Thrash Metal fans in Europe had a delectable little treat this month with the legendary SACRED REICH being on a European tour, with TENSIDE, a local Metalcore band from Munich, supporting SACRED REICH on four of their German shows. Being a Saturday night, the turnout was decently sizeable, especially considering all the hype surrounding the World Cup going on, and SACRED REICH fans were out in full force, sporting their favourite band shirts.
 

It never fails to amuse me how the audience always treats the opening band with ill-conceal scepticism, being sure to maintain a healthy distance from the stage at all times, and TENSIDE proved to be no exception. In fact, this was particularly true of this band, as they are a young and upcoming Metalcore band playing to an older audience who had grown up with Thrash Metal being their bread and butter. However, over the course of their three-quarter hour set, TENSIDE did manage to get the crowd increasing involved, thanks to their boundless enthusiasm, and their dynamic and energetic performance, with a beautiful backdrop to boot. Bringing on a guest vocalist during one of their songs also helped get the crowd more into the swing of things, with TENSIDE having managed to win over the majority of the audience by the end of their set.

Setlist:
1. Intro
2. Here and Now
3. At the Top of the Tide
4. Reborn
5. Creator
6. Dead or Alive
7. Where we Belong
8. Nothing Will Remain
9. One Bullet Left
10. Reality
 

Next up were the headliners of the night: American Thrash Metal giants SACRED REICH. Starting off their set with an intro song more commonly associated with the lunar explorations, SACRED REICH sauntered onto the stage to the vociferous delight of their fans. Launching straight into "Here and Now", they soon had the audience bellowing along, setting the pace for what was still to come.

One of the highlight's of SACRED REICH's set occurred during their third song "Love… Hate". Before this song, we were introduced to the 16 year old son of drummer Greg Hall. This was the very first time that his son was playing with SACRED REICH, with Greg standing to the side, proudly filming his entire performance. This was very much an occasion that reaffirmed the old adage "Like father, like son", with Hall junior blasting away with the quiet confidence of a pro.

Being a fan of BLACK SABBATH, I was absolutely thrilled when SACRED REICH threw in a couple of covers, including some of the best known BLACK SABBATH track like "Paranoid" and "War Pigs". Needless to say, this went down exceptionally well with the crowd, loudly singing along. Other crowd anthems were also particularly well received, such as "Crimes Against Humanity" and "Surf Nicaragua", with almost the entire audience thundering along.
 

One fan in particular stood out, with the show in Munich being his fourth SACRED REICH show this week alone. When I caught up with him after the show, he told me that he has been a fan of SACRED REICH ever since he was a kid. Living and working in Catalonia, a province in eastern Spain, he spends his holidays travelling through Europe, following the tours of his favourite bands, such as SACRED REICH and IRON MAIDEN. Overall, it was a very good night, and one which will surely be remembered for some time to come.

Setlist:
1. Independent
2. One Nation
3. Love… Hate
4. Ignorance
5. State of Emergency
6. Free
7. Death Squad
8. Crimes Against Humanity
9. Who's To Blame
10. Sweet Leaf (Black Sabbath Cover)
11. Paranoid (Black Sabbath Cover)
12. War Pigs (Black Sabbath Cover)
13. The American Way
14. Surf Nicaragua
 

Whilst TENSIDE, a Munich based Metalcore band,  was recently on tour with Thrash Metal giants SACRED REICH, I got the opportunity to interview them and chat about their tours, future plans, and their latest as well as upcoming albums. And so on a sunny afternoon, I sat down with Daniel Kuhlemann (guitar, vocal), Michael Klingenberg (guitar), Florian Schönweitz (drums), and Martin Rupp (bass guitar).

This is the fourth German show with SACRED REICH. How have the other shows been?

Martin: It was cool. It's not really our kind of audience: we're not an 80s Thrash Metal band. But we don't care about that. The important thing is to deliver our show as best as we can. People liked it so far; some are…

Florian: … Stuck in their own thing, and we have to fight.

Martin: Let's just say we have to convince them.

Florian: It's not the normal TENSIDE audience, as we are a bit more Metalcore.

Martin: So generally speaking, it's a little bit more difficult at the beginning, and the first few songs, there's not a lot of movement, but most of the time they lighten up over the set, and they start to like it. We get very good feedback after the show, at the merch-stand, which is cool.

You have toured with quite a few big names in the Metal industry. Do you have any particular favourites or any band you'd really like to tour with?

Michael: It's always cool to tour with SOULFLY. We did a show with them yesterday, and it's like a family reunion. And we'd really like to tour with the epic names like IN FLAMES or MACHINE HEAD; that would be a big dream of ours!

Martin: There's a lot of influence from those bands so of course it would be great to tour with them.

What other influences do you draw on?

Martin: I haven't been in the band for that long; I wasn't involved in the album.

Daniel: I would say my influences come from daily life.

Florian: From what you see and what you hear, from society. The musical influences are different. Daniel listens to different stuff to what I listen to. He listens to Hip Hop, but that doesn't mean we have Hip Hop influences in our music. My love is 80s Hair Metal. I love CINDERELLA and all that kind of stuff, but we have no CINDERELLA parts in TENSIDE. We know our strengths and our music, so that is what we work with.

Martin: We have a lot of different tastes, but if it would come down to two or three bands, you could say it's IN FLAMES, MACHINE HEAD…

Florian: KILLSWITCH ENGAGE.

Martin: A lot of classic Metalcore bands.

Florian: Or DARKEST HOUR. They're not a big name in the scene, but we like them.

