"(...) one guy put on KREATOR´s „Endless Pain“ CD. This was like a rebirth!" - a "Stormbringer" retrospective interview with Okkulto (ex Desaster, Eurynomos)

1. Hi there, Okkulto! I’m glad that you are to answer a few questions. Want to move back to the past, to Desaster’s “Stormbringer” minialbum. You were after the release of “A Touch of Medieval Darkness”, Thorim left the band replaced by Tormentor. How do you recall that time between these two releases?

Well let´s got back with the time capsule to the years ‘95-´96. I think this was an important time for the band. We got more and more gigs, Tormentor had returned on drums. He had improved a lot casue it was always his dream to play in DESASTER on a permanent basis. So we became a real unity, doing also a lot of things together in the spare time, aside from band things. When we came to gigs, we appeared as a real serious unity, not some of this childish weekend-warriors, which were around at this time. Black Metal had become a huge trend meanwhile. There where countless zines and bands popping out each week. Even the big magazines couldn´t ignore it anymore. But every little youth band was trying to jump on that. We were really pissed off by that, cause to us BM had to be dangerous, wild and extraordinary, not every mothers darling. So we were writing more material which was a bit anti-trend containing less „Black“ but more „Metal“, haha. Stronger rooted in the 80´s glorious Thrash Metal times.

2. “Stormbringer” might be considered as a bridge between the first and the second album, your started to shape your original sound, your vocals changed a bit as well. Could you share some memories on the process of writing this material and influences that accompanied you back then?

Yes, as I said, we were really fed up with the whole trendshit. One could publish some evil photos in the mags, but when you came to gigs, seeing the guys in reality, you had a good laugh. So we wanted to distance us from all that money-printing train which was rolling faster and faster. We just wanted to produce some dark underground metal songs. On a meeting with some friends from the HELLBANGERS one guy put on KREATOR´s „Endless Pain“ CD. This was like a rebirth! in a moment there were 20 guys standing in a circle banging their heads off during the whole album from the first to the last song. We were all electrified by this old nostalgic feeling. From this moment we started to re-discover many of the old records trying to soak up the feeling of this pioneers of the mid-80´s, like when they were in their youth. Also going to many 2nd hand markets, buying rarities or some more obscure stuff from that period. This all influenced our songwriting and thinking for the next years. We always tried to distance us from all the trendriders and typical new BM-outcomes.

3. The cover art of the vinyl and CD is probably the most iconic when it comes to Desaster and matching the atmosphere of your music – heavy and furious metal combined with a unique medieval touch. Who came up with the idea to use this piece of art?

It was always difficult to find a nice cover, fitting straight to the titles. In this case I went through some book stores, searching for medieval/historical stuff which could reflect the title. When I saw it, I knew directly that this would be what I was looking for. Showed it to the other guys and they also liked it from the first moment as well. Still a good choice, as you said, representing our musical theme very good. I prefer simple but effective covers with not too much details. So this one here could also represent the energy of our music very good. 

4. You seemed to be the one in the band who was more into black metal, the same with Odin. Am I right? What bands from that genre were and are the most favourite for you, the ones that had the most significant impact on you? You and Odin were the ones that used corpsepaint. 

Haha, this is a question often asked. It just came from our demo times, I guess. The painting was just not Infernal´s „thing“ so to say, while Odin and me were very, very deeply into black in the early days, so it gave us a special aura, a special feeling. We did it also at some specials out there at some meetings in the wilderness. Later it became something like a trademark that half of the band is painted, half not. You could see it also as representing our special mixture of BM and oldschool Thrash Metal. But the other members also listened to the black stuff as much as we were Thrashers. But I was taking things very, very serious at this period. More serious than many others did maybe. I was completely into it, always looking for the darkest stuff. I liked DARKTHRONE a lot with their „Under a Funeral Moon“ album. This was very influential to me. Also BURZUM was a highlight, ‘cause it was so special in it´s riffing combining melancholic aura. We soaked up everything, even some obscure demo´s or 7”.

