I could be way better at the moment, though I'm surviving I guess.
At first: what has been the reason to call your music “Nihilistic Black Rock Unlimited”? And what is the exact difference to “Gothic-“, “Black-“ or “Dark Metal”?
People should stop labelling everything. We have Post-Punk, New-Wave, Dark, Hard Rock or even Grunge influences, besides Dark Metal, Doom Metal, Black Metal and Sludge influences. I recently read a discussion over the internet with people debating about FT being Doom or not. And they were all terribly pissed-off between each others! Now what I say is: if the creator of the band doesn't give a shit about labelling its own music, why the hell other people should lose their time arguing about that? Some people should really get a life. It seems like everyone is stressing himself to find comparisons for FT with other bands/genres, but that's a waste of time 'cause we don't belong to any genre. FT plays FT-style, nothing else. We don't have any influences from post-1995 music either. "Southern European Black Discomfort" is just another way to define our style, as "Nihilistic Black Rock Unlimited" is. It doesn't really matter how you call it, FT is just FT and it's not a band that you can tag or label very easily. We just like to find original ways to call our music, instead of the usual ones. "Nihilistic" represents the general crude attitude and sound of the band, "Black Rock" was chosen instead of "Black Metal" because we melt together the Black Metal influences with a strong Hard Rock way of playing, "Unlimited" because we don't put any boundaries to our music and influences.
Why has it taken about four years to release a new album after your last regular record “Negative Megalomania”? Did the recordings of “Vol. 5: 1999-2009” take such a long time? And by the way: who of you had the idea to create the cover-artwork of that compilation in the way of BLACK SABBATH´s “Vol. 4”?
Our latest studio-album "Negative Megalomania" was released in January 2007. We spent most of the year playing live around Europe and doing promotion. I also re-released the old demo/MCD "Obscura Arcana Mortis" on CD through Eerie Art Records. In 2008 we took a few months of rest from FT to concentrate on some side-projects, then I started to write some new material and in the end of the year we started doing live gigs again. In 2009 I continued writing material for the new album and rehearsing it with the band. We also played some shows and recorded the "Vol 5: 1999/2009" double-album, which was time consuming of course, like every new album release. The recordings were done in 2 days only but the mix took quite a
while. I spent most of the first half of 2010 taking care of some burocratic issues and other things that had to be done since years, then I completed the songwriting for "Under Saturn Retrograde" and rehearsed the new songs with the band. In the meantime the "Vol 5" album was finally released through Avantgarde Music so I had to take care of its release. We played 13 or 14 gigs around Europe to support the album and in the meantime we started recording "Under Saturn Retrograde". In the beginning of 2011 the album was finally ready and now I'm currently doing promotion for it. We'll start playing new live gigs very soon and there are also some re-releases and
vinyl releases coming out in the next months. As you can see we've been pretty busy. We also had regular jobs, families and life-related issues to be taken care of in between, so time flies you know. Regarding the question about the "Vol 5" cover-artwork, that was my idea and I did the graphic work myself. It's obviously our personal tribute to the mighty BLACK SABBATH. We also thought it was ironic and original, compared to the usual Black Metal album-covers.
In my opinion “Under Saturn Retrograde” sounds more compact and less Gothic-influenced than “Negative Megalomania”. Did you want to have a little change in your musical style again?
I think "Negative Megalomania" had absolutely nothing to do with Gothic Metal. There were a few slight Dark-Wave influences here and there, which are even more evident on the new album, but that's it. The term "Gothic" doesn't fit my band in any way. Talking about our new album, I definitely think it's our best release so far, it has all the qualities that were needed to surpass our previous efforts, both on a production/technical level as well as on a songwriting level. Everything was done carefully this time and it shows. The result fully satisfies me, because it strongly retains the extreme Metal roots but it also includes old-fashioned Dark-Wave influences and more Rock-oriented stuff. I think it all blends together really well,
better than on "Negative Megalomania". It is a melodic album, but it also kicks ass and I think it retains a bit of that Black Metal insanity from where we come from. But anyway I don't think "U.S.R." is our most melodic album. A song like "Joyless" is very catchy indeed, though there are extremely heavy songs too, like "Shutter", "Downlift", "Under Saturn Retrograde Pt.I" for instance. I think it's the same with all of our albums,
melody is always there but also aggression and heaviness. This time we just wanted to keep everything more "in-your-face" and work with a classic Rock-structure. So the song-structure is a bit more regular and midtempo oriented than in the past, but at the same time arrangements (also vocally-wise) are a lot more solid and rich than in the past albums. I think "Under Saturn Retrograde" took some elements from "Negative Megalomania" but
at the same time it reminds me of some older stuff of ours. And of course there are some new elements, like in each of our albums. We didn't really "change style", we evolved our style towards a perfected version of it. Of course we are getting older and bored of the Black Metal standards, and that's surely one of the reasons why we keep on evolving our sound. FT has
always been a band in constant evolution. I always listened to a lot of different things since I was a kid, so it's natural for me to melt together all the influences I got over the years and create my own thing. But at the same time I take a lot of inspiration from myself and from the things I've done on the older albums. I mean, I basically forged a new subgenre in Black
Metal so I don't really need to go looking elsewhere. I actually see a lot of bands who tried to copycat FT over the years, not vice versa. Of course if one wants a pure Black Metal album he should go for another band, but if one loves FT he should not be disappointed by this new album.
The whole new album is dedicated to Pete Steele of TYPE O NEGATIVE who unfortunately died last year. Have you been such a great fan of him and his band?
