Sacred Steel - Going their own way
German traditional metallers Sacred Steel released a new album called Carnage Victory. Metalrage caught up with them asking about their new release. Here’s the result.
First of all, thoughts about the new album. If I'm not mistaken this your second release with the new line up. Has it been easier this time around in the studio?
Sacred Steel: ‘Yes, much easier! Everything went smooth and perfect. I have never before had such a good time in the studio. No kidding.’
How did the songwriting come together this time?
Sacred Steel: ‘Also pretty easy. We’ve had lots of ideas to choose from. Due to the fact that we have two main songwriters, Jonas and Jens, who constantly write and develop ideas we never had a shortage of material to work with.’
How are the reactions so far on the new album?
Sacred Steel: ‘Mixed as usual. Some hate it, some love it. That’s exactly the way it should be. We don’t want to be everybody’s darling. Not at all.’
Just like the previous album, you are releasing a special edition box set of the new album. Are you doing this so that more people actually buy a real copy instead of downloading it?
Sacred Steel: ‘Well, we are metal collectors ourselves and we want to put out value for money stuff. I don’t know if that will keep anybody from downloading the album.’
Apart from an upcoming show on the Pounding Metal festival on the 21st of November, there are no tour dates announced. Is there any news on future shows?
Sacred Steel: ‘We are trying to put a tour together for March 2010, It’s just that we all have our regular day jobs. This always makes it quite difficult. But we’ll try our best.’
What songs are you going to incorporate on the live setlist?
Sacred Steel: ‘I guess we’ll keep the songs in that we’ve already played live: Charge Into Overkill, Carnage Victory, Broken Rites and Denial Of Judas.’
Having read a couple of reviews, the general critic on Sacred Steel seems to be the vocals and are not always positive. How do you deal with that?
Sacred Steel: ‘We don’t give a shit. I mean, I have that voice and not everybody likes it. So what? Listen to some other band if you can’t handle it. There are so many bands out there that will maybe be to your liking instead.’
The revival of traditional heavy metal , has it been positive to you as a band? Or do you think the market is overcrowded?
Sacred Steel: ‘I see no real revival of traditional heavy metal yet. The big thing still is crappy third rate Black Metal or Folk/-Viking Bullshit. The market may be overcrowded, but hey, again: everybody is free to support whatever he likes.’
What do you wish to achieve with the band?
Sacred Steel: ‘We’ve already achieved most that we wanted. Our future goal is to keep releasing quality underground metal for the few who understand and maybe play some places and countries we’ve not had the pleasure to visit yet.’
Your musical preferences in metal are quite clear. What do you think about the more modern metal bands?
Sacred Steel: ‘I don’t listen to anything modern. If people like them, so be it.’
Sacred Steel is actually a musical style on its own. It is an African-American gospel tradition that developed in House of God churches in the 1930s. The Steel part of that name comes from the fact that it is played on steel guitars. When you selected your band name, where you aware of this, or is it just a coincidence?
Sacred Steel: ‘It was a pure coincidence. But thinking of the fact that we absolutely despise the church and their gospel shit, it feels good to annoy some bible bashers with our presence, ha-ha.’
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