The Apocalypse is here! And not just any apocalypse; I speak, of course, about The Metal Apocalypse Tour, headlined by HIRAX, and with several awesome bands as supports. Thrashers all across Europe have a reason to pull out their patch adorned vests this month, with the legendary HIRAX on a massive tour across Europe, showcasing their new album "Immortal Legacy", a moniker chosen partly as a tribute to their legion of loyal fans. With Munich being the last official German show of the tour (a very last minute show has just been confirmed in Rheine), this was definitely the place to be, as witnessed by the steady trickle of denim clad fans arriving long before the venue even opened.

Starting out the night was CRESENT, a Blackened Death Metal band all the way from Egypt. I was doing an interview with HIRAX's frontman Katon at the time, so unfortunately missed the set. But based on what I heard from people after the show, CRESENT put on a good show. Sadly on tour without their bassist due to visa issues, CRESENT luckily found Sonja Bossart to step in for the tour.

Setlist:
1. An ode to Qadish
2. Gates of the Sun
3. Pyramid Slaves

Next up on stage was NUCLEAR, one of the best Thrash Metal bands to come out of Chile. Funnily enough, one of the images most vividly stuck in my head from their set was a bottle of water which was wildly ricocheting around the stage, being forced into perpetual motion by the reverberations emanating from the monitors and speakers. And the crowd fared no better than the bottle; with enough shredding to make your ears bleed, NUCLEAR had the crowd frantically headbanging along, trying desperately to keep up with the break-neck pace of their music. This band had it all, from their heavier and slower tracks that were pretty much made for headbanging to aggressive riffage that blurred past in an almost frenzied attempt at breaking the sound barrier. Ending their set slightly early so as to have enough time to oblige the crowd's calls for an encore, NUCLEAR played a cover of "Chaos is my Life" by THE EXPLOITED, which really went down well, serving to whet the crowd's appetite for the barrage that was still to come.

Setlist:
1. Architects of War
2. Sadistic Method of Crime
3. Against Them
4. Left for Dead
5. Apatrida
6. Agrado
7. Chaos is my Life (Cover)

The penultimate band of the night was BONDED BY BLOOD, a Californian Thrash Metal band. Appearing on stage with the bassist wearing a skull-like mask and skeletal gloves, this band certainly got people's attention. By the time they were a few songs into their set, they already had the audience completely captivate, with the audience chanting "Bonded! Bonded! Bonded!" As with the natural progression of things, it didn't take long before BONDED BY BLOOD were encouraging the crowd to form a circle pit, a request that was heeded with some reluctance until two ladies at the front got things rolling. Jokingly admonishing the audience for letting the ladies do all the work, vocalist Mauro called into the crowd "People at the back, don't be a pussy! The French are more violent than you!", which definitely succeeded in galvanising the pit into action. This band certainly got the crowd worked up, with a full on wall of death going on for their song "Left Behind". Their final song "The Aftermath" started out with a mesmerizing bass solo, a nice contrast to the wild pace of the rest of their set.

Setlist:
1. Shepherds of Rot
2. Psychotic Pulse
3. Civil Servant
4. Prison Planet
5. Repulsive
6. Mind Pollution
7. Crawling in the Shadows
8. Restless Minds
9. Left Behind
10. The Aftermath

Finally it was time for the headliners of the night. With over 30 years of experience behind them, you know that HIRAX will deliver a thunderous set, and this is exactly what they did. The crowd by this point in time had swelled to a substantial size, especially considering that it was a week night in the middle of the month. With tracks from both new and older HIRAX releases, there was something for everyone. Indeed, the entire first row was just a mass of windmilling hair for the majority of the set, pausing only briefly to break into wild applause at the end of each song.

An especially memorable point of the show was when Katon was regaling the crowd with a tale of how the drummer had fallen asleep on the tour bus whilst drinking a beer, only to wake up drenched in his unfinished drink; the crowd immediately took this mention of beer as a cue that the band was thirsty, taking the opportunity to jump up on stage and share their beer with the band.

After my interview with Katon, he told me how the band's motto was "to play every show like it's our last, because you never know what can happen. That way, every night our fans know we gave our very best". And that is exactly what HIRAX did. With fans having the opportunity of meeting the band after the show, this definitely will be a show that will be remembered for some time to come.