Martin: Generally speaking, the worst thing you can do as a band is to say "We want to sound like them" because they are already there and you don't need a second IN FLAMES or so. We don't want to copy them.

Michael: I think the most important thing if you want to be a good musician is you have to listen to many music genres, not only Metal. You have to listen to almost everything.

TENSIDE has been confirmed for Summer Breeze Festival. Do you have any expectations for that?

Michael: It's cool for us to be there. It's the first time at the festival. I guess it's going to be a blast to be there.

Florian: It's time for TENSIDE to play Summer Breeze! We're a band from South Germany, so we have to play the biggest festival in South Germany.

Martin: We've been looking forward to this festival for a long time.

A question probably more suited to you Daniel, as the only founding member: how is the current chemistry of the band?  

Daniel: I would say it's the best lineup since I built up the band. I have the best three musicians with me, and I'm very proud to be with these guys and to keep the band alive.

Martin: We get along very well. Also with our crew. What people don't see is that when you're on tour, you're not just the band; there's the backliner, merch, and the mixing guy. And you're confined in a van for most of the day. When you're touring different cities, sometime you know other people in the city to hang out with, but sometimes you don't. So if you don't get along with the rest of the band, you're really in trouble. But luckily we don't have that problem.

Florian: And another thing is we've known each other for years, playing together but in different bands.

Martin: It was a natural thing. I had been backlining for TENSIDE for a year, and when the original bass player decided he couldn't do it any more, I stepped up to the position.

Michael: We had no other option. It was good that we had no other option; it was either Martin joins or nothing.

Martin: It's all about the chemistry. I started to play bass because of that. I was a guitarist before, so the transition to bass was not incredibly difficult, but I'm not a bassist from the beginning. It was more about: we know each other, we've been on tour together, it's cool, we get along very well together, so let's try it that way.

Your latest album "Nova" was your first album together. How was the writing process for that?

Daniel: We started to write the songs at our rehearsal spot, and each of us has a home studio, so we all brought in some riffs and song ideas. Michael does a lot of the song writing. We have a little studio where we spent a lot of time doing the preproduction before we hit AntFarm studios in Denmark together with Tue Madsen and recorded "Nova" there for a couple of weeks in Denmark. Then we came back to Germany and recorded the vocals in Michael's studio together with Christoph von Freydorf, from another Munich-based band. He did some of the production with us.

Michael: He is good with vocal stuff, like vocal harmonies.

Daniel: Then Tue Madsen mixed it.

Florian: But the writing process was very good. We didn't have any big problems.

Daniel: It takes ideas, and it takes time. You don't get a good song every day.

Florian: The production process was a little difficult, but it's always difficult. But with the writing process, in my opinion, we were really quick.

Daniel: Every band always says that their new album is their best, but in this case, I'd really say "Nova" is probably the best album this band has made.

Martin: I wasn't involved in the writing and the recording, but in my opinion, you could probably say it's the new album for the new TENSIDE because of the new lineup and the slightly new orientation and sound that comes with it.

It has been a year since the release of "Nova". Are there any plans for a new album yet?

Daniel: Of course there are plans! At the moment, we're on the road and we'll spend more time on the road this year. We're going to do two more European tours in fall this year, and a couple of festivals this summer, as well as club shows and maybe some more overseas shows. Next year we will definitely start to write new music, so I would say the new album will be out maybe by the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016.

Speaking of all these tours, is there anywhere in particular you'd like to play?

Daniel: For us, the biggest thing is to play all over the world. We played China in April for the first time which was a blast, although it's very different to Europe. We would love to play the US, but it's very hard for a German band to get over there. It would be cool to play a swop tour or something, or to play Australia. There are so many things to do! There are also so many big European festivals to play too, not just overseas. It's a never-ending story, and the cool thing is if you get it step by step, you work for it, but you also get the fun, so you get something back.

And are there any plans to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of TENSIDE?

Daniel: Maybe. We are thinking about that at the moment.

Florian: Drink a lot of booze and celebrate!

Daniel: Haha, yeah! Maybe we'll do something within the next year with a little DVD for the next album, or an own tour. But we're still thinking about that.

Michael: But at the moment it's all just ideas, there is no real plan for anything.

My final question, seeing as the band has been around for 10 years, what advice would you give a young band that looks up to you?

Florian: Keep doing it! And believing is really important if you want to keep the scene alive.

Martin: The biggest problem that I see with a lot of local newcomer bands is that they play for a year in their hometown, and all their friends are coming to the show because it's new and they get the support. But once they reach the point where their friends have seen them fifty times and don't want to go to every show, the band tries to get shows that are further away from their hometown, and they realise that it's hard. If you're a Munich band and you're in the scene in Munich, if you drive 50 miles out, no-one has even heard of your band. And somewhere at that point, a lot of bands break up and form a new band with other guys from the scene and they start all over again, and people are coming to the shows again and it's a never-ending story. I've seen it happen many times here in Munich.

Daniel: When I was a kid, starting with my first band, or even at the beginning of TENSIDE, we played youth clubs and small little venues. People showed up, but these days, all these underground concerts are done.  Everyone says that there are no more people coming, and that there are no venues, so to start a career is difficult. At the moment, regardless of whether you're a big name or a middle name, no-one is selling a lot of CDs. It's no longer enough just to sell, so everyone is playing and all the venues are booked, so there is no space for local bands. That's really a big problem for the scene.

Ok, well, that would be all from me. Thanks very much for your time and answering all my questions!

Thanks a lot!