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When you hear that a band plays Viking Death Metal, it’s easy to put them in a drawer and never take them out of there ever again. In the case of the mighty ASENBLUT, however, this would be far too short-sighted: Their anthems not only bear witness to epic battles, but also to how you can progress as a human being and take responsibility for yourself. In the interview, singer Tetzel tells us what role mythology still plays in their music, what his highlights on tour were, what to expect from ASENBLUT in the coming year and much more!
Huge thanks to lightinmirror.de for the wonderful pictures!
Shieldmaiden’s Voice: If you met a real Berserker, what would be your first question to him?
Tetzel: The interesting question would be whether we could communicate at all, because of the potential language barrier… but… mhm… Very good question in general! I would probably ask “How did I get here?”! [we laugh]
SV: He would probably ask you that too!
Tetzel: Exactly! Depending on who ended up where!
SV: Where would you see the musical overlap between ASENBLUT and Berserkerism?
Tetzel: It’s very wild and that’s also the theme of the current CD Entfesselt. It’s about being completely liberated and doing exactly what you want to do. Mythologically or semi-historically, berserkness is a very fast-moving and wild fight. Musically, we have the possibility of a special, free expression and we are offered the stage to do exactly that. The martial aspect, even if it is not necessarily contemporary, is a lot of fun and always offers great entertainment value!
SV: What significance do you think mythology has in your music?
Tetzel: A very big one, but from different spheres! We make use of a wide range of very historical themes, such as recently in Blut und Sand, which is about Rome, decadence and gladiator fights. Then, of course, we also have the mythology of H.P. Lovecraft in songs like Wahnsinn und Chaos or Schatten über Arkham or Dagon. Norse mythology also makes an appearance, of course, but we also have a lot of historical themes. Fortunately, we’re quite open-minded about that! Sometimes we also have very modern influences, for example when you think of video games. The song Penumbra is inspired by Dark Souls. Fortunately, it’s all wide-ranging and everything is deeply rooted and well thought out, so you can find nice overlaps and tell great stories.
SV: Mythology always has a certain time-critical aspect, I think. Would you see it the same way for your music?
Tetzel: Partly! If we look at the song Unbesiegbar on the current album, where I wanted to express that I don’t always want to see the world through the lens of negativity. As a community, humans have achieved so much and if we work hard, we can continue to achieve so much more. That’s one thing that gets lost more and more these days. We always criticize ourselves and each other and everything is so bad and negative, but I believe that a lot is possible. Especially in a subculture, this is alive and well, because if you look at the past few years, I know that many people can no longer hear this, and look at the pandemic, various cultural institutions in Metal have survived because people stood by each other. They worked together to ensure that venues like Hellraiser here in Leipzig didn’t disappear from the scene. That was a huge effort, but it also shows that things can work if you pull together.
SV: That’s a good point for my next question! When you look at your music and what you just described, how do the fans usually respond to it? Is it something that the fans can relate to? Or does it rather give your fans an opportunity to escape from reality?
Tetzel: It’s probably a bit of both. I think that escapism is hugely important in music these days. You can’t just be topical every day, because that quickly becomes too much for people, I think. It’s easy to get into a time-critical style of music and that’s not what we do. Basically, we make music that, even if it is relatively extreme, is primarily intended to entertain. So that’s an important key point. Of course people love the stories we tell, or at least I hope they do, and they’re sure to find one or two things in them. Especially with songs like Wie ein Berserker, it’s about seizing people by their own responsibility and telling them “You are responsible for yourself! Go your own way and don’t let anyone stop you, but you will also have to suffer for it!”.
SV: In the last weeks you followed a tremendously exhausting path and today it’s finally the tour finale. What has your personal tour summary been so far?
Tetzel: I’m incredibly positively surprised! It was very, very exhausting, especially for me, because I had to take care of booking, tour management and generally organizing a plethora of things, not least merchandise, packing and loading utensils and generally everything that had to be done around the tour. Apart from what still has to be done on stage! But I’m very, very satisfied and grateful for the responses we’ve had. We met a lot of fans and people actually went crazy everywhere, had fun and loved our new merchandise. The latter in particular is important for a band, because that’s how you finance yourself. It’s an absolutely positive summary for me and I’m looking forward to the show here at the Hellraiser. It’s a nice, big place, we have a lot of space and it will be well filled for us. It won’t be super full, but it will be good! [He laughs]
SV: You moved the show up from the small room to the big hall, didn’t you?
