Интервю с Mob Rules

Mob Rules is a band, which more than two decades now constantly brings joy to the fans of the German metal worldwide. Without shining too bright, thеse magnificent five succeed somehow to be always adequate to the time in which they create their own music. And their eight record Tales From Beyond, which came out on 16th of March with the helping hand of SPV Steamhammer, is no exception of that rule. It gets on equally well with a pint of German beer, British beer or even a glass of whiskey, and what`s more – it shows how the band keeps expanding their own sound. In their music we again meet some new and fresh elements, which are firmly standing on the wings of the classic German and British metal sound. So, we finally reached the man in charge in Mob Rules – the outstanding guitarist Sven Lüdke.

Hello again, Sven! Nice to hear you!

Nice to hear you too, Ivan. How are you?

I`m cool. I`m drinking German beer and was just reading bad news concerning those immigrant stuff.. How is the situation in Germany actually? I watched a video where many Sirians were roaming on the streets of Berlin in groups…It looked terrifying to me…

Nah, man. The situation is not that serious. I`m not quite sure what the media and the newspaper says but I think this is not such a big problem as the newspapers want it to be. At least not in Germany. We don`t have any attacks here and up to now everything is quiet around. But the situation in Belgium is really bad and I truly hope that this terrorism will soon stop.

To me it looks like the world is slowly going to the Third World War…All those waves of people are sent here by the great powers, they don`t need a strong Europe I think…

Absolutely. This is what the terrorists want to achieve – people to kill each other cause of false religion and stuff. I hoped we had left it behind us, hundred or two hundred years ago, but we`re not. There are always some radicals who want just to kill, provoked by the wrong picture of extreme religion.

Yeah, unfortunately this will be hard to stop – we fight against an invisible enemy now. Ok, ok, let`s talk about music. How was your vacation?

Awesome. Everything is fine. We`re preparing for the tour, rehearsing with the band…Now we`re relaxing a bit because next week we`re starting our journey in support of the new album…

I suppose you already have ideas for the setlist?

Yeah. We had our first rehearsal yesterday. We have only 50 minutes to play so unfortunately we can`t play much songs. We`re working on several options for the setlist, focusing both the classic and the new songs..

Well, it must be hard from you to chose from so many songs…

Yeah, it`s difficult. We want to bring in songs from our every album but it`s not possible. Every song is around five minutes long and when you have less than an hour to perform you can play not more than eight or nine songs…

Before we talk about the new issue, did the fans like the absolutely awesome anniversary boxset The Timekeeper?

Absolutely. I think it`s a quite valuable product with a lot of stuff in the box, and for a fair price. That was our goal, actually. We wanted to bring out a box that when you hold it in your hands and open it just to be satisfied of what you get. Luckily the record label went with us and supported us when we decided to cell it for 20 euros, not 30 or 40. And I think the people realized that it really is a worthy and good product.

Yeah. Let`s now discuss the new Tales From Beyond album. I saw a different Mob Rules in it. The classic hard rock sound is left a little bit on the back now and the songs are versatile, progressive, more dynamic and faster, and with the tempo constantly changing. Was that how you planned it to be?

Yes. That I can say is some sort of progress we started with the Cannibal Nation album and I wanted the songs to evolve more to a more spontaneous direction. I didn`t want them to sound over thought. Former days we always recreated the songs again and again and this time I wanted to work very straight on the song. I took some evenings, locked in my studio, had some German beers as you do and just worked on riffs and melodies and stuff. It was really fast and it was a real fun to me. I thought „Let`s see if we can work this way for the whole album.“

Nice. The songs are really fresh and the fans will like that I think.

That was the idea. I hoped the listeners would hear from the songs themselves that they are more spontaneous. Like you said – more fresh…

I felt like the British metal influences are even stronger this time, especially in the beginning of the album? In some moments I felt like i`m listening to the Final Frontier from Iron Maiden. Do you agree?

Yeah. Iron Maiden is definitely an influence on me. I think they were the first band that I heared. I can remember when I got „The number of the beast“ for the first time. It was like „Aww, oh my God!“… This was what I wanted to do back then – the two guitars and stuff…it absolutely blew me away. So every here and now I bring in those influences and let them shine through more or less. But I think we still have our own style and we can call a little bit in that direction without copying anything.