Setlist:
1. 100,000 Strong
2. Hellion Rising
3. Baptized by Fire
4. Lucifer's Inferno
5. Blind Faith
6. The New Age of Terror
7. Black Smoke
8. Hate, Fear, and Power
9. Hostile Territory
10. El Rostro de la Muerte
11. La Boca de la Bestia
12. Destroy
13. Killswitch
14. El Diablo Negro
15. Atlantis
16. Barrage of Noise / Walk With Death
17. The Plague
18. Broken Neck
19. Bombs of Death
20. Assassins of War / Unleash the Dogs of War
21. Battle of the North

My thanks to Thomas Gottschalt for stepping in at the last moment to do the photography of the CRESENT and NUCLEAR sets, and also to Katon's wonderful wife Anne for arranging the necessary photo pass for Thomas.

Are you curious about what the new HIRAX album is like? Then look no further! Before the Munich show of The Metal Apocalypse Tour, I got the opportunity to interview Katon De Penia, the vocalist of HIRAX, who gave me an in depth view of "Immortal Legacy", the fifth full-length studio album released by these Thrash Metal legends.

Tonight is the 19^th show of the tour. How has that been?

It's been a great tour, because for us it has also been to build up Europe again, because we've been in South America touring there over the last five years. But we need to work here in Europe so that people get re-familiar with the band, and for the fans who haven't seen us, it's something new and special. We started out in Spain, then Portugal, France, Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, then we went to the Czech Republic, and now we're back in Germany. And then we still have the Netherlands, and Belgium will be the final show. But it has been great! The fans are really die-hard, both the fans that we have that know the band, and a lot of new fans that are seeing us for the first time. Germany has been really strong, and our record label, SPV Records is also here, and they've been really supportive. They came to the show last night in Hamburg. You always hear about the German headbangers being really supportive of Metal, and it's still really true. So we'll have to come back to Germany on the next leg! There's also been a lot of great stories and a lot of craziness. Whether it's the guys or the women, the headbangers are just crazy here! So since this is the final (German) show, I expect it to be really wild!

I hear there are plans to visit countries like Bulgaria, Russia, and Finland on a later tour perhaps, seeing as HIRAX has never played those countries before?

We've already done certain parts of Scandinavia; we've done Norway and Sweden, but we haven't done Finland yet. Bulgaria would be great. There are a lot of countries we haven't seen yet, like Turkey, Hungary, Serbia... It's amazing how the word of our band has spread, especially through the underground; we have such a great following! So for us it's important to play to all the fans, no matter what country they're in. So that will probably be the next leg when we come back to Europe. This has been pretty strong, and it seems like toward the end of the tour it's been picking up, like the word has spread. I think if you stay on the road, the word on the internet starts spreading around; especially when the shows are good, people start talking.

Your 5^th album, "Immortal Legacy" has just come out. How has the reception to it been?

Awesome! It's one thing to release a studio album, but when you see the band live, and they are able to recreate the sound live really well, that's just great. And the record's selling better than any record we've done before. It's cool because it seems that with each record we do the sales pick up. And we also got a vinyl version of the record. It's amazing; it's got a gate-fold and it comes with a CD in it. The record is still really new, but so far the sales have been really good. I think a lot of kids are still finding out about us, and also the old school fans that have been into us for years were ready for it, they were waiting for the album. "Immortal Legacy" has really proven its point. We wanted to do a record to prove that we are still really strong.

Listening to the album, I hear a lot of old school influences in it. Was that intentional, or more something that happened naturally?

It's something that we've been doing so long, because we came up with a lot of those bands in the early 80s. When we were starting out in Los Angeles, it was a handful of bands: us, METALLICA, SLAYER, and DARK ANGEL. We all came out of the same movement and played the same nightclubs and all that. We have a lot of the old school influences, whether it's the American Metal bands or the British New Wave or a lot of German bands, like ACCEPT. Or there's another really old school German band called MASS; they're forgotten heroes, but not to us. We grew up on a lot of their early 80s Metal, so their influences are going to be there. Even that of bands like DIAMOND HEAD, TANK, early JUDAS PRIEST and MAIDEN and stuff. But we have our own thing too. So you have those influences, but when people listen to us, they know it's HIRAX at the same time. It's something that we've grown up on, and it's in our DNA: it's the way we are.