5. “Stormbrniger” seems to underline your own way when it comes to music and position on the metal scene. There was a statement on the release that wimps and poser should leave the scene and that the minialbum is dedicated to your own fanclub Hellbangers Moselkranken. Did you have any problems with a more radical/extreme part of the scene, the black metal one mostly? What was the response on this paricular release?

As I said earlier, we just tried to distance ourselves from that trendwave, which was getting bigger and bigger. It was clrear that this would blow in pieces one day. We had ever seen us as an older band with a history rooted in the end 80´s. So we just wanted to point out that we are not a completely new band.

I guess even the BM-Hardliners respected us as a old band, cause everyone who saw us in real could see that we were completely serious, not any kiddies.

Yes, we fixed an own position in that whole circus back then. When we were playing live there were 3 or 4 bands before us who just played blast-beats the whole time, so the audience was finally taken away from that when we entered the stage, playing real riffs, with real rhythms to bang your heads to. The live-set mostly ended with a cover, for a long period this was „Tormentor“  by KREATOR. We presented a good mixture to the audience, not just fast stuff the whole time. I think we became in a way famous for that, so the live shows became better and better. We´ve grown a lot with that as a unity. Years later, at the time of „Tyrants of the Netherworld“ we were nearly perfect in that. It´s the image as a band, as a whole. A band has to be a unity on stage, otherwise it´s just like 4 guys playing some instruments.

6. You were the author of Desaster’s lyrics during the period you were in the band. You seemed to share the passion towards the dark side of the medieval aesthetics that Infernal had and still have. What themes/sources from that specific area inspired you mostly when writing lyrics for “Stormbringer”?

We have a lot of castles here in our area, which was always a great source of inspiration. Aside from band-things we were meeting there from time to time just to soak up the aura. So this surly was a huge inspiration to be put into the lyrics, as well as historical myths or simply black aggressive „hate-stuff“. You know, we were young and really wild, metal was around us 24/7. We wanted to distance us from the „normal“ society as much as possible, being metal outlaws, but being proud about that, haha.

7. When it comes to the vocals itself. What where your most favourite singers, those and had any special inpact on you and they way you shaped your voice?

On the fist recodings I started with more black metal-like vocals but I realized that there are simply too much singers in that, to get an own identity. So I tried to bring in more and more of my own voice into it. One can hear that with each release I think.

For sure I always like Quorthon’s voice and the dirty raw expression in it. Later Nocturno Culto made it perfect on „Under a Funeral Moon “ but also Cronos was great, early Tom Araya, Evil Chuck, Jeff Becerra, Stace Sheepdog. So as you see, one can just learn from the best!

With the years, I think, I found my mixture of raw extreme vocals in combination with my own voice and higher screams. Also important were all those „uuh´s“ and „ahh´s“ which were mostly a homage to the 80´s. It all had to be still natural, not in a wannabe way. Many guys sounded very extreme on their records in the 90´s, but seeing them live, they lost their voice after 2 songs, so it all was faked. I never got problems with that. So the people at the gigs realized that we were 100% serious in doing what we did.

8. You started to play live more and more, cloud you share any gig stories/ tour stories from that time? Infernal told me, while talking about “Hellfire’s Dominion” that is was a great adventure despite many problems.

Yes, gigs were always an adventure so to say, hahaha. You know, when we started, we were driving hundreads of kilometers in our little VW-Polos completly full of stuff. Mostly me and Odin were sitting on the backseat and we had a Guitar-case on our legs for a trip of 400-500km. Music from cassette-player (mix-tapes mostly) was always playing, 4 guys smoking into this car and it could happen that we were drinking the first beer at noon during the driving. The difference, in my opinion, in comparison many other bands today, is that we lived this thing 100%. With the feeling that no one could stop us. Many guys today are simply to „nice“ for that I think, haha. There was no real organisation, most gigs were organized by other fans. We were just sleeping somewhere in the dirt, but happy to have played a good gig and meeting other great metal-guys.

The gigs made us a unity and we became more comfortable in our playing with each gig. It could happen that we had to sleep in a backstage room or on the stage itself, after a trip of 400km, gig playing, partying the whole night until 4:00-5:00 o´clock, then driving home 400-500km the other day. This was just normal. A total chaos but in the end it made us stronger and stronger as a real band. We had suffered the dirt and all the difficulties a band could get through, as well as shitty clubs or soundwise chaos. So waht else should come after that?

