Interview withAndy Brings (lead vocals, guitar), Slick Prolidol (bass, backing vocals) and Julian Fischer (drums) from Double Crush Syndrome
He is the king of Rock’n’Roll in Germany’s Ruhrpott and SODOM, THE TRACEELORDS and POWERGOD are only three of his former projects. 174 centimetres of pure energy, wit and the combination of big mouth and big heart add up to the incomparable and uncontested man we are talking about: Andy Brings. DOUBLE CRUSH SYNDROME, his current and unlabelled project with Julian Fischer (drums) and Slick Prolidol (bass), celebrated great success when touring with HARDCORE SUPERSTAR and NITRODIVE earlier this year, and just a few days ago they finished their tour with OHRENFEINDT from St. Pauli - and we took our chance to talk to them at their last gig in Aschaffenburg on November 21st.
Reflections of Darkness [RoD]: The new album’s coming up - you’ve teasered a lot already, but for those who have no idea, what can we expect?
Andy Brings [AB]: Who have no idea, including us? (laughs) That’s a question for Julian.
Julian Fischer [JF]: Death. Ten to twelve songs, full throttle, hammer to the head. That’s it.
Slick Prolidol [SP]: With melody.
AB: We actually started recording already, but then one of us got sick in summer and that threw us completely off course for weeks. Then we toured, and well, we couldn’t continue. But we hope it’ll come out in April and it’s going to be so, so good. As always: long, nested, complicated songs (JF laughs) for which you like, know and despise us. Yeah, like that. It’s just going to be nice songs with all trademarks, looking to the left and to the right... but this time, all in German. Just a joke. (everyone laughs)
RoD: What is your songwriting process like? Are there differences between the writing in DOUBLE CRUSH SYNDROME and the solo-project ANDY BRINGS?
AB: The solo-project ANDY BRINGS doesn’t exist anymore. I dropped out myself and founded DCS after that, because the solo-project wasn’t “suitable for everyday use” anymore. We had too many people, logistic problems and in the end it was almost impossible to get everyone to come to a rehearsal, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. So I went back to the roots, three people. Back to the musical roots, English Power-Pop-Punk-Rock, something like that you know. The songwriting: since Slick is on board it did... well, not exactly change. He knows how to write as well, let’s put it like that. And you can take advantage of that, unwillingly, but... (laughs) Well, you have to sit in a car with him for a long time and he becomes a very unpleasant fella if he can’t have his way. (laughs)
JF: Contrary to me. (grins)
AB: Yes! Contrary to Julian. But yeah, everyone’s fully integrated in the process and whoever has the basic idea calls the shots... and then I call the shots again, of course. (laughs and hugs SP)
RoD: What would you never write a song about?
JF: About the “bloody Sunday”. Or anything that U2 wrote about.
AB: I’d never write about politics because I have no clue about it, neither football for the same reason... (turns to SP) Wait, we have already! Back then, the first songs...
SP: Yeah...
AB: Neat pocket money! But yeah, politics and things like that, others have to do that, we rather sing about tits, fun, self-realization, don’t get on my nerves, those things. Everything between “don’t get on my nerves” and tits, that’s our field.
JF: Don’t go on my nerves with tits.
AB: Why, yes! Especially go on my nerves with tits! But I can only speak for me. Slick, what wouldn’t you sing about?
SP: I don’t sing about anything that Andy has sung about, that wouldn’t make sense. No, seriously, I sing about things that upset me as a human being - and I get upset by a lot of things - and that has to be expressed. Everything I experience, things from everyday life. Football doesn’t count to that, so I don’t sing about it, but everything else I encounter, I sing about it.
AB: I gotta step in here again, cause all this “Neue Deutsche Befindlichkeit”, this being affected by everything... I read an interview with SILBERMOND earlier and it was like “We have topics from life, I’m coming to terms with my past!” What was it...? “My sister just bought the old house of our father and now every time I hear the creaking of the old barn door...” something like that, and when I read shit like that I could really go up the wall. I would never ever sing about anything alike.
SP: (nods)
AB: And you wouldn’t either!
SP: No. And I wouldn’t tolerate it if you did.
AB: You would not tolerate it, that’s right. (laughs)
RoD: A genre you’d never even touch!
AB: Reggae!
SP: World music. There’s nothing worse. It’s people who can’t decide what they want to do, do they want to be a therapist or do they want to be musicians? I would never do something like that.
JF: I fully subscribe to that statement.
AB: I got another one! Reggae and Jazz. Those are the two music genres I’d never...
SP: Genres you _could_ not do because you couldn’t or because you just don’t like them?
AB: No, I cannot even listen to them! I don’t even have the synapses to comprehend that kind of music! What’s it called, Grey Jazz... it’s like giving disabled pre-schoolers instruments and saying “Everyone plays on three!” Disabled pre-schoolers who have never even met before.
JF: I could add this modern Melodic Metal. It really annoys me.
