Live, Laugh, Blegh – An Interview with Chris from STESY

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There is music that you just have to dance to! Making music like this is the mission of Partycore band STESY. With songs like Yes Weekend! or Shapeshifter, they have played their way into the hearts of a (still) small but dedicated fan base. With singer Chris‘ appearance on The Voice of Germany and the viral cover of We like to Party by the VENGABOYS, the Austrians were able to win over a few more people. They are currently on tour with VENUES. Reason enough to catch up with Chris and see what he has to tell me about the viral cover, the upcoming year in general and the tour!

Thanks again to lightinmirror.de for the partytastic pictures! 

Shieldmaiden’s Voice: If you had to explain STESY to someone who doesn’t know anything about metal, what would you say?

Chris: Loud guitars, fast drums and a lot of techno in the background. We’re fun, we party without end, just a bit harder than usual!

SV: Your slogan is “All party, no clean vocals” and you had a lot going on in 2024! Your We like to Party cover went viral. How did you come to cover songs like that?

Chris: The cover thing started with BLÜMCHEN. That was one of our fever dreams that we really wanted to realize. We also used to play Sailor Moon live, which always went down well. But at some point it was time for something new! We’re 90s kids, we like listening to the music and we looked to see which songs there weren’t any metal covers of yet. In the end, our selection stopped at AQUA or We like to Party and somehow the VENGABOYS song was more catchy. Of course, we don’t just want to focus on covers, but We like to Party has cracked the 1 million streams on Spotify and that’s pretty cool!

SV: That’s a huge success, which also came about thanks to platforms like TikTok, where a big Metal influencer also shared the song. What role does social media generally play for you as a band? 

Chris: Social media is a big thing. With the amount of music out there right now, it’s hard to stand out. The only way to get your music out there is to promote it via social media. We’re lucky to have people with a big fanbase supporting us. Matt Bevan made a video for We like to Party that went viral and that’s how people who had no idea we even existed became aware of us! Social media is a good tool to bring the music to a lot of people. It’s a lot of work that nobody really wants to do, unless they really want to. As a band, you want to focus on the music and not create content for social media, but nowadays you can’t do without it as a band. If you don’t use it, you probably won’t make it outside your own circle of friends.  

SV: Social media is one thing and maybe we can come back to the topic of BLÜMCHEN: Until recently, you were on TV on The Voice of Germany and sang one of her songs. That also went very viral, even my hairdresser knew it! What impact has that had on you as a band so far? Have you had more growth as a result?

Chris: The response at The Voice of Germany was insane! The BLÜMCHEN cover was based on our own version. I basically sent them the STESY song and they just copied it. So a lot of people found our cover afterwards and thought it was funny. The performance with BLÜMCHEN itself was also just amazing!

In the battles, the three of us performed Psychosocial by SLIPKNOT. The Metal community completely tore us apart for that. That didn’t go down well at all…

In the teamfights I sang Blue by EIFFEL 65, and the response was great again. That’s also when I gained the most followers on my own Instagram profile and was able to generate around 5,000 followers within a few months. I was then able to pass around 2,000 of these on to the band. Those were the ones who found out that I was doing something else as well. In that respect, The Voice of Germany brought us a lot in terms of social media traffic. A lot of people who liked me there and wanted to be more involved with the music really followed me and they are now coming to the tour.  It was a win-win in that way! I signed up for The Voice with the idea that I might be able to push the band a bit. I didn’t expect it to be so good and so much fun! It was a great time, but it’s not as if we only became famous because I was on The Voice. But the fanbase has definitely grown as a result. 

SV: In the meantime you’ve been signed to Bleeding Nose and released your cover of Blue on December 13th. What about a new album?

Chris: The first track from the new album will be released soon and we have continued to do exactly what we stand for: partying and having fun! I think our upcoming album has become very versatile. We didn’t want to write 10 songs that follow the same pattern and always have the same message, like we used to do. It used to be mainly about drinking, we still have songs like that, but we’ve moved away from that a bit and thought more about what would make a cool video. Stupid words were then thrown around and everything was somehow addressed. Our drummer Fuchsi in particular talks a lot of nonsense and we tried to understand everything as a basis for new songs. That’s why there are so many versatile songs on the album, very heavy songs, funny songs and we’ve already shot a lot of music videos for them. You can definitely expect entertainment at its best, I’m sure of that! What I can also say is that I had The Voice vocal coaching all the time and when I wasn’t on set, I was recording the album in Vienna. So I was able to incorporate everything I learned into the album straight away. So the vocals have also improved and that also makes it more dynamic. I already have the album and I can listen to it again and again without getting bored! I still think it’s great! So stay tuned!

SV: I think it’s a bit of a shame that you already have the album and I don’t!

Chris: I just have contacts!

SV: It’s almost like you’re the singer of this band…

Chris: It’s crazy, the rumor machine is buzzing… [we laugh]

SV: If we compare the upcoming album with the previous one, what are things that you have improved? Apart from the vocal performance and the changed songwriting.

