
I was a student of Sascha Gerstner, the guy of Helloween. He is also from our area, from Nürnburg, so again another musician coming from the south of Germany. He showed me all those great guitar players, like Steve Vai and Chris Impelliteri. I knew Metallica, I knew Pantera and all those guys, but also others. I think he was my mentor, my influence, my main influence in becoming a musician, becoming creative, becoming a guitar player like I am now. Not only because of his lessons, it was this spirit he gave me, this mindset. What he said, led the way to becoming a professional musician like I am nowadays.
Beyond The Black has a solid, permanent line-up since 2016, but the bass player is mentioned as session musician live. How do we interpret that?
After Stefan (Herkenhoff – former bassist – Vera) quit the band in 2021, it was not only because of joining Doro, because first of all he quit the band because of his job, to be honest I don’t know if he is still a rescue driver, but he was a rescue driver those days. So many night shifts and it was too hard for him to be good in his job. He could not do the tour and then go immediately into the night shift without sleep and driving a rescue car and risking lives of guys he is rescuing. So we understood that and he joined Doro later on, maybe he changed job or whatever. After that we felt quite complete with us four. We don’t need another band member. We had to find a bass player nevertheless and then we found Linus Klauzenitzer who is an amazing, technical bass player, but he is already in other projects. So for him it was also a win-win situation, having not another fixed agreement with Beyond The Black and being open, so being able to play in his bands, because if he cannot tour with us, we need to have another one, like last year we had the bass player of Ad Infinitum with us or whoever, so that is the reason why we don’t have him as a fixed player, but he is as often as possible with us and we love to have him with us. He will be there on our upcoming tour now.
What can you tell about the artwork? Was it the same guy or a new one?
It was again Stefan Heilemann from Stuttgart, we had him already on ‘Horizons’ and also on ‘Heart Of The Hurricane’ and I think we had him for the photo sessions for the self-titled one as well. So it was again him. We love his style. He is pretty good in bringing a face or persons or such things in a central position in the artwork. He is a nice guy, always creative, he has always good ideas and that is the thing we need.
You created a lot of video clips for this album…
This time we wanted to have more video clips, because we created a kind of movie story for the concept of the album and it cannot be told in three or four videos. I think if you don’t make three or four videos, then there is no push for the industry to keep more focused on the band, because everyone is just placing musicians in the wood and then performing. These videos are just, I would say, boring, somehow. People don’t want to watch these video clips anymore and of course, you can release it on YouTube, but there is no advantage of it and I think MTV just died in Germany. So there is no MTV anymore, music video already died almost completely. I think you have to do something for it and we had the chance to do it. I think you should always not try to put aside money for yourself when doing videos. You should invest what you can, to bring the best out of it to make it great. I am not a big Trump fan, but I would say ‘make video great again’, because if you don’t do it, you cannot ask your record label for getting more money for making better videos. You can just do that if everybody is trying to make better videos.
To occlude first we have the already mentioned tour in Europe. Can you unfold some plans for the rest of the year?
After the tour we will start, in March already, our festival tour with a full metal event in the Austrian Alps. We are looking forward to that, we are a big fan of snowboarding. After that we will prepare for our summer shows. We are still in the booking of the Summer festivals, maybe there are more big festivals to come, let us see… And then of course we are always planning the next things. At the moment nothing is concrete. We want to come back to Japan, we want to go back to South America as soon as possible. We also want to do finally our step to the US, but it is always a difficult thing about the costs and all the things. Of course I would love to go back to Australia and New Zealand, let us see what this year will bring. Otherwise we will do all that in 2027.