AB: Yeah! SABATON, POWERWOLF, AVANTASIA, everything in between this despicable, degenerated bullshit. I can’t even understand why people listen to this. I understand that people listen to Reggae and Jazz, I really understand it, but I cannot understand that people listen to SABATON, POWERWOLF, AVANTASIA and the like. I can’t find any tolerance for that. I’m a very tolerant person, but it ends with that.
RoD: What was your most embarrassing stage-experience?
JF: I think that’ll come tonight?
(everyone laughs)
SP: I gotta be honest: none. From the outside I guess I have tons of embarrassing moments on stage (AB nods), but... (shrugs) I don’t care.
AB: But something that might be embarrassing for others, even though it isn’t embarrassing for you.
SP: Even that... you say what my most embarrassing stage-experience was!
AB: ...
SP: Oh, yeah, I might know one actually. I once lost my shoe on stage and Tony had to fix it with gaffer tape, wrapping it around the toes so I wouldn’t completely lose it and face plant it. (laughs) It looked stupid but I wouldn’t consider it embarrassing.
AB: Julian?
JF: This is a competition now, isn’t it? Once my complete drum set broke down. It was with a progressive band I played with... (to AB) I never had embarrassing moments with you, so I gotta go back further. So, yeah, we had one track, 45 minutes. And after two minutes to complete drum set broke down. And then I sat there, had to keep up the beat, drum on my thigh and stuff.
AB: A real thigh-slapper, wasn’t it! Well... I once fell off the stage.
(everyone laughs)
AB: POWERGOD, Munich, 2001. We played ‘Burn The Witches’ from WARLOCK and I walked and walked and suddenly the stage was XXX. There’s even a video of that. I was just gone then and you hear me making a weird sound, but I didn’t hurt myself. I got up again, got back up and continued playing. That was... yeah. (laughs)
RoD: What do you have absolutely no talent for?
SP: Football.
JF: Maths.
AB: Maths. (nods) Yes. Even nowadays, when I’m in the bakery or at the store, when it’s about change I just hold my wallet up and tell them “Here, look yourself please”. I also still can’t tell the coins apart. So, definitely maths. Football... I’m pretty okay at football if I have to be!
JF: I can’t remember things for the love of God. On tour I lost my glasses twice. Once on the toilet and -
AB: Yesterday he found them before he even missed them! That was great. “Hey, I found my glasses!” – “Did you miss them?” – “No.”
(everyone laughs)
JF: Yeah... that doesn’t make life easier but more interesting!
AB: I’m really a part time clumsy fool but I really met my match in him, it’s crazy. But together we’ve got a chance, if we had to open a lock together or something, or carrying stuff together... it’s like minus and minus equalling plus. That’s us. Drum and drummer.
(everyone laughs)
RoD: What are your favourite misheard lyrics? Can also be in your own songs.
SP: A friend of mine asked me on a festival when we had just heard GUNS’N’ROSES ‘Civil War’ what Axl meant by “My ants are blind.” The original line is “My hands are tied”. (laughs)
AB: I think I can’t join in on this one. I can’t think of anything. Well, I think I had misheard lyrics in ‘With Me’ in the soundcheck, you heard it. Misheard lyrics produced on the spot. (laughs) I always confuse the lines, if I even remember them.
JF: There is this MISFITS cover album which shouldn’t be allowed to be called MISFITS, there’s one song, what’s the title... ”See the pyramids along the Nile...” Uhm... ’You Belong To Me’? I always understand - and I had to actually google the lyrics to even know what it actually should be - ‘The Pillerman’!
(everyone laughs)
AB: Because you only think about dicks! Always horny, always thinking about dicks. (laughs)
SP: (laughing) Can we please just continue...
AB: Since yesterday in Affalter we’re now probably the uber gay dick band. None of them there would believe we’re heterosexuals; it crashed their world view completely, in case they had a world view. (laughs) Next question!
RoD: If you could choose a song of any band you like to make a music video for said song, which one would you choose and what would your video look like?
SP: I would choose JIMMY HENDRIX...
AB: Cause it would be like three seconds long.
SP: Yeah. And I would film a filthy toilet full of shit. Doesn’t take long, and it’s a cheap video.
AB: I would like to have SKID ROW reunited in their original line-up for their first single. I’d like to do the video for that. One camera in their rehearsal room, just filming. Rough and shaky, and while I was filming I’d already slit my wrists to die at the end of the songs because my life couldn’t get any better ever again. Slowly bleeding out while the song fades out. (laughs)
JF: I would probably retake some of those 80s videos where I always think, “great music but the guys look like shit”!
RoD: In August we asked NITRODIVE about a song with you, Andy. Albert said it’d be German-Swedish, but what would it be about?
AB: Tits. (laughs) Tits and war. That’d be a good combination.
RoD: And that in German from Albert.
AB: (laughs) Yeah! And we already got the song title too. ‘Tits and War’. (laughs and starts drumming on his legs while singing about tits and war; then, to SP) You will do the “and war”!
SP: (laughs)
RoD: Brian Molko of PLACEBO was once asked if he thinks that it is sad that he gets recognized as the singer and not the guitarist - Andy, how do you feel about that?