Yeah, I can`t agree more. Is the artwork made by your drummer Nikolas (Fritz) again? It`s quite original and somehow classic?

Yes, It`s quite original, right? He`s a very creative guy and as we were working on the „Tales from Beyond“ trilogy he came up with the idea of this typical art style. He explained to us what he was looking for and what he tried to do with the artwork itself. So we said „Go ahead, do what you think of!“. The people now like it a lot, as you described it reminds of the poster of the old-school movies like Metropolis…

Was the songwriting process the same? Are most of the songs yours?

Usually I write most of the music. I have a studio in my house and the other guys now call me „The musical director“. So I bring in all these ideas, riffs and parts, I work on them a lot at the studio, I call Klaus Dirks to come at my place and work together on the vocal lines. This is how the song naturally evolves and evolves and that`s it.

Lyrics are intelligent, as usual, and are inspired by great novels. Does that mean that what you and you guys read determines what songs will enter the new Mob Rules album every time?

We all read a lot. We like novels and we`re pretty interested in good books. We`re listening to the music and we get some kind of a picture of the song. We see what the song needs. On the Tales From Beyond album most of the lyrics were written by Jan Christian Halfbrodt, our keyboard player. And he always had these ideas like in the „Dykemaster’s Tale“. After he read it he told us „Let`s do something about a more modern Germany topic“. This turned out to be a great idea using this novel.

Okay but, why only a trilogy on „The Martian“? I think you have material in it to create a whole concept album?

Absolutely. I think you are right. But it was an idea that came up in the very end of the production process. I had three musical ideas and this came from one of them. Then I thought I could unite the all three together in one theme. And we decided to do a trilogy. In the same moment Kristian was reading „The Martian“ and when I told him my idea the things just worked out immediately. But you are right – this might had been a whole concept album, yeah.

As you said all of you read so much, I think it will be very interesting if you guys sit down and try to write your own rock opera. Have you ever thought of doing that?

It`s a very great idea! We`ve never been thinking of something like this. I have…I have but not as a band. I`d do it for myself. I`ve thought of writing a novel and then write a complete album to this novel. And to make it one whole product. I`d love to do something like this.

It will be really nice, I think you have the skill to do it! What`s more nowadays music is never just music. It`s connected with movies, with visual art etc…

When we wrote The Oswald File on the Radical Peace album, it`s a very long 20-minute song, we had the idea of making some kind of a movie to this song and bring it up on stage while we play this song. But to be honest it`s quite expensive and you need to have some people on the side who are able of making something like this and that was a lack of time and money, so we couldn`t do it. I absolutely want to do something like this so…maybe someday..

This is your first full new album with SPV after the two-album deal with AFM. So how would you compare SPV and AFM? Where do you feel better?

We were absolutely happy with AFM. It`s a great label and we would never say something bad about them. But SPV stands more behind the band. They see something in the band and wants to do whatever they can do for the band itself. That is the difference. AFM have hundreds of bands in its roster and SPV wanted us to come back to them and made a very good offer to us. Now all the promotion and interviews that are going on are making us see what a great job they do for us. We never made so many interviews before and that`s great. We receive more reviews, more pages in the magazines etc.

I know you are always full of new ideas. You constantly gather riffs and melodies and after that you work on them to turn them into songs. Where is the strangest place where you got a good idea for a song?

Haha. It can be ANY place. Sometimes I start thinking about an idea, I work on it for several days and in the middle of the night I get up and record it. For example The Dykemaster’s Tale, the working title of this song, is a night invention. I went to bed bud I couldn`t sleep because I had this intro melody stuck in my head and I kept thinking of it again and again. So I had to get up like…in 2:30 in the night and write down the half of the song on a piece of paper. Because if I don`t do it, in the morning ideas like that are gone. And when I have them written down, on the next day I take them and go into the studio where I try to recapture what I was thinking last night and I work it out.

Tell me more about your home studio? What is the equipment in it and how important for a musician today is to have their own studio at home?

The equipment is nothing special. It`s not a big studio with hundreds of microphones and a drum set in it. It`s just a small mixing console with an USB interface, a very good studio monitors. The software that I use is Cubase DAW. I also have an isolation box over here where my guitar amps stand in so I don`t have their noise. It`s a cozy place where you feel comfort and you can spend the night. Some evenings I`m just standing here, drinking whiskey and listening to music…

So is whiskey or beer better for creating music?