Besides these influences, was there any particular inspiration behind the album?

Mainly just the touring in the last five years, where we went to other countries and met the fans. Our fan-base has been going strong for over 30 years, so that is like a legacy in itself. So the title of the album is a homage to our fans, and also that our music has lasted over 30 years. That's crazy! When we started out, we never thought that Thrash Metal would be around 30 years later because we weren't thinking about the future, we were just doing what we loved doing. And even tonight, when you look out the window you see the kids in the denim and leather and that makes us proud because that is one of the things we started with over 30 years ago. So it's the immortal legacy of our fans and our music.

You mentioned the five years since your last album. How does "Immortal Legacy" differ from your previous album?

Different in the song-writing because there's a lot more complexity, and the technical playing has grown. Lance Harrison was more involved than ever before because he's our main guitarist now, and his brother Steve Harrison's a big, important part to that. But mainly the difference is in the production. It's a really big album; it's a solid sounding album. And we've done some things we've never done before, a few different style changes: even though it's still Thrash Metal you can hear some of the Heavy Metal influences that we grew up on, even bands like THIN LIZZY, DEEP PURPLE, MOTÖRHEAD, because how could we not pay tribute to bands we grew up on? For the production we brought in a guy called Bill Metoyer who has done SLAYER, and W.A.S.P.; he's done a lot of big Metal bands, too many to even list. And then we brought in some special guests which we have never done before. We brought in Rocky George from SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, he played solos on the record. We brought in Jim Durkin from DARK ANGEL, he also played some solos. And also Juan Garcia from AGE OF STEEL. We wanted to do something real special, and we feel we accomplished that. We're really proud of the album, and so you're going to be seeing the band come touring through Europe more often.

In terms of production, I heard you had a list or "holy trinity" of producers to choose from?

Yeah, it was tough! We had Jeff Waters from ANNIHILATOR; he's the guitarist and vocalist, and a really good producer. There was also a guy that a lot of people know, Andy Sneap. Then there was Bill Metoyer, and the thing that was great about him was that he's where we're based in Los Angeles; he has a studio in North Hollywood, and I had worked with him over 30 years ago, so we had a good relationship, and I knew that I could trust him. So that's why we went with him, and I'm glad we did, because he put his own little taste into the record too. When you choose producers, you want to get somebody who really knows your music but also somebody who will bring something to it.

How did the writing and recording process go? I know you took quite a while with it...

Well, we were also still touring. We were doing big festivals in South America, we were doing 30 000 to 40 000 people shows down there, so in between those shows we would write, because we needed to get the record done. So that was a tricky process. Mainly me and Lance would meet at my house in Los Angeles, and we would write all day, five or six days a week. We'd mainly write riffs, but some of them weren't good enough, so we'd trash them, and we kept all the riffs we liked. Then we started arranging the songs, putting the compositions together, and then we'd take them to the band at rehearsals and we'd just jam. And then we started recording in North Hollywood with Bill Metoyer, and that was really tough because we recorded there in the summertime. And anyone who knows California can tell you it's really hot! Even with air con, it was still really hot in the studio. But it was good because it made us have to play tight and focus because there was no playing around in the studio, even though it's still pretty loose with us. Like there's beer drinking and stuff in the studio, but we just don't overdo it. It was a tough process, and I'm glad we were so focused. That's why the record sounds the way it does because we all came together and focused on it. We really thought about the fans the whole way through. From the beginning of the recording process to the end, we always had the fans in mind. With us, it's really important not to let them down, no matter what. No compromise, no sell-out, pure Metal!

What struck me about the album were the several instrumental tracks. You don't usually find those in a Thrash album!

Some of the musicians we've grown up with over the years have influenced us, like Randy Rhoads has influenced our guitarist Lance. And Jaco Pastorius is a bad-ass jazz musician, and probably one of the greatest bass players of all time. So those influences seep through on the record. There's a song "S.O.W." on the album that is instrumental; there's "Earthshaker" which is Lance's tribute to Randy Rhoads; and there's "Atlantis (Journey to Atlantis)" and that's a bass solo. And those are some of the influences we had growing up as young kids, so we're kinda paying tribute to some of our idols. But I think it's a good idea, because it's kinda what separates the album from other Thrash records like you said, and it makes it interesting.

