"Songs Against Humanity" (read full review here) sound quite misanthropic and differs quite significant from the previous album titles by the German black-deathers. But not only the album title but also the music is slightly different from the stuff they delivered in the past. Stepping out of the shadows of the almighty Dissection, the band has created their own style and emancipated from the Swedes. I had a very nice chat with vocalist / guitarist Matthias Trautes who felt a lot of frustration and bitterness about everything in the world to talk about. Maybe after reading the interview, you will understand the album title a little bit better – enjoy reading.

Michael

Hi Matthias, everything's fine with you?

Yes, I am quite busy but everythings fine.

You did a small tour with Waldgeflüster, how were the reactions to the new album and the gigs so far?

The gigs were great although it is always quite difficult to go on tour at this time of the year. In some cities were some other concerts, too – for example when we played in Oberhausen was a festival in Maastricht, too which had an absolute murder line-up. When we played in Leipzig was a black metal festival in town but hey, everything was fine and the venues were crowded. The reactions to the new songs were also very well, normally people are a little bit reserved and when we released our last album it was very terrible (laughs). But with the new songs it is a little bit easier to get into and this we noticed also live.

When I listen to the opener of the album, I do have the feeling that nothing is okay any more. It all sounds like a huge accusation towards mankind – how fucked up it is and I would mainly agree to that.

That's what I wanted to ask you – do you see that different?

Hell, no!

I mean everybody who thinks about all that will probably confirm it. No, in the last couple of years I have experienced and seen so much and I tried to be not too pessimistic. But I have lost my faith completely, everything tends into a direction where I don't have too much hope for every one of us. Not that it will go down the drain within a few days but when I look what happened within the last 20 years and when I think about the Western World and the direction it all goes to; if you think back 10 or 15 years and what kind of things are quite normal today…if I had told anybody back then they would have said that I was crazy. Maybe this could be in one or the other country but not in Europe! There are a lot of things concerning generality and, what is scientifically proven is that we all are becoming more and more stupid. I just have to go outside and feel shame. It is the first time in human history that the IQ is declining and you can notice this everywhere. I assume that if there will be a new studies in 10 years the IQ will have been lowered even more significantly than expected.

I know what you mean but the IQ complies with the average IQ of mankind, so there will be a pretty much constant even if it declines.

Yes but it is the first time that the average IQ declines. This has never happened in history. It raised permanently in small steps….

Yeah, I know what you mean and I notice it all, too. Do you know the movie "Idiocracy"?

Haha, yes! I remember when we drove to our rehearsal room once. Manuel picked me up and while we were driving there, he asked me if I knew that movie. I said no and he went that I should watch it because it was exactly my thing. So I watched it and, okay at the end it is a little bit stupid, this intro of about two minutes introducing the stupid people with their family trees, where everything is popping up and they're making kinds and all that – I showed that to so many people since then. The basic of that movie is brilliant. You could have made much more out of it but it is a cool thing for sure.

I think that hits the bull's eye these days.

Yeah and that's the thing. You cannot see things and just say that you could live in another country instead. I live here and first of all I don't care how it is in other countries. I can see things and how they change, especially with technology and how it should make things easier – from ten things nine become more fucked-up. I could go fully into detail and count up things but it's a fact. Hardly anything is getting better. With a few ones came an improvement within the last years but in general everything is becoming more complicated, worse, more expensive. Nothing develops the way it should do and for what we have options for. If you sum it up for a longer period of time, this is really shitty.

Yep, so let's see how the world looks like in ten more years…well, it's not only lyric-wise straight into your face but also when it comes to the compositional aspect. As I stated in my review the new album is much straighter forward and not so "cerebral" as the last one where you told me that you worked with that 7/4 beat and stuff like that.