Oh, when I drink whiskey I cannot write songs. I`m writing songs and when I have three or four glasses of whiskey I stop playing because my fingers don`t work. To be honest I don`t like to play the guitar and drink in the same time. It`s either the one or the other. But I think it`s quite important for an artist to have a place like this. It`s like a sanctuary, where you can close the door, turn the key and remain alone with the guitar and the music and nothing can interrupt you – noone is coming in. When I work on the solos for the album it`s a whole mess in here. I`m totally sweated, the room is full with smoke and I`m lying on the floor playing the guitar, and you don`t want anyone to see you like that.

Do you support the theorem that nowadays music is more business than art and do you like it that way?

More business than art…hm..It`s a lot of business, indeed. For me music is and always had been art. I see music as a piece of art. Like a painter or something. You are creating something. I`m not happy with all this business staff. I`m not happy when I have to deal with it but unfortunately I have to. So you want to make it a living, you have to earn money so you have no other way. But for me it`s always been more art than business. I love to crate! That`s why I can`t enjoy pop music. All the pop music that i hear on the radio has nothing to do with art. It`s just business, just making money. They sound all the same – all the same four chords, the same melodies and all those out-of-tune vocals and always the same drum beats. It`s like made by computer, it`s nothing human in it. Even the voice isn`t really human because it`s processed on a computer. But when I hear the Rainbow`s Rainbow Rising album (1976), for example – just hear the drummer play, man. You close your eyes and you can see how the man is sweating, how the hands are flying and he`s  beating the shit out of his drum set…And today it`s nothing left of this, and it`s sad.
So that`s why you collect vinyls…

Absolutely!

Many people now say that there will be no more big rock stars, and they blame the market for that. How do you see the music after, let`s say 10 more years, when the metal legends won`t play anymore?

I`m not quite sure what`s coming in 10 years. The last two or three years was horrible. Many big bands stopped and many big musicians died. I really have no clue of what the future will bring. Will there be a big bands again…no, I don`t think so. The times nowadays just won`t allow it. The business does not allow it…

Some people also say that Mob Rules is a band with no weak issues, but in the same time it`s a band with no real masterpiece. Do you agree on that and what do you think is not enough for Mob Rules to become a real Big name that can fill stadiums?

Oh, it`s difficult to explain. If I knew the exact reason, maybe i`d change it, hehe. For the last eleven or twelve years, that i`m in the band, we always try to make our best album that we can. And everything is some kind of a process where things evolve. For expample the first album after I came here – Ethnolution A.D. (2006), when I listen it today I don`t like it as much as I like the newer albums. Because things have to rearrange as people left the band and new guys coming and…it`s always a process of how these people fit together, it determines how the music will taste…And the business why Mob Rules is not bigger is maybe we had been made bad decisions in the beginning, maybe we didn`t tour enough in the early days, I don`t know, noone can be sure about that.

And respectively, do you plan to visit south-eastern Europe in 2016?

This tour now we`re not visiting any Eastern Europe countries. We`re planning to do an autumn tour this year but our company is still working on that at the moment. And it`s pretty hard to find promoters that can bring you in and get you into those countries. The live scene is difficult..

Is it? Isn`t organizing a tour in America more difficult?

It is, because it`s way more expensive to play and tour there. The expenses are high and you can`t afford it. Despite we`re quite successful there, we still have to find good promoters there. This turned out to be  a very hard task lately.

I see. And my last question – What lies there, beyond?

Beyond from now it`s the next album. As we mentioned before I constantly collect ideas. And to be honest right now I have NO musical ideas for the next album. But I know from my experience that the ideas will come back to me, I just know it. It`s like your creativity is running out and when I start to work again on the next album the magic will happen again. But for now it`s quite important for us what  will happen this year. We have to play as much as we can and up to now we still don`t have any summer festivals booked, but we really hope there will be.

I`m sure you will have invitations soon, Sven. So, my questions are over, my beer is over so I have to let you go now, hehe. Thanks for your time, Sven, see you soon!

I thank you too, Ivan, it was my pleasure. Keep your fingers crossed to meet you in Bulgaria any time soon!