AB: I don’t see myself as a guitar player, but I don’t think I see myself as the singer either. I always just do it; I don’t have a big ego concerning me as a musician. I’m glad when it sounds good what I do, but I’m not a guitar virtuoso so that I’d have a big guitarist’s ego. I think many people from the past see me more as guitar player; others may see me more as the singer. I don’t know, I just do it. The external perception is completely different I guess - first of all probably “complete wacko who does whatever he wants”. Which I can live with very well!
RoD: Woman for a day! What does this day look like?
AB: I’ve always said that the only plastic surgery I’d ever consider would be getting tits. I would let myself go so badly and they’d have to cut me out of my armchair someday because I would just play with my boobs (laughs at SP who just shakes his head) and rub my coochie all day until it got sore.
(everyone laughs)
JF: That’d be all?
AB: That’s be all. One day as a woman, that’d be my day. (laughs)
JF: Yeah, mine too!
AB: Mine too! (laughs and high fives JF) You’d play with my boobs all day and rub my coochie! (they both laugh)
SP: I can’t even put myself in that position. That’s so far away for me... I don’t know. I would just try to understand it maybe.
AB: One day peeing while standing up at the service station, oh no, wait, then you’d be a man for one day.
SP: I think you could rather ask me what my day was like if I was a raccoon for one day, I could rather put myself in that position.
AB: Rummaging through garbage? What do raccoons do anyway, they are rummaging through garbage!
SP: Yeah, and run along the road.
AB: You’re a weird boy. (laughs and leans away from him) Three more questions and the band’s breaking up!
RoD: What’s the most embarrassing bet you’ve ever lost?
AB: I only bet when I know I’ll win.
SP: Me too, definitely. When I come up with a bet, run like hell, cause it’s clear that I’ll win. I ruined a lot of people with that. (laughs)
AB: (nods and points to himself)
JF: I can’t remember what it was about, but I had to eat half a block of butter.
AB & SP: Eww!
JF: But I went through with it.
AB: When was that?
JF: Schooldays. He would have had to eat cat food, and I really wanted to see that, so I prayed that I was right, but... sadly I wasn’t.
AB: I’d do most things anyway without betting, by the way. Because I just find it funny.
SP: (to their soundman) Yorck, can you buy butter?
(everyone laughs)
RoD: You have to go to jail. Who will make it the longest? Why?
JF: Slick.
AB: Slick.
RoD: I think so too.
SP: (laughs) What the... why? Because I just don’t care?
AB: Because you’re the one dry-fucking the toughest guys in the ass.
(everyone laughs)
AB: I’m such a pussy, I come in and instantly three of them give me a hiding until I’m completely worn out and lacerated, then they throw me in the corner and leave me to die. That’s the first two hours. Or I’d cry myself to death. Is that possible, crying yourself to death? I’d do that. One of my biggest fears is innocently going to jail. I couldn’t go in guilty because I don’t do wrong, but innocently going to jail is my worst nightmare. I wouldn’t survive an hour in there, I’d run against the wall head first until I’m dead.
JF: Everyone seeing Slick getting up knows that you could survive anywhere for a long time.
SP: I don’t think I want to know what you mean.
AB: Getting up? Explain.
JF: He could technically live on a cigarette and a coffee the whole day.
AB: And keep himself busy as well!
SP: (laughs)
AB: Julian is like me. He’d probably try to swallow his tongue and suffocate on it.
JF: But I can do karate.
AB: Oh, yeah, Julian can do karate! Maybe he would just do a roundhouse kick... when you think about it, he’s always so aggressive, and spoiling for a fight... and the skills he has! He can do the splits! Hey, I’ll force him to do the splits on stage tonight.
SP: Yes, please!
JF: You’re really asking the wrong questions, he gets weird ideas. (laughs)
AB: Julian is theoretically the hardest one of us.
JF: No. Slick is. I only can do karate if I’ve eaten well. The jail mush won’t nourish me enough.
AB: (to SP) Where did you even get this guy?
SP: I don’t know, found him somewhere on the road. (laughs)
RoD: And the last one - do you have any rituals before a gig?
SP: Standing in a circle, howling to the moon.
AB: Yeah, we learned that from POWERWOLF. We once read that they stand in a circle, hold each other’s hands and howl to the moon.
SP: One thing, if any... if any at all actually... we very often just ignore each other and say hi again on stage. We don’t adulate each other before the gig cause we do that all the time anyway, we don’t have to do that especially then. And then on stage, “Hey, what’s up!”
JF: It’s always fascinating when those two warm up their voices before the gig though.
AB: Yeah, that’s right. That’s like disabled pre-schoolers too, but without instruments. (laughs)
SP: (laughs)
AB: You alone are a lot of disabled pre-schoolers already.
SP: (laughs even more)
AB: Yeah, but, the normal drill, warming up, doing the make-up. Nothing special, nothing silly. We are basically very unspectacular. One would almost like to call us -
SP: Boring.
AB: Yes. Boring. (laughs)
RoD: Thank you for your time, guys!
All pictures by Sandra Bentz
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