Don't but do sing along
don’t hail from the small town of seesen near hannover in germany. in 2002 they will celebrate their 10th anniversary.
don’t use patches of traditional, death and thrashmetal to create their own style of aggressive modern music: DEASHCORE the lyrics are half german half english.
interview with Stefan on 26-02-2002
Please give us a short introduction of yourself?
don’t hail from the small town of seesen near hannover in germany. in 2002 they will celebrate their 10th anniversary. don’t use patches of traditional, death and thrashmetal to create their own style of aggressive modern music: DEASHCORE the lyrics are half german half english.
don’t are:
thomas antl - vox
stefan santag - gui, vox
dennis lippke - bass
jörg janssen - drums
Why did you choose this bandname? Find it not too negative?
on the one hand we didn’t want to use one of those typical metal band names. some bands restrict themselves too much in their musical style simply by calling themselves ’dark thisandthat’ or ’satanic thisandthat’. on the other hand it’s a very brief and simple name. easy to remember and a motivation to think about its several possible meanings. so, NO!,we DON’T find it too negative. we like it a lot.
What style did you played in the beginning?
in the very beginning we used to play some kind of what people now call true metal. we did songs by manowar and metallica but also stuff from nirvana or die toten hosen. (we were young and needed the money...hahaha!) but that was 1992/3/4.
Why did you move on with the style?
we had some line-up changes 94/95 .younger guys with a more extreme taste of metal music joined the band. that had a great impact on our music. bands like fear factory,sepultura, machine head, etc. became very successful and popular and were (are) among our favourite artists.
How did you came a top live band?
performing live, performing live, performing live. the more you find and express your own favourite type of music with a band, the better you get on stage. you must push yourself to perform the best you can, even if the audience thinks you suck!
Why are the first songs in German and the second 4 ones in English?
we just thought of what would be the best order for the songs on the cd. we always start our concerts with ’dein reich komme’ (thy kingdom come). so it became the first song. then we wanted to blew everyone away and took one of our fastest songs: ’durch meinen kopf’(through my head) . we wanted to put the 10-minute title track at the end of the record. and so on... when everything was done, we realized that we divided ’have some fear’ into the german and the english part.that happened by accident
Aren't you afraid to cut of the foreign market with German songs?
No. the german language sounds very hard and edgy. that works well with a lot the songs. lyrics like those in ’hölleluja’ (hElleluja) wouldn’t work in english.many things you can only express in your native language properly while others might just sound stupid in german. that’s when the english language becomes more important.
Explain the term deashcore?
Death metal, thrASH metal, hardCORE. get it? very innovative, don’t you agree? some hardcore people hate us for using the term CORE for our very metal like music. but we DON’T give F*CK!
Who the heck is Lucy?
we just wondered if mr satan could be a mrs. we liked that idea ,gave the bitch a name and wrote an asskicking song about her.
What do you do in your spare time?
sleeping (dennis), dancing (jörg), workout (thomas), wrecking computers (stefan)
What is so great on Hamburg? Worthwhile a visit?
actually it’s only me (stefan) who lives in Hamburg. the rest lives in Seesen. haven’t seen a lot of Hamburg myself yet. but it is definetly worth visiting.
What is your fav place to visit?
I liked the U.S. very much. I’ve been to Washington D.C. and New York and saw the WTC when it was still there. I met a lot of good people over there and feel very sorry for the cruel things that happened last september. one of our newest songs is dedicated to the people in the states. it’s called ’heavyweight’.
How did you get sponsored by Pit's Kunstgalerie?
three of us got tattooed by Pit. he likes our music very much. so we decided it would be a good idea to support each other.
Was it hard to find sponsors for the album?
yes, it was. two sponsors were easy to find: pit and dacapo-music where we buy nearly all the stuff we need for the music. the owner, gösta grabau, is one of the best friends and supporters of don’t.he and mark and olli are our favourite technical crew and do lots of great mixing jobs for us. thank you, friends!
but we didn’t manage to find other sponsors except those two and a musician-supporting club we are in. we even wrote to our favourite beer brewing company oettinger-bräu and asked for sponsoring. they felt pretty honoured but said no because they don’t spend any money on advertising to keep their prices at a low level.
What were your expectations when recording the album?
having lots of fun. and we had! we recorded ’have some fear’ in a small village in a studio located on an old farm with lots of animals. we partied the night away in one of those thingies you can find at construction sites. don’t know the right word, sorry. many people were looking forward to a new album by don’t. so there was a positive kind of pressure on all of us. until now, we did not disappoint anyone.
we invited friends to sing along on the record or to play an instrument. we knew that it would become special for us. and we still feel very proud for ’have some fear’ because we put all our energy into it and lots of people and friends have helped to make this possible in the one or the other way.
Are you staisfied with the album?
after a while you always discover small things that might have turned out better doing them differently. but you have financial limits and only a very short time to decide when you’re in the studio. we wanted to record a total of 8 songs in just 5 days and managed to do this. so, without any doubt we are very satisfied with the result.
Your turn to promote your album?
listen to it if you like mean, heavy, rolling, rocking, pounding metal!
Last rites?
we thank Twan for featuring us on BRUTALISM and hope to see many of the readers at one of our concerts in the future.
metal rulez!
