Thank you for having me here. Complicated times, aren't they? Individually we are doing well, although the situation for a band as a whole is tedious regarding the pandemic. But things can always get worse, so we try to not lose our sense of humour.

The latter, exactly. The band started as musical project of friends, who diverged personally or career-wise after the debut. I guess that's typical for any band but mostly happens before the first album. So, yes we had a plenty of shows and also a small European tour but in fact the band stagnated. As the region where we live is not too overpopulated by talented musicians, it took some time to get Iron Fate back on its feet, regarding a working line-up.

Harms and my motivation has never faded. The "comeback" was rather a continuous process. The material was not completely developed ad-hoc. Iron Fate at this current state is a result of this time span, of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, haha. In other words, there was no: "Ok, let's try it again". With Oliver and Kai we got very sophisticated new personal, who raised the band certainly on a new musical level. So, rehearsing and song writing was also more fun from then on.

The album had to be released, regardless of the pandemic. Sure, the uncertainty regarding planning live shows bothers a lot, but we didn't have the nerve for strategies like "let's wait further X years after the pandemic just because the live promotion won't work otherwise". Finishing the album with all associated activities was tedious and exhausting enough. To get back to point: No bravery at all. It had to be done, period! 😉

Actually, Harms and I thought about renaming the band due to the renewed line-up. The new guys suggested not to do so as "Iron Fate" was also some sort of brand. Maybe you're right. I reworked the logo as a statement. Although looking old school, it reflects the new mind-set of the band: clarity, maturity, and dedication. So maybe you're right with the transition. But I beg to differ in calling this a new image.

Although "Crimson Messiah" is not a concept album, there's a repeating motive of seduction and betrayal done by false prophets. But this actually happened coincidentally, maybe due to my impressions of politics and society world-wide at the time of writing. With "Guardians Of Steel" and "We Rule The Night" there are also two rather positive hymns without any negative undertone.

I deliberately selected this already finished artwork and brought it into agreement with the rest of the band. The main goal was to visualize some sort of seducer according to the title track, which represents all those previously mentioned false prophets, mankind tends to follow blindly in past, present, and future. As I found this work in Chris' gallery, I thought "man, that's it!". The "let them burn"-aspect is just the natural consequence of such leaderships. In fact, you should ask Chris Cold for his intentions, haha.

I don't think that this album is a musical turning point as the US influences were already present on its predecessor, although not that meticulously arranged. I appreciate that you see our record as some kind of signpost, but I wouldn't claim uniqueness for us with that musical approach. Anyway, we will continue to follow an organic songwriting process, which, in hindsight, seems to be causal for the unexpected euphoric reactions of listeners. I suppose there's no need to change anything.

Alongside the advent of the new members the working discipline, know-how, but also influences improved or expanded, respectively. Back in the days of the debut we've been wet behind our ears, so the songwriting, especially the arrangements, was rather impulsive. As especially Oliver and Kai are very experienced musicians, they had a big impact on a rather thoughtful or well-elaborated approach to the working generally and the songwriting more specifically.

No, damn good that it's over, haha. We're looking forward to work on something new. I suppose, this saturation is typical. I mean as an artist you've heard your recordings bazillion times in a plethora of different mixes before the release, and when the audience reacts after the release, you're already fed up, haha. But we all still like the album, haha.

Hmm, difficult to say. Your question suggests that the creation of "Crimson Messiah" followed some strategic considerations. All members tried to follow their own musical instincts to comprise their parts to "Crimson Messiah". Maybe we focussed more on melodies and a well-rounded song structures. The difference to "Cast In Iron" truly lies in the experience of the new line-up.

On "Crimson Messiah" exist actually two classes of songs. One class represents songs developed in the rehearsal room. The other represents songs actually written or where at least one or more band members composed their parts in a rather theoretical fashion. However, I won't mention which songs belong to which class. Most of the time things are developed as you may think. Oliver, Harms and I come along with a riff or sometimes an even bigger scaffold. Then, the respective others contribute their ideas or arrangements. So, songwriting in Iron Fate is not too exotic, I suppose, haha.

I came up with the basic riff, and although it was pretty clear in which direction this would go, we never were worried in terms of coherence. Even better, as the listeners also seem to like this outlier. You've already listed the inspirers, which influenced all of us for sure. We did it, because we'd been up for it, we still like it, and we can't wait to play it in a stadium with jet fighters flying above our heads, haha.

It's a story about a person with multiple personality disorder, who tries to fight the rather negative characters residing inside him. While his civilized character can most of the time regain control, he loses it towards the end. This struggle we tried to underpin musically as well. However, there's actually neither a certain lyrical sub text in this particular song nor does it reflect a person I know or even myself. It's just psychological suspense in text and music, sorry. 😉 Oliver, Kai and I created that track rather quickly, there's nothing interesting to say about. But as we realized what we've created we decided to decorate it with a special guitar solo, contributed by Kai's former band mate Henrik Osterloh of Deny The Urge, who did an awesome job.

This was actually Kai's idea, as this album was also rather a blind spot in the Sabbath discography to the rest of us. Aside from the fact that "Lost Forever" is actually Metal compared to rather doomy Hard Rock, which made it fit perfectly, it should also be a tribute to the great, too early departed Ray Gillen, who originally sang on this record before being replaced by Tony Martin, who is of course also ingenious. When you listen to the demo sessions of that album, you wouldn't believe it's Sabbath, at all. Actually, a short period of US Metal made in Birmingham, haha. Funny, that dozens of music journalists didn't even recognize it as a cover. Must have something to do with digital advances, listening time spans of 30 seconds, and a rather, let's say it diplomatically, younger generation of writers haha. Moreover, we've recorded a second cover version of another band rather famous for his guitar player who is in fact more famous as guitar engineer, about to be released later. The nosy ones of you can have a guess, haha. But we will see in which way this can be done.

Denis: Oh there've been multiple yet different pinnacles. First time was, when the running order was fixed. From then on you start to hear your album as a whole, from the consumer's perspective. Second, I suppose, was the when the lyric videos were finished, and the music became also visual. From then on it was like: "Yes, it's going to be cool!". And finally, when the first vinyl pressings arrived and we had the first haptic contact with the album. That was awesome. However, at that time we had no idea that it went straight through the roof with critic-wise.

That would be surely fantastic, but probably strongly depends on the pandemic situation. I mean, how travelling is possible and so on. As we are not a fulltime band and have regular jobs, we simply cannot go on tour for months. We hope we can play as much live shows as possible and that we can enter stages world-wide, occasionally. Hopefully chances improve pandemic-wise during the summer months. Otherwise, we have to stream our crap from the rehearsal room, haha.

Thank you very much for the interview, Lior. You are welcome, stay healthy and all the best!

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