Fallen Tyrant all over the place

Good morning boys and girls,

our first gigs after the long break we took to prepare our album are done, and I must say they went pretty well. After all, we have only played live for about 10 times up to now, and we still get better with every single concert.

On February 23nd, we drove to Würzburg to support Vargsheim and Apokrypha at their double CD release party. The Immerhin, located beneath the Posthalle in an old nuclear safe bunker, was already familiar to DTM and me as we have been there with Wight. We found the guys from the other bands to be nice and relaxed folks, and so everything went well and in a nice athmosphere, although the sound check took a bit long and we had to rush through all our make up stuff. We played the entire album to a pretty well sized crowd, to an overall good reception, and got horribly drunk afterwards. At least DTM, I and Addi, who came with us, did, Sperrfeuer volunteered for driving back and was probably a bit annoyed by our obnoxious behavior. Vargsheim and Apokrypha turned out to be great live bands, with Vargsheim playing an athmospheric mix of black and doom metal and Apokrypha sounding pretty much like Damned-In-Black-era Immortal with the bass player of Iron Maiden. Also, they put on a rocking show, and I haven't seen many Black Metal musicians enjoying themselves on stage the way Andy and Freddy from Apokrypha do.

All packed up for Würzburg

The week after that gig, we had our first rehearsal with our new bass player – DTM is leaving for a longer trip to the US a while, and we and him don't yet know whether he'll be back in the band afterwards or not. There's no personal problems between us though, neither are there any musical disagreements, so much can be said.

Anyway, we managed to find a guy who is a fucking rad bass player to help us out for the time being. More info on that is coming, you know, we have to find a silly stage name for him and all that jazz.

Also, we had a foto shoot with a friend of our bass player who is a photographer that week for the upcoming album, which was drowned in fake blood and vast amounts of face paint. One of the band shots can be seen right here.

Fallen Tyrant 2013 CE

On a rather short notice, DTM decided to have us play at our home at the Oetinger Villa in Darmstadt on March 8th, together with local Thrash Metal overlords Blood Patrol. We set up four (!) full stacks on stage, and off we went. Blood Patrol blasted out their set of about 112% fast songs – you should really check these guys out, a mix of old Sodom and punk, all the good stuff. We decided to put on the most over the top live show so far. Blood, smoke, frankincense fumes, a gruesome video show and plenty of room on stage for DTM and me to get moving. The intensity of performing Fallen Tyrant's music live always leaves me in a slightly confused state of mind after the show, but this time it actually took me the most of three days to transition back to normal. The plan was to create a dense athmosphere on this gig, and I think we, and especially DTM, pulled that off quite well. Managed to scare some of the non-metal people attending the gig, too.

Stage set up in Darmstadt

  I'll get back to the topic of Nazis a bit later, but there's one thing to get off my chest right here because of a things that happened right before the Darmstadt gig: People who try to connect us to the NSBM scene and right wing ideology can go FUCK OFF AND DIE! I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we have no connection to that scene in any way shape or form. Each one of us has his political views, and we will not discuss those in public, but rest assured that none of us holds any racist or fascist opinions. We tend to react quite harshly to such accusations – not only are we concerned about our reputation as an honorable band, we also pride ourselves in being thinking human beings. As such, we take any try to connect us to far right idiocy as an insult to our intelligence. It's not yet time for the general and official deathwish, but anyone who spouts that kind of nonsense should at least be thoroughly patronized.

Another quick rehearsal where we played like arse, and it was off to Cottbus on March 16^th. Arroganz invited us there to support their CD release – we had met the guys a year earlier in Frankfurt, when we both played with Der Weg Einer Freiheit, and got along well, and that's how that one came to pass. Anyways, the way to get to Cottbus is to drive to the arse of the world, jump down, and keep on driving – it's in the far east of Germany, and the trip there has been my longest trip with any band to date. As the roads were free, the only highlight of the ride was Sperrfeuer waking up from a nap on the back seat, blurting out „Nekromisantrop!!“ and going back to sleep. Hospitality in Cottbus was great as expected, the stage set up took a while, and we had a nice chat with Chris from Blacksmith Records, among others. 

On our way to Cottbus

  We took the stage at about 2100, delivered our set quite well despite some difficulties. The drumkit was drifting apart in every song, and DTM was busy for the entire gig with avoiding falling down the weird stage stairs. Reception was great though, it was a lot of fun, at least for me, and after we got rid of our stage gear and make up, an awesome night of rock'n'roll commenced. (On a side note - you reap what you sow: DTM had made fun of me for dropping a glass earlier that day, but left a trail of destruction and broken glass later. Highlight: Dropping two entire cases of empty beer bottles.) BitchHammer from Leipzig are another band worthy checking out if you like blackened thrash in the vein of Aura Noir and Absu, and Arroganz definitely live up to the name they have made for themselves in the last years, a truly mighty live band.

Stage set up in Cottbus

We woke up in a damp basement (the toilet had been clogged the night before) among all the stinking pig's blood left over from the Arroganz show. Good morning, rise and shine!! Load in, and off we go again, another seven hour ride back. 

The bloody mess Arroganz left in the backstage

 We made the questionable decision to stop at a McDonalds in the middle of rural Saxony. Now, we're quite infamous for constantly making fun of everything, especially Nazis, and our offensive humour in general, but I guess we had cracked one Hitler joke too many that day. There were already a couple of cars with Nazi slogan stickers in the parking lot and too many skinheads inside the place. When we came out again, the car seen on the picture pulled up by the drive in, with a huge fucking Reichsadler (German Imperial Eagle) sticker on the back window and slogans in old German font written all over it! Well, it's all fun and games if you have a laugh about the dumb East German nazi skins (and they exist in the Wet too...), but I'm not too comfortable if a bunch of them are actually around. Nothing to do here, off to the Autobahn it was ASAP. I'm quite glad to live in Darmstadt, a town with virtually no nazi assholes, after all.

Well, that's a short – or not so short – summary of what we did in the last weeks, for those who care. Apart from that, we're still busy with the album release. Right now, we're checking out offers and the possibility of releasing it ourselves, but in the end it's all about the money, Lewbowski! Which sucks. We have at least set the deadline for ourselves to have it released within the next three months.

So long, and stay tuned!

Mithras Sol Invictus

on behalf of Fallen Tyrant.

Bands worth checking out:

Vargsheim - https://www.facebook.com/vargsheimofficial

Apokrypha - https://www.facebook.com/apokrypha

Blood Patrol - https://www.facebook.com/blood.patrol

BitchHammer - https://www.facebook.com/pages/BitchHammer/278289228952277
Arroganz - https://www.facebook.com/hellishhordes

Live pics:
Würzburg: http://metalfotos.de/index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid=26&g2_itemId=94884

Darmstadt (coming soon): http://www.natureofmusic.net/

Cottbus: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.435845743167353.1073741826.254431267975469&type=3