Yes. I've been a fan of TYPE O NEGATIVE and CARNIVORE since I was a kid and I guess Peter's work heavily influenced me. TON was a unique band, both musically and lyrically, they had that incredible way of mixing a lot of genres and their black humour was simply great. A brilliant band with a brilliant personality. I loved the way they pissed-off people and journalists all the time, their provoking way of doing things. I finally had
the chance to meet Peter in 2007 and it's one of my best memories. The loss of Peter Steele and his band is a tremendous loss in Metal's history and will be greatly missed.
The song “Joyless” also sounds very much like TYPE O NEGATIVE in their “Bloody Kisses”-phase. Is the song a homage to this band?
In all honesty, the song was written in 2004 so it wasn't created
following the death of Peter Steele, if that's what you meant. It has been a coincidence. Also, while creating "Joyless" I was inspired mostly by SISTERS OF MERCY and other Dark-Wave bands of the '80s, though I guess the modern arrangement made it sound similar to TYPE O NEGATIVE in a way. Of course the comparison is not a problem for me, being TON among my favourite bands, but
I just wanted to point out that the song has been inspired by other bands.
What has been your intention to cover a song of THE STOOGES? How have you come to the decision to create a new version of “I Wanna Be Your Dog”?
In the first place, I'm an Iggy/STOOGES fan, and I like the nihilistic, self-destructive power oozing from that song. Originally I wanted to do something out of "Raw Power", since it's my favourite Iggy/STOOGES album and one of my favourite albums of all time, though most of the material was not suitable with the rest of our songs. Also, we have chosen "I Wanna Be Your Dog" because it's more well-known and also because all the cover-versions we've heard from other bands really sucked (including the SLAYER' one, yes). When SLAYER did that cover they changed the lyrics to some macho-bullshit and I hated it. It was retarded. Iggy Pop hated it, too. I think Iggy would
like our version instead. I think we gave it an original Punk feeling, it sounds really nihilistic and violent. I even prefer it over the original! This would have been nearly impossible to do with the "Raw Power" songs, 'cause that album is fucking perfect as it is.
A few years ago you were in trouble with the German “Legacy”-Magazine due to the reason they accused you to be a Nazi-band. When reading in German “Wikipedia” about FORGOTTEN TOMB you can read about connections of the band to the NSBM-scene and some questionable and anti-Semitic statements about selling records of FORGOTTEN TOMB on “Ebay”. I know this is an awkward topic, but everyone here can read that on the web. So I´d like to know if all of these claims are just rumors?
Some media built this kind of image of me & FT, but FT never had any political lyrics or concepts. I said this many times and everyone can read my lyrics and judge by himself. All this stuff is a problem just for some people, 'cause personally I never cared about it. I mean, people can say that I'm a Nazi or a Communist and I won't give a shit anyway, unless they try to fuck up my plans with the band. They always say a lot of lies about me but no one really knows me. I don't care about it because nothing is true and I don't need to take positions.
Everyone is an enemy for me. I don't judge people from their political ideas, every side is more or less stupid so it doesn't really make any difference for me. The whole "Legacy" thing was a big misunderstanding and they recently conducted an interview with me where we cleared up the whole mess. Chapter closed. The German "Wikipedia" about FT is obviously wrong and someone of you should change it, since things have been cleared up a lot of time ago already. In all the other "Wikipedia" pages there's nothing about it, wonder why?! All that bullshit was clearly added by Antifa-supporters. Antifa doesn't even know what they're talking about. The fact that they go around beating
up people and forcing club-owners into deleting Black Metal shows is a clear sign that they're no better than Nazis and it should open the eyes of people about the whole matter. It doesn't matter how hard you try to clear up things with them, it's impossible to talk with people who don't want to listen. Do you think this interview will change things? There will always be
some small Antifa groups here and there claiming we're Nazis. It's all worthless. You people should stop feeling guilty, that's all. Antifa and all those kind of associations are something that should be confined to Punk/Hardcore, with their juvenile fights between left-winged and right-winged guys out of the squats. Then all those people will grow up and they will forget about politics. It's the same old story. Most of the people over-30 don't give a damn about these socio-political hype and that's the way it should be. We're all gonna die anyway and that's what matters in the end. Life is too short to spend time arguing about politics. Those who really have the power are laughing at us and filling their pockets with our money, while we beat up each other for our worthless political ideals. The
whole system should be subverted and turned into chaos. I'm basically into anarchy and I feel close to the working-class. That's it. I'm not interested in any other social/political matter and I don't have any political view. I'm a nihilist and I wish for the death of everyone, regardless of his political ideals. This said, people will always believe what they want to
believe, though the ones who know either me or my band know that FT has nothing to do with politics. All the rest are rumors and jokes made 1000 times bigger than what they really were. Since we were talking about Peter Steele and TYPE O NEGATIVE before: do you remember what happened with him in Germany during the '90s? Well, a lot of people should better take a look at it, to understand how this "Metal VS Politics" thing is only a big circus and nothing more. We already spent too many of our precious time talking about this fucking useless bullshit, so let's move on!
Do you have some special final words for your fans in Germany?
Just wanted to say that I'm working on the re-releases of our old
albums, to be out this fall on CD & LP. We're also going to release very soon (this summer) a split 7" + CD with Italian band WHISKEY RITUAL. Both bands will cover 3 songs each by GG Allin. It's gonna be a cool release. To all our readers: buy our new album "Under Saturn Retrograde" and get fucked up! Follow us through our usual channels: official website (under reconstruction currently), "MySpace", "Facebook" and "Reverbnation". We are currently starting to play weekend gigs all around Europe and we'll probably make a tour this autumn, so we'll see you all live pretty soon! 'Til then: Stay Negative!