Years later in the times of „Tyrants...“ we were able to play as a headliner with getting 300-400 (at times more) people, which was very good for that time. So after working so hard for many years we were seeing that something is returning to us, you know, we putting so much energy in that.

9. “The Swords will Never Sink” and “Sacrilege” are my favourite songs from “Stormbrniger”. Could you share with me the story behind both songs and tell me which ones are your favourite and which you prefered more to perform live?

There were just dark myths, like for example in the title-track, where the Stormbringer is a warrior of revenge. „The swords...“ is more about regaining back our land, which has a heathen/ germanic tradition, from before the chains of christianity. „Sacrilege“ is just a straight „blasphemic“ lyric, which is about the fact that we don´t accept any holy indoctrinated rules of the church and destroy the chains of slavery while having our own believe, so to say. Many times it was this theme of breaking shackles of the christian laws of the church, keeping the people down as eternal sinners instead of full human beeings with own powers and inelligence. Oh, I ilked them all. We had a good repertoire with that, some faster, some thrashy... Good bangers which the audience liked a lot! The strenght was that one song not sounded like the other. 

10. There is a cover  Kreator’s “Tormentor”. Why you have decided on this one? Were you all fans of this cult band? Seems old Kreator stuff was always with you during 90s.

As I said in the beginning of the interview, KREATOR´s „Endless Pain“ started a phase of re-dicovering in the mid 90´s for us, when the BM-trend became so huge and we were really, really fed up with seeing all those countless young bands jumping on that. Even many bands who started as Death Metal went into a BM-outfit later.

So playing such cover by the old Thrash Metal heroes was more like a bit of an anti-trend thing, showing where this music is rooted and what is our personal fave-stuff at that time. We played that song for a long period. That was the very last title, people were totally full of sweat and a bit tired, but activated all their powers once again for this one to scream along with me into the microphone. A better end of a show one couldn´t have. Infernal was wearing often a „Pleasure to kill“shirt on stage and also got the huge backpatch on his vest. „Pleasure to kill“ is still one of the best Thrash Metal albums ever done. It´s wild, raw, that aggressive outcome was also a huge inspiration for us. So you see, KREATOR was alsways with us in a way. Later resulted in a guest appearance of Mille.

11. “Stormbringer” introduced your new drummer back then – Stefan “Tormentor” Huskens. How it turned out that he was to replace Thorim and you got to know each other?

Thorim was a very young, talented drummer, but he was a bit unhappy with the whole gig-thing, driving hundreads of kilometers and so on. He had another musical background which he wanted to follow instead of all the chaos and the extreme people he met with DESASTER, haha. It was a real loss at that time, cause he had a great talent. Then Tormentor returned, who was  a friend of the band for years. He had helped us out in demo times, so after really improving a lot, he was the first decision for the position of our drummer. The fact that we were all friends before made things much easier. He brought in a lot of his energy for creating a new rehaersal room, organising gigs or recording stuff. He was hungry for rehearsing every day, so that man was the right guy for us.

12. Around that time you have also issued the 7’’ “Ride on for Revenge”. There was another cool artwork and great songs. Why you have decided to issue this EP. Were the songs written especially for this release not to be published anywhere else?

Looking back now I regret a bit, putting 2 of our best titles just on a 7”. We should have put this on an regular album,’ cause they simply would have reached more attention. But at this time there were tons of releases by bands popping out, which were never in the underground. They never released a demo or a 7”, but were pushed by huge labels directly into the magazines. We, on the other hand, were rooted strongly in the underground. So releasing such a single was a bit like a statement against all the fashion, the huge advertisments all these bands getting into the magazines and the way they were hyped by the media, coming from nowhere.

As you see, as the time passed,  no one talks about most of them, nor the labels anymore. But the underground with it´s vinyl-hunters is still there. Yes the songs were written exclusively for the release. We were in good shape and one can hear that we improved a lot. They would fit well to the „Hellfire´s Dominion“ material as well, but that became another chapter.

interview by: Przemysław Bukowski