Interview withAlexx Wesselsky (Vocals), Noel Pix (Guitar, Producer) and Rupert Keplinger (Bass) from Eisbrecher - An interview with a prologue and an epilogue.
I started listening to EISBRECHER in 2004, when the Internet wasn’t so widespread in our town and every CD you managed to get was precious. And I was lucky to get ‘Eisbrecher’. Of course, I like ‘Die Hölle muss warten’ and other albums but the band’s debut album is still the best, maybe because it was the first. So I was nervous about the interview: it took me several days to prepare questions, which were totally criticized by a good friend of mine and also a fan of the band. As a result I had to make other questions, easy and more suitable for the situation. The interview and mostly a conversation turned to be a bit messy, slightly chaotic and sometimes funny. So please read and enjoy!
Reflections of Darkness [RoD]: Hello! Congratulations for your 10-year anniversary! So the first question will be about your German tour. Did you get any special gifts from your fans? Or maybe there was a special concert?
Alex: Yes, yes, we’ve had special gifts from our fans, friends. The best concerts are always the concerts where we get nice presents, so must be tonight. A special concert within our tour I would say was the last one in Oberhausen, very, very successful, because, I don’t know, sometimes it’s just magic, not always, but sometimes it’s just magic, so I think Oberhausen and maybe another city… The others were also good, but Oberhausen was very good. It was the last concert and maybe we just all wanted to go home. When you go to EISBRECHER show, always go to the last concert: when we want to go home, we are really good. And we played at big festivals last year. So we had Wacken, it’s also known in Russia, I guess, a big metal festival. So we had tour gigs, we had big festivals – quite a busy year. And now we are in Russia. 2014 starts with our visit to Russia. And we are really happy that it is running so well for us.
RoD: When you started your band, did you expect that you would be so famous one day, that you debut album would be so popular?
Alex: Who thinks that the debut album was the best album?
RoD: I think so.
Noel: I think the second one.
Alex: The first one was so non-commercial.
Noel: It was very experimental.
Alex: Yes, the most experimental.
RoD: And could you imagine that it would be so highly appreciated by the audience?
Alex: The first one? It was never. The first the biggest problem for us: nobody wanted to buy the record. We sold, I don’t know, about 10 thousand copies for two years. So the first record was our biggest flop, it was almost the end of EISBRECHER. And then we decided: hey you know what, Jochen? We had to write hits, hits, hits. Can we do this? And he said: of course, that’s what we forgot to do on the first album – we forgot to write some hits. And since that day we just write hits and we sell records.
Noel: Like hellfire.
RoD: And what emotions do you need to write a song?
Alex: Oh, when we just write records, they are all about life.
RoD: Are you always in a creative search?
Alex: No, I’m not. When I visit St. Petersburg and I go down Nevsky Prospekt by bus, I look out of the window and see an icebreaker ‘Krasin’, it’s beautiful and it inspires me. But the song ‘Eisbrecher’ already exists. Too bad. I mean it happens when you really want it, when we have to work. It doesn’t work always perfectly, not always the idea you have is really a good idea. You may be happy at first and two days later you think, that you don’t like it, nobody likes it. You have to be lucky, there have to be lucky moments. So we try to do our best and we did quite alright so far. We wouldn’t be here, if we weren’t okay, I think.
RoD: Did you ever face a creative crisis?
Alex: Yes, when I was born it started. My whole life is a creative crisis. Because what I do I 
cannot do, because people won’t understand it. So now we have to write hits and hits and hits. It’s our fate to be popular.
RoD: You have so many fans, that they will accept any song.
Alex: Hopefully. Well when you talk about music, you have to talk to mister Mastermind [Noel Pix], because he writes songs and my main part is sexy dancing and good-looking.
RoD: And who cares about lyrics?
Alex: Him, me sometimes. Sometimes we do it together or more him, or more me. Maybe sometimes we do a collaboration, so the lyrics are not from me or him, they already exist.
RoD: Your started to play live more and more songs from ‘DHMW’. Are you going to play all of them?
Alex: Tonight?
RoD: No, no, before the new album will be released.
Alex: [after the collective discussion] There are about three or four songs we’ve never played live, like ‘Tanz mit mir’, like ‘Treiben’ [collective discussion continues].
RoD: What are your plans for the future? Are going to start working on a new album or to 
take a rest for some time?
Alex: No time to rest. We have to work fast to make some records, no vacation.
RoD: And are you going to play at summer festivals this year?
Alex: Yes. We’ll play at Baltic Open Air, it’s a rock festival.
Rupert: We’ll have a gig in England.
Alex: We’ll play in England? Oh, yeah, for the first time in England. And maybe there will be some more festivals for us to play, but we played at very many festivals last year. We wanted to release our new record in 2014, but we take more time, so we want to play much in 2014, because we don’t have time simply to be in the studio when we have to be permanently onstage. But now we decide that the new album will be out in early 2015 and we’ll try to play some more festivals this year: Baltic, Amphi… And what we have in England?
Rupert: Alt-Fest.
Alex: Yes. There are about four or five or six festivals we’ll play at.
RoD: This is your third visit to Russia, so what do you think about Russian audience?
Alex: They are crazy, I mean, compare to German crowd. This is why we started making music and this is why we go up on the stage to play live, because you want to see people go crazy when you’re doing your thing. Because we are crazy, because if you are not crazy, you won’t do what we do. So you go onstage, you want people to be happy, to freak out. So when you play in Russia, in Moscow or in St. Petersburg, as we do now for the third time, then you have 
to play, as the people are rock fans. This is what you want when you play in a rock band. When you are a rock band you want rock fans and you go to Russia to find them. So people are just amazing. Beautiful presents. It’s just amazing when people invest a lot of time, they create things, cookies or whatever. They are just nice people. So I think this will be my second favourite country.
Rupert: What’s the first?
Alex: Germany. It’s MY country.
RoD: Ok, and finally would you say something to your Russian fans?
Alex: Yeah, I hope we can come back. Have fun with your Olympic games. I wish you some medals. And stay healthy and we want to come back and we want to play bigger and bigger. In Moscow the show was sold-out. We played at the hall. I don’t remember the name of the hall.
Rupert: Moskva Hall.
Alex: Moskva Hall was sold-out and we need a bigger hall. And I like it this way. We all like it this way. We want to play on a big stage one day to attract millions of Russian fans. Maybe we’ll do a Russian tour one day, not only Moscow and St. Petersburg. We are prepared, we are ready and we definitely want to come back. But first we have to survive the show tonight. And we will. So just a big “hello” and “spasibo” to our Russian fans!
RoD: Thank you!
And after the interview there started Meet & Greet with Russian fans and in some time on of the best concerts I’ve ever visited. But that will be another story.
All pictures by Daniela Vorndran (http://www.vorndranphotography.com / http://www.black-cat-net.de/ / http://www.facebook.com/blackcatnet)
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