What you think about Metal music loving people isn’t true. Metal heads aren’t scary, bloodthirsty people who live in dark, scary caves and eat nails dipped in blood for breakfast. They are extremely warm, nice people; believe me I should know, I spoke to THE metal head himself, Schmier from Destruction.
Last year was a busy time for Destruction; new drummer, making a new album, changing labels. But as they say ‘hard work pays off’, and pay off it did.
Schmier says “Last year was the year when we were preparing the album, so it was a crazy year where we had to find a new drummer, we were changing labels along with a lot of uncertainty. We changed a lot of things in the way we recorded the album. It’s hard to make time and make 100% sure that we liked the songs that we were going to record on this album. Now we have a drummer and the album is recorded and we have gained a great response so far. This year starts with a bang for us, so that’s great.”
Schmier talks about Destruction’s Day Of Reckoning like it’s a player in his U/12 soccer team he is coaching, harsh but fair.
“Our latest album was definitely a good one but it didn’t have the aggression that a Destruction album is supposed to have, so after we recorded the album we discussed the songs and agreed that the next album has to be more aggressive and more speedy. It’s a legacy in Destruction that every album has to be a classier one; I think that this one may be named a classic album one day.”
Being the lyricist of Destruction, Schmier has a very solid avenue where he can portray his feelings, political views and views of humankind. He sees writing as a way to release built-up tension so his head doesn’t explode upon impact with society. Most of Destruction’s songs deal with the controversial topic of religion.
“For me, religious fanatics are the root of all evil. If you go back into the history of humanity, all the wars and territorial wars are fuelled by religious beliefs. I just still can’t believe that after all those years and the evolution of mankind, we’re still fighting about bullshit like this. I believe that religious belief can be good for people who are lonely and need it in their lives but basically if you look at what we have nowadays, it’s crazy that everywhere in the world there are still wars going on about religious belief.
I come from a very conservative part of Germany where religion is really big, I found out that what is in the Bible and what is reality is too far apart. I found out that religious beliefs sound good on paper but not in reality and therefore I started to get my own opinion and since then I see a lot of fake bullshit going on; I see priests out fucking little boys. The religious topic will always be one of my topics, it’s not even the people who strap bombs to their asses and blow up stuff, it’s the Catholic Church that has the most fucking burden in their hands. There’s a lot of bad things happening ‘in the name of god’ and it’s a good topic for me to write about.”
But Schmier isn’t trying to educate us on this problem, simply trying to make us realize. Firstly making himself concrete on the subject before giving us a hint.
“I wouldn’t say educate, I would just say trying to give people a hint and idea you know. What I see on the road is maybe a different life that they see in their country. I don’t see myself as writing negative lyrics, I’m turning negative things into positive stuff and that’s something that I can deliver and hopefully it will make people think about certain things, that’s all I want. I’m first of all writing my lyrics to get shit out of my head because my head will explode if I keep it all to myself.”
The future is no worry of Schmier’s or Destruction’s, they’re just going to take it as it comes.
“This tour will take us until the end of 2012 then we’ll see what happens you know. 2012 is meant to be the end of mankind, so we’ll see what happens (laughs).”
Destruction’s new album Day Of Reckoning is out now. It’s killer.