Yes, on the last album I worked a lot with these odd beats. On the opener in "Of Clarity" the beat changes 34 times and I experimented a lot there. Some experiments are on the new album, too but this is much more subtle. Where you might hear it the most is on "Death Is My Salvation" which was also the first song I wrote for the album. So you can notice that I was more into the "Of Clarity"-mode. This was in the beginning of '23 but from that time it went down with me in many ways and in the middle of 23 I got health issues in addition to that and couldn't play guitar for a long time. When I could play again I absolutely had no desire neither to experiment anything nor try out new stuff. I had massive time pressure because the studio was booked and I lost half a year of song writing. So a lot of things built up in that time and I let it out. According to that the songs are a little bit straighter into your face.

You started somewhat as Dissection-worship but I think that you have struggled free from that in every respect. Only some riffs sound remotely of the Swedes – was there a special album that had a special influence on you while writing the album?

I never did that. Of course I bring in some things here and there and I can tell you three or four riffs that are based on the music by "Camel". This is an influence and I let it sound like "The Spirit". People still keep telling that we are this kind of Dissection-worship. I met a guy from a bigger metal magazine on a festival when we released "Of Clarity" and asked him if he could name one single track from that album which would sound like Dissection. He said "no" and I asked him why he would say something like that then. So it sucks a little bit. If anybody tells me that the band xy sounds like Iron Maiden, I directly go hmmmm, okay, I'm going to have a listen. And of course they don't sound like Iron Maiden. Not with that genius song writing Maiden had and because of that I always become disappointed and don't like it personally. So I don't like these comparisons to a band that is the linking chain between black and death metal and that has released with their two first albums absolute masterpieces. It just causes displeasure. Of course it is important that you have a direction that describes your style of music but I like describing my music more than to name any bands for this. I really try not to let flow music I listen to into my song writing, this comes automatically. This is music that characterized me during the 90s, especially black and death metal. The main reason for that is the fact that nowadays nothing new comes anymore. No new stuff that grabs me. I don't know if it's just me, I became older or I evolved myself a little bit more. I think everything sounds like a copy of a copy of a copy. We also don't make anything brand new, we aren't the new Children Of Bodom and I don't want to be it. I just want to write good songs and even this is something I totally miss these days. Also a production that doesn't sound like plastic…it is tricky and maybe it just depends on me.

Nope! I feel the same and when I talked to Marco from The Crown he just said the same, too. Everything after the 90s is okay but that's it. You don't have that feeling you had back then. So you are not alone!

But listen to the latest Stormkeep album "Tales Of Othertime"; M.). This is a blast. There are many albums from the 90s which sounds like that; this great atmospherical keyboard black metal I absolutely worship. It is such a great album, it has such a great feeling and so many amazing songs, the arrangements are killer and it is an exception these days that I get touched by an album.

Focusing on the lyrics, is there a common thread in the songs? "Room 101" for example deals with this torture chamber in Orwells book "1984". I have the impression that you focused lesser onto astronomy than onto the dark sides of mankind and the end of everything like in „Nothingness Forever".

The topic is still there like in "Nothingness Forever" and "Cosmic Rain And Human Dust". But as I also stated in other interviews, now we are back from outer space and we're focusing more on that what is happening on our own planet. But I have some cross references in the lyrics to the other topic. Both are great topics to fit into our music and I have to tell something about. I am highly interested in the one topic and I try to keep updated about it every day by reading books and so on and the other topic I cannot escape except I buy myself somewhere a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. I see it every day and these are things that keep my mind busy and so I try to put it into lyrics. I usually try to keep my lyrics quite open for interpretation and don't explain things because I want people to create their own picture in their head. "Room 101" is an exception; otherwise I would have chosen another song title for it. It was inspired by "1984". When it comes to lyrics I always bring in the example of books and movies. I love movies but with a good book you can use your own fantasy. In a movie you just see what the director wants to see and what he brings to the screen and because of that I always proceed with my lyrics that way. I mean, if I would write the Romans, eventually the thing would be through. But with astronomy it is different. You can throw away all the books about black holes every ten years for example because the whole scientific recognizes have changed completely. "Nothingness Forever", the end of everything is amazing, all the theories about how the universe will probably end. Maybe nothing of it will it be but these four most probably theories are exciting.

