Heaven Shall Burn are one of the largest metal acts in Germany. And yet the outsider remained – as a left in Thuringia and as a politically active band in their scene. A conversation with guitarist Maik Weichert.
Last year Heaven Shall Burn played in Wacken as headliners, but also at “Jamel rocks the forester”. What was the more important appearance?
That is a nasty question. Wacken was certainly a milestone for our band biography. Jamel is more of a logical consequence for an East German band that is politically committed.
What is the meaning of a festival like “Jamel rocks the forester”?
There people get the strength to not let themselves be able to get themselves down in Finsterwalde, in Pößneck or in another suspended area for the rest of the year. These empowerment moments are extremely important to make sure of each other: I am not alone. When I saw in Gera Kreator in 1993 and the band came on stage entirely in anti-Nazi t-shirts, it was a blatant sign for me: I was also part of it as an anti-fascist. If we will soon go on a release tour, we also play in a place like Themar. You can hardly find that on the map, but it is important that what takes place at least once a year – and the Landgasthof is not alone with its right guitar evening.
These suspended areas are home to many people. Home means your new album that comes at the end of June – why this title? And why a German title, even though your texts are all in English?
The tension that is in the term was important to us. Especially because the word triggers bad feelings among the people in our bladder – and homely feelings with those who are rather not good for us. And there is no English word with which you can trigger the same reaction from a German.
You grew up in Blankenhain, south of Weimar. Most recently 6,609 inhabitants, in the Bundestag election the AfD has won 43.8 percent. Is that still your home?
43.8 percent is not that bad, there are completely different results in some towns in Thuringia. (laughs) But of course that’s still my home. I have been socialized, that is where I come from, and that also includes that I should get on my mouth regularly as a long-haired one in the 1990s. This stink finger, we come from here and we stay here too, that belongs to Heaven Shall Burn from the start. When we started selling a few plates, it quickly came: you have to go to Berlin or Hamburg, it is much easier with the media and you can fly somewhere quickly. And admittedly: the Nightliner driver escapes every time we go on tour because he only has to curve through Thuringia for hours and collect all of us. But we agree with Kraftklub: I don’t want to go to Berlin.
Never tempted to pull away?
Never. Yes, we are here at the ass of the world, but it is a statement that we don’t go away here. I have friends bubbles in Blankenhain and elsewhere, if I do not open my mouth on certain topics, then the way of thinking that I represent is no longer represented. Then I am only the next one who ran away to Nuremberg or Cologne and is happy there. Then the sauce here only becomes brown.
How do you break this vicious circle that the committed people go away, it gets even brown and then go even more?
One method would be the suspension of the rental price brake in order to defend people to go to the big cities. (laughs loudly) Such a corona pandemic also helps to populate the country again. (laughs even louder) But that is indeed a huge problem that committed people are frustrated. I know villages that liberal people live there who have repaired an old farm with a lot of love. But they drive to their buddies with their Tesla at the weekend, while the village kids are trained by the Nazi on the sports field because the only one who is in the go is to get up on Saturday morning. I already understand: I am also not so knitted that I would go to the fair association or the parish in the village. Sometimes there are quite enough progressive, but the ends do not find each other. Too often there is the old village and next to it the mortgage hill with the new houses – and they exist side by side.
How are the reactions in the metal scene on your political engagement?
In metal, there is often a demand that the genre should be apolitical. In fact, there are really many in the metal who are apolitical who have never seen an interview with us, who have never read a text that only find the music horny, and then honestly wonder if we call for a demo against the AfD youth party conference in Apolda. There are really many who don’t care whether this is a song about the treasure at the end of the rainbow or – as with us – over Primo Levi. The main thing is that you can headbangs. But I always counter it: “If you have something against anti -fascists, then the fascism in the scene.” I no longer need the antibiotics when there are no more bacteria.
So the scene does not see your left -wing so critical?
Admittedly, the shoulder knockers we get today did not exist 15, 20 years ago. Today we praise people for our clear attitude, so that, like others, we do not like to losing part of the fans for every political question for every political question. Yes, Metal is conservative, but Metal was never completely apolitical, there were always left -wing positions such as the early Metallica or Megadth. Many also come from the punk and UK grindcore corner, in the tradition we see each other. But our problem in the past was that our rebellious style caught very caught in the right scene.
Perhaps it is also because you can’t really understand your texts.
Yes, that’s the metal dilemma. My mother always says we sound like a D-train that drives past you. It is always very impressed by the classic intros.
Why have you never given up your bread professions despite your great success?
We probably didn’t believe in it. You also notice your fame as the very last one. Although everyone tells you, too early how cool you are, but you can really feel it only later. And then at such strange points as that that the tax office reports and wants to take a serious exam. Or you can get a clip from a random porn film, in which a guy wears a Heaven Shall Burn-T-shirt. Then you noticed that you arrived in pop culture. (laughs) But if you play band history in Wacken as headliner after twenty years, it is long too late to think about whether you still want to become a professional musician. But we don’t have to panic if the singer has a sore throat because twenty jobs are on for six months. I can always look at the other side of life in a relaxed manner – and tell myself: “I make this out of Passion because I want to change something, I don’t have to do it, I still have my different mainstay.” I would not have this relaxation as a full -time lawyer or as a full -time musician.