At Dong Open Air 2024, Tony sat with Matthias and Michael from Harakiri For The Sky

Today you played Dong Open Air fairly early in the afternoon how was that for you because your music is a lot heavier than daylight?

Matthias: The lights are always important, but we played so many club shows where we play later in the day. But you have to get ready for the sound check at 2 pm and then have to wait for hours and hours to play at 11 PM. Not the most fun thing to do. So, it was kind of nice to play a bit earlier. Of course, it’s not the same, without the lights, because the light is very important for the music visual.

Tony: Is it because your music is a bit darker?

Matthias: Well, it’s not that. It’s just not seventies disco metal like the band that played after us (The Nightflight Orchestra).

Tony: You also have this amazing artwork on every album, do you use the same artist every time?

Matthias: We do have different artists for the albums because there are many good artists, you know? We always look for artists, and always have different graphic designers and artists. When we like something that we find, we talk to the artist to see if they want to collaborate with us.

Now for the new album we have a guy from Brazil that does the artwork, simply because I went to Brazil with my wife and got into a tattoo parlor. He did 2 shirts for us before, and now he’s doing the new album artwork. There are so many great artists around, so it’s nice to work with different people.
With the first three albums, we had the same guy who is a friend of ours, but after that we always switched them. And we usually just give them our music and tell them just create something that inspires you when you listen to the music.

Michael: The only concept is that we do have an animal, or the animal scene on every cover. But it’s getting more and more difficult to find a fitting animal and yeah it shouldn’t feel forced.

Matthias: I don’t know if you can tell this already, but for the new album, we have, like you know the movie Watership Down. We have, like, all the animals that we had before trying to escape from a burning forest.

Tony: That’s not a good movie, that was traumatizing as a kid.

Matthias: So, it is a good movie. It at least left an impression after all the fucking Netflix bullshit that we can predict after the first two minutes. So, it’s a good movie. It traumatized me as well as a kid.

Michael: Yeah, me too, because my parents thought, oh it’s just a cartoon so it would be a nice movie to see, and all that. But it was traumatizing, it was like Lord of The Flies or something like that, just with rabbits.

Tony: So, you can better watch a horror movie than Watership Down?

Matthias: Yeah. Because horror movies are, like, fucking predictable these days. It’s just fucking bullshit just because you have a scare moment that is only working because of a good soundtrack. That doesn’t make a good horror movie.

Tony: You said there is a new album coming along, can you tell us anything about that?

Matthias: Well, we’ve finished the mix and master around one month ago, and it’s going to be released… I don’t know if I’m saying too much… but they’re going to be released at the beginning of the next year, and we’re going to have 3 singles before.

I think the first one is coming out at the end of September. It is good for us you know, the whole COVID period was not very crazy for us because the whole lethargy of being at home, no inspiration, didn’t work out. And so, practically, after this whole shit ended, we then started to write music again, and we started working on the album. And then I think we started the recording process in December and finished now in was it end of May. And so, everything is done, and the fans can really get another album finally.

Tony: The release for the album is set for early next year?

Matthias: Yeah. It took some time but, you know, I think it’s better to take some more time to be happy with the music instead of just putting out something in the same time frame. When I wrote songs, I kind of threw 80 percent away because some things were too similar to the previous songs. I didn’t want to start repeating myself. After five albums, that’s a bit tough.

Tony: When you get in a rush, it feels rushed for you as a band, but it also feels rushed for the fans.

Michael: The older you get, the more difficult it gets to write songs because you don’t want to do the same thing over and over, and the issues and the scenes in the world are changing.

Matthias: Yeah. You don’t want to fucking recycle riffs and topics to be something honest. For example, we also redid the vocals because the first time, it didn’t feel right. We made some more effort and redid the vocals. Sometimes you just need to take the extra time.

Dave The Sound Guy: There’s actually a funny story about the textbook containing all the notes for the next album, we were flying home, and the textbook was left behind in the plane. Luckily, we called them, and I had to wait half an hour after the plane landed and they gave it back to me. It was fine, just missed one train, but that was still a weird moment.

Michael: And it wasn’t even the lyrics or anything like that, it was the textbook containing all the notes for the new album.

Tony: What is the song you like the most?

Matthias:  It changes all the time there are songs that we really like, but you’d start to hate if you have to play them every show for 3 years, and then you stop playing them live, and then you rediscover them. But, you know, it’s like everything in life. If something becomes too regular, then it gets boring. So, for us, we have quite a lot of songs now. If we stop playing something live, then it’s fun again to do it again. But some songs that people really want to listen to and just every gig is the same song. So, there were some songs that I really didn’t want to play anymore, then we stopped playing them for 1 year, and then it was so much fun again to play.

Michael: I can’t stand calling the rain and fire walk with me anymore. And I don’t think it will get better. I don’t know, it’s because we play them too much.

Matthias: Yeah, but for different reasons; and you’re bullshiting now. But luckily, we have a great repertoire to choose from.

Dave the sound guy: So, The funny thing is to watch those two talk, because they have a relationship like that of an old married couple.

Tony: What is the song you’re most proud of?

Matthias: Tough to say. It’s like pretty much every new song now.

Michael:  Except for the new album stuff, I would say I, Pallbearer and Sing for the Damage We’ve done. And if we go back to the really old albums, I would say Dawn of the Nihilism.  But like Matthias said it changes all the time, I can’t have the same favorite song for a few months.

Matthias: The first two albums that we did, pretty much is a bedroom production that we rerecorded now properly. We re-recorded them with the sound they deserve because back then we had just started and we didn’t really know what we were doing. So that was also a moment where we kind of rediscovered the songs and what potential they have, and we try to do it properly.

Michael: We tried to keep it as authentic and original as possible, but we also try to make it sound okay. We’ve been a band for ten years, and we are now in this position, and we sound like that today, and we will try to find a compromise.

Tony: And what is one thing you guys really still want to do?

Michael: What do you mean?

Tony: Well for some people it would be to headline Dong Open Air or Wacken

Matthias:  Not headlining. It’s so annoying to play late, you know. You sound check first, you wait, you wait, you wait, and then you play. For me it’s to never have the feeling that this becomes a job that we don’t like to do. Like, just to do it for the sake of it. Because if you lose your love for the music, I think then it becomes just a job, and I think that’s not a good thing.

Tony: Is there anything else you want to say to your fans?

Matthias: Thanks for all the support and it’s the most beautiful thing to be able to play music that is so close to you and we put our hearts in. It’s the most beautiful thing so thank you everyone for the support!

Tony: Thank you so much for the interview and thanks for the music.