Is there a discovery that flashed you in the last two years? Last time we talked the Webb telescope did its first blurry pictures.

The first pictures of a black hole were great. I watched a cool documentary about it. They just got data and made a picture out of different segments that didn't belong together and only if these pictures were the same they knew it was correct. It was absolutely genius how they did it. Nobody has ever seen such a thing; it was just pure theory what we can see on television and in movies like "Interstellar". To prove that the calculations are correct and that a black hole looks like that is great.

V. Santura once again did the mixing and also contributed some music on guitar and bass tot he album. How much did you have to beg him for that?

We did everything except the drums with him. It was easy to get him. We worked for the third time with him now and we did the last three records always the same. We recorded the drums at Iguana Studio near Freiburg and after that I drove to Bavaria to Victor to do bass, guitar, vocals and after that mixing. After that he did the mastering. We had one song left and I always wait with the soli until the end and work them out at the studio. Victor is an extremely fantastic guitarist so I asked him if he was in the mood and he agreed. I was already finished with everything so did it in retrospect and sent it to me a few days later. Of course there is the question what to do if it doesn't fit like you want it and from the time schedule it was also quite tight because some things didn't work as they should do. But it was a great solo, perfect. He is an abnormal great guitarist and put such great feelings into that solo and it is a completely different style to how I play guitar. I am super happy with it and this really upgraded the song. Also with the bass, he had some ideas in the studio and he incorporated some amazing bass lines into the song. If it's good for the song I am the last one who says no. I always wanted to have a band where everybody is involved in the song writing process and if Victor is ready to contribute something I am more than confident about that.

You were part of the farewell tour of Dark Fortress. How was the mood during these events? I guess it must have been very emotional….

Well, I knew half of the bunch of guys. Linus (Klausenitzer; M.) played bass in our band and helped them out as keyboarder and Victor I knew before and this is how the tour came about. He and I were talking about doing something together and, I don't know the original dates; the tour should have happened much earlier. Victor always said that he wanted to disband Dark Fortress but due to Covid it all protracted and postponed everything. I guess it was about two or three years but don't know exactly. I was looking forward to it to be on the road with people you know. It is very important that is tour is relaxed and we didn't only share the backline but also our own crew. When you travel with some friends and have a good time it is worth a mint. I have toured with so many bands, even before my time in The Spirit – when you on the road with some jerks, this doesn't work and because of that I take care to pick up bands, if possible, I know. The last show in Munich was something special. Sold out location, a great mood backstage…the last few shows were really great. I went backstage to change clothes, getting the first beer of the evening with our FOH and I watched them every evening and enjoyed it because I knew it will be over soon.

You're going to play at Bloodstock in August. What else is planned?

We will do a smaller tour this spring in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I hope we can do a bigger tour now that all the Covid shit is over because that is where we get the people. We are no social media band with all that circus and entertainment. We just want to make music and that's the way we convince. For this we have to go on stage and I hope that we can make a huge step forward and play more live. Bloodstock I guess will be the biggest show we ever played.

Do you gonna play the same day as Emperor?

No, one day later. It is a pity because I would have attended them. The day before we're playing at PartySan and straight after the gig we will go to the airport and fly to Birmingham and I have to look if we can figure out to get a rental car to get to the festival and drive back to the hotel in the evening.

I'll cross my fingers!

Emperor is one of my absolute favorite bands but I've never seen them performing a good live gig yet. I've seen them twice, once in Norway where nor sound not the venue weren't good and when we did PartySan 2018 they played a day before. I remember I fell asleep while I was standing because I was so tired. We went there this day before because I told the band that we have to go there because of Emperor but with the driving and the stressful day before I couldn't enjoy the show. I hope that the third time will be my very "Emperor moment" and the gig I always longed for.