Tetzel: Exactly! We sold out the small hall!
SV: When you look back on the tour, what was a highlight for you?
Tetzel: We’ve just returned from our hometown of Göttingen and that was great, it went really well! The show in Cologne took place on a Thursday, which wasn’t so good because of the number of visitors, but it was still a highlight because every single person there bought a T-shirt. Those who were there absolutely loved it anyway and went along with everything. We have a few new show elements, including audience interactions, which were really well received and that is simply a highlight for me. The people who come to see us as headliners, who sing along to the songs and give it their all from the first to the last minute, are the ones who make me very proud. After all, we’ve been doing this for a long time and we work hard on it.
SV: What is something that people have missed if they haven’t seen you on this tour?
Tetzel: Definitely our evolved show! We’re not standing still, we’re not doing what we did two years ago. If you saw ASENBLUT on the NACHTBLUT tour last year, for example, it’s not the same as what you get to see now. We’re still working on constantly developing ourselves and our show and offering people something. You want to be entertained when you go to a concert and if you put a bit of effort into it, you can get a lot out of the overall concept of music and performance. We definitely try to do that – with our means!
SV: What do you think is the best thing about your show?
Tetzel: The best thing about our show is always the music. The way we present the whole thing, the combination of music, outfits, stage performance and stage design, is a great whole and hopefully that’s what people see and get.
SV: Your motto also seems to me to be “A rolling stone gathers no moss“, after all you’re also taking part in the upcoming VARG tour!
Tetzel: That’s actually just one date. But we still have a few shows coming up this year. I’ve just organized a show on 20.12. in Magdeburg: Bloody X-Mas together with BLUTGOTT, i.e. DEBAUCHERY, DELIVER THE GALAXY and ABROGATION. It’s quite clear that you can’t hide in the basement! We are also in the process of planning 2025, both in terms of gigs and new music. You have to say quite clearly that the classic album cycle is slowly dying and you have to adapt to that as a band. We are a band that has always been incredibly slow with releases and now we have to adapt to modern circumstances. In times of algorithms and streaming, it doesn’t work to make an album every two, three or four years and hope to stay relevant. That simply doesn’t work. That’s why we’re planning videos and singles for next year, let’s see what we can realize. It’s a lot of work, time and money, but we’re in good spirits!
SV: The keyword “future” is not such a bad one! What are your wishes for ASENBLUT in the next five to ten years?
Tetzel: Thinking a bit more short-term, I would love to do a support tour. I would like to have the opportunity to expand my genre audience. Of course, ENSIFERUM or AMON AMARTH would be the best, just to make dreams come true! Or ARCH ENEMY, that wouldn’t be bad either! Just some kind of tour where you have a musical overlap but can still present yourself to a new audience. It would also be great if you could grow so much that you could do nightliner tours at some point, that you could tour in one go. If you look at our tour now, we used a total of five weekends for ten shows. That’s obviously very exhausting for everyone. If you play these ten shows in two weeks with a few days‘ break in between, you’ve just worked through it and you can’t get out of this show routine. But that’s a situation we’re not in yet, so you have to be honest. But that’s where I want to be! [he laughs]
SV: What’s the best way to support you along the way?
Tetzel: The best way is to do the typical things: visit our shows, we have our own ticket store and like to buy merchandise and follow us on Spotify, generally just listening and clicking. That’s the most important thing for us!
SV: If you could send a message to your fans, what would it be?
Tetzel: To all those who are already fans, I can only say thank you very, very much! You can rely on us to keep going! We won’t turn 180°, but we will continue to develop and hopefully together with you! And to all those who are not yet fans or don’t know us yet, I would like to say: “Listen, keep an open mind and have a lot of fun with the music and if you don’t like it, then keep listening!”
You can only agree with that! And if you don’t like ASENBLUT’s music, just recommend it to someone you don’t like! For my part, I’m still in the throes of Berserker fever. It’s not a problem in my private life, but the people in the university library might have looked funny when I turned up there with a Viking shield and a battle axe!
However, this Viking-like belligerence will certainly disappear, as dark music is on the agenda again in October, this time in a completely new venue for us. So stay tuned!
Shieldmaiden's Voice 