Magic of ManOwaR: "Hail To Germany"

HAIL TO GERMANY

A two year abstinence from putting music to vinyl would have broken the back of most other bands... and Joe Public would have forgotten the band by then and moved on. Not so with Manowar, who are over the moon at their continued popularity, not only with the press, but also with metal freaks. This is especially so in Germany where METAL HAMMER's Oliver Klemm spoke to Manowar's bass player Joey DeMaio.

"I'm amazed at the reaction here. That's the reason why I'm learning German at the moment. I've bought a whole heap of teach yourself German in days type books and study them continually" he explains at the beginning of the interview. Well that seems a good enough reason to continue the interview in German huh? "NO!" He laughs, "I'm not up for that kind of thing yet! But I reckon by the next time we meet that I'll be capable of it." Fair enough. Two years is a long time to be out of sight. In fact it's long enough for you to be edging on the "forgotten" stakes.

"I don't see that as a problem for Manowar. We've got the most loyal fans in the world. We realised that on our tour last year. Our fans won't forget us because they know that we won't forget them. You know it's amazing the number of bands who make it to the top and then don't give a shit about their fans, because they think that they don't need to rely on them anymore. The nice thing is that they're so full of themselves that before they know what's happened they're down at the bottom again. To put it into perspective: the fans don't need the band, but the band need the fans. We are well aware of that and that's why we fight for each single one of them...and the fans realise that."

The last time that Manowar played at the "Easter Metal Blasts", Joey kept quiet about your new deal, the new materia and so on...

"The reason that Joey didn't give anything away then was because things weren't signed, sealed, and delivered. We were also getting offers from other record companies, but we finally decided on Atlantic Records. We signed for ten albums! Atlantic have given us all the freedom that we need as they really believe in what we do. That's quite different from our old record company, 10 Records. They were really heavy. They wanted to turn us into a super-heavy band. With atlantic it's quite diffeent. They say 'Boys play whhat you want, we know that what you'll do will be good stuff'. That's an ideal atmosphere for us to work in. They gave us a production budget that was more than enough for our needs. That's why on our new album 'Fighting The Word', we were able to really go for it and make it a monster album. I'm not saying that because we produced the album ourselves, but because it's the turth. No HM band has ever had the sound that we've managed to get. We used the most advanced studio equipment and recorded the album digitally. We're toying with the idea of putting 'Fighting The World' out on CD, so that you can really hear the quality of the sound. We brought in a specialist who was able to take certain drum sounds of ours and stick them in a computer and we were able to re-call any particlular drum sound that we wanted to at will. We are currently the only band in the world who are using these 'Drums of Death', as we call them. I reckon that in two or three years time, and drummer who is any good will be using this system. Without doubt the new tracks are the best that we've ever done. We re-recorded 'Defender' as a tribute to our late friend, Orseon Welles. We got the idea into our collective nuts that we would get Orson Welled to do the intros to a few of the songs. We sent his manager some of our material but we never reckoned in a million years on getting an answer from him. We were real freaked when the guy called us and said that Orson Welles would like to do it. We were real upset when he died."

A massive world wide tour is about to kick off. You're starting it in Germany. That's not the normal place to start so why there?

"That's Manowar's way of saying thankyou to our German fans who stayed loyal to us over the years. We read all the fan mail that we get, every single letter. And the most came from Germany. We like playing in Germany as the atmosphere at the gigs there is always so good..."

At that point I interrupt him and ask him if the next Manowar album might be called "Hail To Germany"?

"That's a good idea." he laughs "Yeah, maybe, that really is a good idea, who knows?"

Author � Oliver Klemm
Translated by Al Simpson

This article is taken from Evil Manowar Page

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