Ready for the big performances – An Interview with DELIVER THE GALAXY

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Before you get treated to the second day report of Rockharz 2025, I just had to share another special thing with you: The interview with DELIVER THE GALAXY! It was only natural that we should do an interview when we were allowed to participate in such a monumental event in the band’s history aka their first time at Rockharz!. We talked about the band’s upcoming tour plans, new music and their first appearance at Rockharz. In case anyone out there is also working on the DELIVER THE GALAXY Wikipedia article, at the end you can also find out which band inspired guitarist Rocky to want to play guitar!

Thanks to lightinmirror.de for the photographic insights and to DELIVER THE GALAXY for letting us share this adventure with you!

Shieldmaiden’s Voice: If you had to describe your music in three words, what would they be?

Rocky: Intense, passionate…

Matze: … and fun!

Rocky: More like friendship! That’s a big issue for us, because if we weren’t such good friends, the band wouldn’t exist anymore and our music wouldn’t be as good.

Matze: Long-standing friendship welds a lot of things together and that’s also the case with the music. We always decide everything democratically, everyone is always involved and that’s a big part of it. 

Rocky: I often get my way! [we laugh]

SV: Music is a good keyword! What do you think is the greatest strength of your music?

Matze: Simultaneous power and energy! I think that works quite well for us in many ways. When it comes to songwriting, I do a lot of the riffing and Rocky takes care of the melody and everything that goes with it. It just works best because of this symbiosis between us.

Rocky: But it actually took a few years before we figured it out. You’ve known us since the very beginning and there were nuances of that in the beginning, but it really crystallized with our latest album! With the album we’re writing now…

Matze: … it’s even more to the point! With Bury Your Gods it was simply the beginning of a new era, which was also connected with a change of musicians, because our drummer changed. On the upcoming album, our drummer will be fully involved in the songwriting and I think that will show even more of what makes us who we are.

SV: You were on tour with ASENBLUT last fall and there will be two more tours with OCEANS in the fall and with SAGENBRINGER in early 2026. What is something you’ve learned from playing live that helps you now?

Matze: First and foremost, we’ve become much more experienced. We also had a lot of time to learn new things, especially for me because I take care of the technology a lot. It was a gain in knowledge because we now know how to make it easier for the crew and the technicians on site and how to make it easier as a band too, of course. Of course, the routine of playing live also comes into play, but on the whole these were the most important facts that have led us to a point where we have been able to correct many small mistakes. There aren’t many construction sites left!

Rocky: It really is a live routine! I was really worried today that stage fright would win out because it was a bigger show, not what we usually do. But I actually didn’t have any stage fright at all, I was very confident and very experienced because we’ve played so many times before. I could actually watch my fingers play!

SV: So what makes a typical DELIVER THE GALAXY show?

Matze: For me, it’s above all the spontaneous response to the audience and conveying to the audience that it’s not just any old show. The show that is currently taking place should also take people with it. For the audience itself, it is certainly a special and powerful show.

Rocky: It’s a combination of us and our attitude. That may sound a bit esoteric, but the energy that comes across infects people at some point and what we transport and convey live just picks people up at some point! We’re always cursed with not knowing what our music sounds like from the outside. That’s a big problem for me! I’d like to hear how it sounds to me as an outsider. But because we are such charismatic people, it has a great effect on the audience in the sense that we also come across as likeable. You also know us backstage and I think if people saw us there too, they would be even more with us! You only ever have one sequence in which you have to convince people. Well, you don’t have to, but you want to because you want to win over new fans.

Matze: You’re grateful for everything because you know the feeling of being in the audience and hoping that you can be there yourself one day. We are very grateful that there are people who come to a show like this, who celebrate and spend money so that they can see this show!

Rocky: Take today as an example! I haven’t even realized that for myself yet! You can’t give that back to the people!

SV: When you’re on stage, people get a snapshot of you and in that time, today it was 30 minutes, you have to give it your all. That’s anything but easy. Considering that it was your first time playing at Rockharz, it couldn’t have gone any better! It can go on like this! Next year you’ll be headlining [we laugh].

Rocky: We’ve told the people and we keep saying it: We’re ready for the big stages. We feel called to do it!

SV: In the fall you’ll be on more stages when you go on tour with OCEANS. Why should people come to this tour?

Rocky: Because we’re playing!

Matze: It’s a really nice potpourri of bands from different worlds. You have the very modern metal that OCEANS produce and then you also have the more brutal home cooking that we serve up. This mix makes the tour as a whole very worthwhile for visitors. All in all, it makes a difference whether you go to a concert where only modern metal bands play, which perhaps sound too generic, or whether you come to see us. It’s the variety that makes the difference!

SV: You briefly mentioned earlier that you are working on a new album. What’s the plan there? At what point can a fan say “Oh yes, it’s coming!”?

Matze: From next year, when we go on tour with SAGENBRINGER… That will happen in March 2026 and that will be the phase in which we will promote the album. In principle, you can expect the first tasty audio samples at the end of this year.

SV: Rocky looks so horrified over there…?

Rocky: I just wanted to say that my big wish is that we play two new songs on the OCEANS tour, because they are already finished! For me, those are also some of the strongest songs on the album. When you listen to it, it reflects DELIVER THE GALAXY perfectly.

Matze: The slight identity crisis that was prevalent on the Bury Your Gods album, with the minor internal band disputes, is definitely a thing of the past. You can definitely hear that in the new songs, because all four of us are equally represented and that’s what makes it!

SV: None of this is possible without the people who support you. So if you had a final message to your fans, what would it be?

Matze: We are grateful to all the people who support us, whether they are parents, friends or acquaintances, who have accompanied us through the ordeal that we have been through. They stuck with it just like we did and that’s how the fan community somehow formed. We are simply grateful from the bottom of our hearts that we are allowed to be here, because it wouldn’t be possible without these people.

Rocky: It’s a symbiosis and I’ll say quite clearly that I wouldn’t be here without my parents, who support me. We went to a DEEP PURPLE concert in Weißenfels in 1999 and afterwards I said that I wanted to play guitar because I think it’s good to be up there. Since then, they’ve supported me and us, whether it’s morally or financially. They are always there!

That was the second interview from Rockharz 2025, but that’s not all! In the coming days you will find much more content about the festival and interviews with bands that illustrate the whole style range of metal wonderfully! So stay tuned!