What I saw when going through your social media; there should be a movie coming out from the band and it seems to be something special. Can you tell anything more about it?
Yes, I think we did many albums and every album is special, but a movie is something that you don’t do so often in your life, maybe just once in a career. We have the pleasure that we could kind of use a person who could make a movie about the band, so when they had to film this kind of documentary, it was of course amazing. It is coming out now after almost five years of filming. We started in 2019 and then covid-19 came in 2020 and we filmed through all those difficult times. So the movie has all this background. The stuff was difficult for a while, but it turned out really cool I think. It is 71 minutes long.

Is it coming out in different places in cinemas or only on line?
First of all in German cinemas and hopefully we will have some more screenings outside of Germany after there has been some attention and people say ‘hey this is cool, let us bring it to our country too’. Hopefully our movie distribution can sell it to cinemas around the world, so we can have some more screening and then, later this year, we will have a screening partner which means it will be available somewhere like Amazon prime or – I don’t think Netflix – but something like that. Then also the plan is to do some physical copies. DVD or Blu-ray will also be available some time later this year I think. It is kind of cool. A movie is a little bit different, because it is not really my job. I did not make the movie, I am just in the movie, so we have a part in the movie, not like a new album, where I am involved in all the making and the writing. For the movie it is more like: I got filmed and then some other people are taking over and they are doing the job for distribution and then the cinemas and everything. It is exciting. It is new, it is something that we never did before and watching yourself in the cinema can be scary (laughs), but it is definitely a cool experience.

We also have the new record ‘Birth Of Malice’, but first one question about the past, because you did a huge tour to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of Destruction. Where did it bring you and are there special locations or things that happened, you want to share with me?
We did a lot of gigs and I think the craziest shows were definitely in Latin America. Fans over there are really into thrash metal and they are very wild. So if you see the movie from the first video clip, from the song ‘Destruction’, that was filmed in Brazil and then you get a little bit of an idea how crazy fans are down there. We also played some really cool places on this tour. It was the first time in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. That was very special also, playing in a city that you thought you could never play. So that was really exciting as well. We also had a very great European tour where we had Whiplash with us and some Swedish guys. Anyways, we had these anniversary shows almost everywhere, but not in Asia and North America, but in America we toured with ‘Diabolical’ already. All in all it was exciting, because a lot of memories come back when you play so many old songs and go through your history. It was fun.

On the new record one can find a lot of criticism, for instance a song such as ‘Scumbag Human Race’ resumes it all…
That is actually a metaphor. It is basically out of the perspective from the planet. If you were the earth, what would you tell mankind? You would say: ‘you fuckin’ scumbags!’ and that is how the lyrics started. I was thinking: what would the world tell us if it could talk? We are bad, we are evil, we suck. That is how the song came together, that is the idea of the crazy straight title. In general, the lyrics of the songs are dealing with problems that we have on this planet, because I face them every day. I travel a lot, I travel the world, I go to different countries, but I see the same problems everywhere. Sometimes I see different problems, but mostly some problems come to the same conclusion, you know. A song like ‘Greed’ is a song about the biggest problem of humanity. We are greedy. You are a small person that gets power and you want more power and you want more money and then you become an asshole and this is a problem that is in all of us, even in nice people like you and me, if you would get too famous, too rich, too powerful, you might turn into asshole too, because humankind is in us. The greed is in us, you know. These lyrics for this album that I wrote, you can start thinking about: ‘why are we the way we are?’ and ‘why are things the way they go at the moment?’ Then there are songs like ‘No Kings No Masters’ where I say: ‘I follow no leaders’, because it makes no sense following a person that has nothing to do with me and has totally different ideas, to idealize a person is dangerous. As a German you learn to not idealize persons, because we had Hitler and now I see many other countries having people up there that they idealize and that is very scary. The songs are basically dealing with the world today and it is kind of a therapy for me. Music, art and the creation of music, to talk about those problems and to scream them out, it makes me happy and I feel better afterwards. Usually, when you have problems, you go to your psychologist and you talk about the problem and then you feel better afterwards and that is the way I see music a little bit too. If I have a bad topic, I write about it and I want to shout it out there and I feel better afterwards, because I could spread my opinion, I could talk about it, I could hint on the topic that is important. So for me this is a way that thrash metal works best. We also have a song like ‘Destruction’ on the album, which is more like… I call it ‘Manowar lyrics’, be united with the fans and appreciate the fans and it is an homage to our fans. Not all the lyrics are negative, I don’t see my lyrics negative anyway, because even a song like ‘A.N.G.S.T.’ has a message that fear divides the world and fear is a scary partner in life. We try to wake you up and say ‘hey, don’t be scared, fight your fears’ and I was trying to transport a positive message, even though the lyrics are talking about a serious topic.

Food for thought…
Exactly, that is the right way to summarize it.

Sometimes people just do what the rest is doing, without thinking…
Exactly, that is a problem that exists since the beginning of mankind.

Maybe because we come from the apes…
(laughs) I always wonder, people often go where there is a lot of other people. When you go to a disco or a restaurant, you like to go where there is many other people. Then you think it is good. When there are other people there, it is a good thing and that’s the way the whole world works I guess, but I think it is wrong. I don’t feel like that. I think it is the same with music. The most popular music that people like, pop music and country music, for me it is horrible, you know. So common, so normal, so obvious without challenging. People like it easy, they prefer the easy way. That’s why I never understand things like trends. Why do people put on trends, like ugly shoes or ugly gloves become a trend? And everybody wears it! It is ugly, so why do you wear it??? Because everybody wears it. It is the trend of the month or the year or the Summer… I will never understand. This is actually also a great lyric topic, something like that. It is what I like to write about.