Another thing I noticed is that there are bonus tracks on both the vinyl and online versions of the record. Why not on the CD?

I know it's bizarre. That's actually a question we get asked a lot. Mainly the record company was like "Hey, we need bonus tracks", so we got the bonus tracks. It is weird how the formats go nowadays. In the 80s vinyl was number 1; now it's more CDs and online. But still, they wanted to go with the vinyl version and the online version. So it was more the record label's idea. But next time what I think we'll do is a bonus track on each edition, because the fans were like "Hey, now I gotta go get the online and I gotta go get the vinyl". And both tracks are really strong. On the vinyl version there's "Mass Hysteria" and on the online version there's "Mephistopheles". So next time, the only thing I would probably change is I'd do a bonus track on the CD. But overall, I'm really happy.

The album artwork reminded me a lot of the covers of sci-fi books I used to read as a kid. It has a really old school feel to it! Can you tell me more about it?

There's a guy called Frank Frazetta, he's an amazing comic book artist, and he's done stuff like Conan, and I love Conan! He's done a lot of old album covers from bands like NAZARETH and MOLLY HATCHET. He's just done amazing stuff. So Frank Frazetta is a big influence, and even old comic books like Monster and Creepy; these are old comic books from the 50s and 60s comics, and sci-fi, we like all that stuff too. So especially with the new record, we wanted people to realise that we hadn't forgotten our roots. If you look at the record, it looks like and 80s record. That was done on purpose. And Philip Lawvere, the guy that did the artwork, has done work for bands like KREATOR, and CELTIC FROST. So to have him come out of retirement and do the album artwork for us is perfect. It fits the overall album style and the concept of "Immortal Legacy". We want our fans to know we haven't forgotten where we come from!

Now for an odd question, why is a Thrash Metal band named after a rock rabbit?

Well, actually back in the day when we first came up with the name, it had two meanings. First there is a rock rabbit, which is an African descendant of the elephant, which is even crazier if you think about it. And it wasn't just that: there's also an antidote for mosquito bites, which is really where I got the idea from. It's an ointment you use when you get bitten by a mosquito, and it's called Hirax. It also kills mosquitos so I was like "Let's do HIRAX!" But later on I found out more about the rock rabbit which for me made it even cooler because it's a small furry animal, but it's a distant descendant of the elephant. Who would ever think that something that small would be a descendant of an elephant? But now what's really great because now it's known for the band. So it's really cool that we took an obscure name and now when people think of HIRAX, they think of the band. But good question!

My final question: as a band, you've had over 30 years of experience, and have obviously learnt a lot in that time. What advice would you give to young bands who look up to you?

Basically, you've got to be tough and never compromise. It's funny in this business, a lot of bands, once they've written a few good records and gotten popular, they want to get even bigger, but you don't really need to change your music that much. I feel like a lot of bands sometimes forget that it's important to stay true to your roots and what you believe in. I think that's really starting to pay off for us: even though we've been around for 30 years, we're gaining more popularity now than we have in the 80s because people know they can rely on us. They're like "Those guys still play Thrash and they have their own way of doing it". But I think you've really got to be tough and you've just got to stay loyal to what you believe in and people will really start understanding that. That's what great about the fans; the fans we have, including on this tour over Europe, are phenomenal. We've had guys turn up at the shows with steel suitcases full of our record collections, having us sign them. One guy goes "It's probably going to take you at least half an hour for this record collection!" We feel a really big obligation to our fans and with newer bands, they don't realise you've got to keep that in mind. You put out a record, and for some people, it really affects their life. On this tour, we can't believe all the kids that have come to us. Even sad stories, like where fans of ours have died leaving concerts, and one of them was buried in his coffin with a HIRAX album. So you realise the obligation you have to the fans. For us, it's about always putting out good records to make our fans proud. What I would tell most young musicians is to believe in what they're doing. Be loyal to the fans, and they'll be loyal to you.

That sounds like awesome advice!

Thank you for the interview.

And thank you for taking the time out to answer all my questions!