MESSIAH’S KISS – Et ekte metal flaggskip

MESSIAH'S KISS er et ekte Metal flaggskip med en internasjonal besetning, i ferd med å begi seg ut på reise med deres tredje eventyr! Uten å være påvirket av kort varige trender, bandet holder stødig kurs for hjertet av tradisjonell Heavy Metal affeksjoner, bevisende deres besluttsomhet atter en gang. Tidlig en musikalsk kveld i januar ble jeg oppringt og i den andre enden av tråden var slagverker Eckhard Ostra. Vi hadde den gleden å snakke sammen og han hadde dette å si om bandet.

 
ET: Hi! Ståle speaking.
Eckhard Ostra: Hi! Good evening.

ET: Good evening. How are you doin'?
Eckhard Ostra: I'm fine, thank you.

ET: Above all, congratulations with your new album, titled «Dragonheart». It's your third studioalbum, right?
Echard Osrtra: Oh, thank you. Yes, it's the third chapter of the trilogy.

ET: And it will be released in february. I suppose you're happy with it?
Eckhard Ostra: Yes, I'm very happy with it.

ET: How long were you in studio?
Eckhard Ostra: We've been recording since September 2006 to December 2006, so we've been in studio recording in September, October, November and December. We recorded most of it in Germany, and a few tracks in New York.

ET: What do you think of it now that you hear it?
Eckhard Ostra: I'm very happy with the album. I'm very proud of it. There are a few good musicians contributing to the album. We're having Herman Frank from VICTORY ACCEPT with us on guitar. I'm very happy with what he has done on the album. I'm very proud of him.

ET: How would you characterize the type of music that you create? Has your style changed or evolved over time?
Eckhard Ostra: We play classic Heavy Metal. We play the music we love the most. We all grew up with the great eightees metal acts, like JUDAS PRIEST and IRON MAIDEN from UK and ACCEPT from Germany, and that's where my heart is at. We love the music, we don't wanna play anything else. We play classic Heavy Metal music as in the 80s combined with an American singer. The singing has no accent, it sounds both American and German. It sounds great.

ET: Do you think that the lyrics in this music are reflective of your personal beliefs? Why or why not?
Eckhard Ostra: Yes, the lyrics has to transport something interesting. They has to sound good, they has to express power, express dynamics. When you have a bad day, you wanna hear something that makes you feel good. You know, that's how it work for me. That's what MESSIAH'S KISS mean to me, to feel good. The lyrics has to express positive thinking and take you to a different level, that's the most important thing.

ET: I suppose you kind of predicted the answer to my next question I meant to ask, as well; that the sound and style of the classic Heavy Metal music you perform express your personal beliefs and identity.
Eckhard Ostra: Yes.

ET: What first attracted you to the Classical Heavy Metal music scene? What captured an held your interest?
Eckhard Ostra: Yes, you can call it classical. Classic, Power, Death Metal or whatever you call it, the most important thing for us is to have fun. If you buy a song you like to listen to it each day. You listen to it the whole week. It's the emotion you love. You like the guitar, the bass, the drums in the song. I listen to NIGHTWISH as well, it's good music that contain Heavy Metal and power.

ET: So it's about how you can relate to the music.
Eckhard Ostra: What the song transport to me, that's important to me, not the style.

ET: Do you believe that the lyrics serve a particular function? Is there a particular reason to the topics?
Eckhard Ostra: I'm not quite sure I understand the question.

ET: Yes, I understand. Do you have a «metal philosophy»?
Eckhard Ostra: Yes, guitar on the left side, guitar on the right side, bass in the middle, drums paned all over the sound and on top of it the screaming vocals. We want to entertain people with the music. We want to have fun, and we want the people to have fun. He – he (laugh). You can imagine, to see the faces of the people is the most important. The best complement is to see them having fun. He – he (laughs).

ET: Yes, I can imagine. What sorts of personalities do you encounter most at shows? What are the positive trends and the negative trends that you have noticed?
Eckhard Ostra: We've been recording for almost four months now, with breaks of course. I hope we'll play live, ‘cause we've stayed home for four years, and we wanna show the band. We wanna hear how the songs sound. We're gonna play festivals, and we'll be on tour. We have an international line-up with an American singer, Mike Tirrelli, the bass player (W. Banks) is from Nottingham in England and we are three Germans, I think, and that's a problem. The singer is playin' with the American band RIOT, and he's very busy with that, and the bass player is busy with another band, as well.

 

ET: Will we be honored to see MESSIAH'S KISS play on stages in Norway or Scandinavia?
Eckhard Ostra: I hope so, but we don't know yet. I have some friends in Norway, and they say it's a beautiful country.

 

ET: Yes, it's beautiful here. He – he (laugh).
Eckhard Ostra: We'll play for two or three weeks in September and October, maybe we'll play in Norway, as a package, and we'll see the country stale (‘well, that's a twist to my name, and I like it'). Check it out on the record company, they will have the tour list.

ET: Please add any additional comments or impressions that you might have.
Eckhard Ostra: It's a good interview.

ET: Thank you.
Eckhard Ostra: Add anything, hmmm. Don't look too much on the genre, if it's Gothic, Power or something else: listen to the songs, give them a chance. Heavy Metal is not dead. If you say that metal is dead, then it will be dead. Heavy Metal is 35 years old, you know, it began 35 years ago. The kids want it, they listen to Heavy Metal and the children grow up with it and they know what they want. Heavy Metal will at least live for another 35 years.

Websites (band/record label): www.steamhammer.de