Chris: We’ve definitely come closer with the modern sound. We’re tuned lower and that gives it more oomph. We used to have a bit more help with the synthesizers when it came to songwriting and now we can do that completely on our own. Mario, our guitarist, has grown a lot in that respect. He’s also our videographer and when we had a video idea, he knew roughly how the song should sound, he somehow already had it in his head. He also paid a lot of attention to what was currently trending and what was well received. We tried to do something new on this basis, but without falling into the age-old patterns. The inspiration really came from everywhere. One song came about because someone sent me a meme! I then sent it to Mario and two days later he already had the first ideas ready. If you already have an idea for the video, it’s easier for us to write the song. On the other hand, you would have to think forever about what the video could look like. You simply have a blueprint on which you can build the text lyrically and follow a common thread. That also makes writing a lot more fun because you know roughly what it will look like later. With albums, it’s often the case that you have six songs that sound great, then you have three or four that are more like well, and one that you just somehow put on the album so that you have ten songs. That’s not the case with us at all! We have implemented so many funny ideas in a really cool way and you can definitely look forward to that. Together with our producer Norbert Leitner, we sat together a lot and tweaked our sound until we were at a point where we were satisfied. It was important to us that it really sounded like us and not like a production that you’ve often heard somewhere else. We’re not at a point yet, like ALL THAT REMAINS, where you can tell who’s playing from the first guitar note. For now, we’ve established a standard for ourselves and hope that we can pull it off completely. It’s definitely going to be a lot of fun!

SV: I think that a “signature sound” is also something that can develop and evolve over the years. In my opinion, it’s not as significant as it’s always made out to be. You haven’t written that many albums yet for people to expect that from you. What’s more important for you right now is the tour with VENUES! What are your personal highlights?

Chris: Just because of my circle of friends that I met at Wacken, the northern cities will probably be good! Hamburg with the Reeperbahn is something legendary, I have a lot of friends in the Osnabrück area who want to come to a few tour dates. In general, I think every show will be great. I don’t have a show that I’m looking forward to more than the others. We are very happy that we can go on tour at all and with VENUES! VENUES are the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life and I’m very happy that we can do something with them. 

SV: It’s also your first real tour. What are the challenges for you as musicians that an outsider wouldn’t expect?

Chris: The biggest problem we have to deal with is transportation. You need a reliable bus. We have the tour on three different weekends and you can’t just borrow a bus. You need a vehicle that is big enough to transport all the people and all the equipment. It can’t be too heavy either. Transportation really is the problem par excellence. 

Merchandise management is also complicated. The merchant from VENUES explained to me how he does it on tour to avoid any problems with inventory and so on. 

The main problem on a tour is just getting to a certain point and what you have to watch out for. You have to make sure that the bus fits into the hotel’s underground parking garage. Then you have to ask yourself how to get the equipment from place to place and how to do it without spending too much money. You just have to see what pays off financially and what doesn’t.

SV: What is a STESY show like and what makes you different from other bands? 

Chris: If you’re epileptic, you should definitely wear sunglasses because we have a lot of light action. You’re completely flooded with stimuli and it’s amazing how much light you can actually bring to the audience. We’re always partying! It doesn’t matter if the audience is just waiting for VENUES and doesn’t want to have too much to do with us as openers, I get them all dancing! I’ll get them all screaming. You’ll dance, you’ll mosh, you’ll want to do everything that’s possible! We only have a good atmosphere. Even if you don’t fancy metalcore with techno and nonsense, I’ll be able to convince you otherwise.  We’re always in a good mood and we’ve got some fun stuff going on. We have a whale! I mean, hello? Who has a whale on stage?

SV: You have to get it out of the ocean and onto the stage! That’s completely awesome!

Chris: We had to fight a lot with Greenpeace, it wasn’t always nice! [we laugh] And when you’re in the front row, maybe there’s something like a funnel… You don’t know…I think we’ve always been able to convince with our live show. At the Full Rewind Festival, for example, we opened the tent that day and it was a blast! We can do that again on tour!

SV: 2024 was already a very good year for you and for yourselves. What’s coming up in 2025 that you’re looking forward to?

Chris: I’m looking forward to the whole album release cycle, of course, because we finally get to showcase all the hard work that went into the album and in cooperation with Bleeding Nose. We also have some festival highlights coming up! The tour with VENUES will of course be very cool, but we have landed two festivals that are really a dream for any metal band. We’re playing Summer Breeze, for example, and that’s on every band’s to-do list. It’s also really cool that we’ve been asked to play Resurrection Fest in Spain. The line-up there is completely crazy! We’re the late-night act at 2 a.m. on one of the days and it’s going to be so much fun. But we’re also struggling with the question of how we’re going to get there at all…but hopefully that’s a problem that will be solved in the course of the year. These are the things I’m really looking forward to, apart from the tour with VENUES. I mean, what do you do in January anyway? You always get a bit depressed in January because the weather is shit and you don’t really know what to do with yourself. You might as well go on tour! It’s great too! 

SV: Finally, if you could give a kind of “instruction manual” for your live performance, i.e. something that people can use to prepare themselves properly for you, what would it be?

Chris: Warm up your dancing legs, you’re going to need it. Warm up your vocal chords and pop 28 beers in your head, otherwise it won’t work! If you fulfill these three requirements, you’ll have the time of your life. With us – the crazy dudes from STESY!

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the upcoming STESY album! Be sure to check them out on social media and your streaming provider of choice. Party is guaranteed!

Things are already hotting up here again in February: we’ll be at two cool, albeit hugely different events on the first two weekends of February. Stay tuned!