interview with Speedwhore

Have any of you played in other bands? Yes we did or still do! Joker played in a Doom/Death Band called Ossarium; Basti still plays in the Thrash Metal band Nuclear Warfare, which are pretty well-known within the German Thrash underground; Dan our new drummer played in several Death and Punk bands since the late 80s and nowadays does acoustic stuff besides our band; and I sing in the Thrash ‘n’ Roll band Discröyd besides Speedwhore!     

How is it that you started playing music/ What year did the band form? It was some crazy idea back in 2006. I always wanted to play in a band but wasn’t really able to play my guitar, so I had to wait until I find someone who is likely amateurish hehe. The only one who already had some experience was our first drummer who played in some Black Metal bands before us.

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? I’m Tim, guitarist and singer and with the age of 30 the youngest member; Basti our lead guitarist is 3 or 4 years older than me; our bassist Joker, with whom I’m founded the band is 37. Our oldest member is our newest one: Dan our drummer passed the big 40 already hehe

Have you had other previous members? Yes we had, especially on the drumming position. Dan is, I guess, the 5th drummer so far. I don’t know what’s wrong with people who play drums haha. But there wasn’t any bad blood with any of them and every ex-member contributed something to our overall sound! 

Where are you from? We all live in Munich, Bavaria. Although not every band member was born here, at least all have some roots in this city.

What's your style of genre? For me Thrash Metal or even just Metal would be enough to describe it, but to be more specific for the ones who are interested, I guess sci-fi-themed Black Thrash comes nearest.

What inspires you? A lot of things, but nothing concrete. We just have fun playing our music loud as possible.  

How often and where do you reherse? Too rarely.

How have you developed since you started with the music? As we weren’t able to play our instruments when we began, one can say that we developed a lot so far. Our album and also our live shows are not comparable too our beginnings. Our sound back then had its charm and I still like our old rehearsals (which by the way can be heard on our Bandcamp site), but the album is a complete different level.  

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? I thought about that, but I never informed myself about booking agencies to be honest, but basically it’s surely a thing to consider for the future.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Our album was released by Witches Brew Records and we’re really happy to have landed in their roster. Cheryl the owner of Witches Brew does a great job!

What made you decide to make this music? We like all kinds of old school metal, so it wasn’t sure for us that it will be Thrash, but it turned out that way when we rehearsed for the first times. Outbreak of Evil by Sodom was the first song we tried to play, so I guess we just stuck with that sound.

What are your songs about? The album is complete science fiction, but within that frame we also cover more specific topics like war, science or depressions etc. Besides that the first song we ever wrote is called Alcoholic Force. This song will be by the way the next thing to be released. It will be a single together with a Violent Force cover (Dead City).

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? That’s my job so far, but Joker also wrote the lyrics for a new song that will be on the next album.

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Normally it’s the music first and then the lyrics. But there are exceptions. The song I mentioned above, the one that Joker wrote - here it was vice versa.

Have you done any covers live? Yes! Our first song we ever rehearsed was Outbreak of Evil by Sodom. Some years ago we also covered Commando from The Ramones but we don’t play those two anymore. But since 5 or 6 years we play Dead City from Violent Force at every show. As I already mentioned Dead City will be also released as the B-side for Alcoholic Force in the next months.

What language do you sing in? Only English!

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? We try to vary, but we have our base frame which contains our personal favorites (like The Machine, The Call or Destiny f.e.)

What was your first gig like? Pretty funny. It was in a shabby garage as opener for a befriended band back in 2006 or early 2007. I think it was really bad for the audience, but for us it was great hehe.

What was your latest gig? Our latest gig was here in Munich together with Magister Templi from Norway and Christian Mistress from the US. It was a cool package. Thrash, Doom and Heavy Metal. What more could one want?

Have you had to cancel a gig? No, not yet. Once I had pretty high fever and was shortly before doing so, but the gig turned out to be pretty cool, even my high screams worked fine and in the end it was good medicine. On the next day my health was way better!

Where do you plan to gig the comming year? We want to do more international shows of course, but nothing concrete yet.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? At the moment the only merchandise besides our music are patches which were done by our label Witches Brew. Shirts will be the next merch thing to come for sure.  

Where can people buy your merchandise? You can always order directly via the band (just write a mail to [email protected] or write us via Facebook or Bandcamp). You can also order the CD and patches from Witches Brew Records (http://www.witchesbrewthrashes.eu/shop/)

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? To be honest, I don’t care about that topic. You can’t hold back technological developments whether you like it or not, so there’s no need for me to decide if it’s bad or good. The metal scene is either way a very old fashioned scene in good and bad ways. A good thing that comes from that is that there’s still a relatively high amount of metalheads who buy records and I think that won’t change for the next years.    

What do you think of my work? Your work is very important, whether it’s for a band like us which will be introduced to new people who may like our sound and also important for those undergrounds maniacs who would have never heard of a relatively small band like Speedwhore without your work. So thanks to you!

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? To be honest I’m listening to more or less only old bands. Musically I’m stuck in ’85. I need help!   

What have been your biggest obstacles? When you have 5 drummers in 9 years I think it’s clear what the biggest problems were hehe

Do you have any new material? Yes we have. We began to write new songs shortly after “The Future is Now” was released. We already have 2 new songs in our live set. It took us about 8 years to release our first album and I can promise that it won’t take as long for the second one!

What are your web sites? I guess the best site to get info about new material, live shows etc. is Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Speedwhore-124679414257404/) and the best site to hear our stuff is Bandcamp (https://speedwhore.bandcamp.com). There you can also stream the whole album and our older releases for free!

How can people reach you? Just write us via [email protected] or leave us a message at Facebook or Bandcamp!

What are your plans for the future? Our plan or goal is to write even better songs for the second album and besides that we want to do more gigs especially in foreign countries. That’s it more or less: Keeping up to write good songs, playing live and having some fun. That’s it.

Do you have something to add? Thanks for the interview! To everybody who reads this: Feel free to contact us via the mail address or web sites mentioned above and check out our music when you’re into old school metal. Cheers from Tim & SPEEDWHORE

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