Interview to INSOMNIAK (Germany)

1. Hello dear friend, pleasure to have you on Rotten Pages ´zine. How are you doing today? Let us set the scene first. Where do we find you right now? Please describe your surroundings.

Hey guys! Right now we’re sitting in our rehearsal room staring at a laptop with your questionnaire. It’s situated in the town of Giessen, Germany (close to Frankfurt (Fráncfort del Meno)) – the town where we three are from.

2. Let us start out by learning a little bit more about the members of Insomniak, perhaps you can tell us about your personal musical background?

Every one of us has a large variety of tastes. Dennis used to play drums in a Grindcore band named “Ignite the Massacre”, Chris is also a member of a Blackened Death Metal band called “Oracle of Worms” and Jannik is part of the Stoner Rock band “PlasmaJet” (among his dozens of other duties…e.g. playing bass in “Dust Bolt”).

Although we’re all very versatile in what we like and listen to, we always lash back to Thrash Metal and that’s where we found common ground to form a band – in the love for classic Thrash Metal!

3. Most of you seems to be very “old” in the scene. What changes — good and bad — have you witnessed or experienced as a unit in the local and underground scene?

To be honest, in our local scene weren’t that many negative changes in the past couple of years. All the bands and artists still like to help out each other and doing and returning favors – whether it’s a musician filling in for someone else or a person who’s good on the record editing site doing some mixing, we all support and help each other with what we are best at.

4. Also, how hard is it to avoid falling into clichés when playing thrash metal of this calibre, and intensity?

The question is: Do we want to avoid the clichés? We think it’s part of the DNA of Thrash Metal to sport a certain look (e.g. hi-top sneakers, tight jeans) or have a certain design style (album covers, logos etc.). So, we don’t try to avoid the clichés, but we’re aware that it’s always a thin red line between representing the music we make and becoming a corny parody.

5. How do you see the thrash metal scene nowadays? So many subgenres, so many bands… Where is the border between the trve and untrve? What is different now vs. back then when you started?

In general, we think Thrash is a healthy, up-and-coming scene again, there are soooo many great bands right now that just seem to wait for their big lift-off!

Differentiating between “trve” and “untrve” probably isn’t fair towards the artists. As you can imagine, we absolutely tend to the “classic 80s/early 90s” Thrash, but we can appreciate if someone tries to evolve the sound a bit or experiments with it – but that doesn’t mean we like everything of that stuff. Of course, there are bands we don’t really like, where we think something like “Too many experiments”.

Back in the day, there were actually just regional differences in the sound (German style like “Sodom”, US style like “Megadeth” etc.) and some mixed Thrash with a bit more Punk, but you were always able to narrow it down to a common genre, nowadays the term “Thrash Metal” is much more diversified.

6. Your musical performance on the EP 2022 “Descent Into Insanity” is intense, to say the least, can you tell us what they are supposed to convey?

We always want to shove our wrath and aggression straight into our listeners’ face. We have no intention to take prisoners or get you in a relaxed mood – we believe the world sucks, and we want you to feel it in your bones!

7. When you write music, is it a group thing or is there someone who writes all the music and someone writing the lyrics individually?

Regarding the music, it’s mostly a bit of both. Sometimes one of us comes into the rehearsal room with some great ideas (doesn’t matter whether with single riffs or almost complete songs) and we work on them to get them playable, sometimes we just doodle around and find awesome stuff while doing so.

The majority of our lyrics are written by our singer Chris. Every now and then Jannik brings some cool lines or text fragments to work with, too.

8. How do you record your music? A pro tools set up? Garage band? Are you selftaught or do you have a friend that helps out with the mixes etc?

When we’re recording demos or stuff like that, we do it with software like Garage Band or Reaper, yes. For the demos our self-taught abilities are enough.

As mentioned before, we have many people in our environment to help us with setting up, mixing, mastering and more, so we can rely on our friends and acquaintances to get our sound professional.

9. What in your opinion is the difference between old school thrash (first & second wave), “old school”thrash (the revival) and modern thrash (the rest)?

Old school Thrash was very rough and anarchistic in its beginning. Of course, you had incredibly talented musicians back then as well (Mustaine, Hoglan and a ton more), but they all had this “wild” spirit in making music.

The second wave in the beginning of the 2000s probably lent a lot of this spirit, but kind of intensified it (think of stuff like Municipal Waste or Fueled by Fire).

A lot of modern bands seem to orientate on the phase many “classic” bands had in the 90s, which means adding a LOT more groove to the music, incorporating Nu Metal elements and stuff like that.

10. What would you like to see Insomniak accomplish that you have not been able to achieve yet?

Going on an extended tour! We’re not talking about 5 days in Germany but being abroad for weeks all around the globe.

11. With what you cannot make compromise – in your music and in your life?

    • Racist bullshit

    • these stupid parroting dumbasses that believe every simple solution someone throws at their feet without thinking by themselves for even one second

    • growing inequality between social classes

12. Playing live is a totally different beast to studio work. How does your music work in a live environment?

Despite the fact that we’re only a three-piece, our music works very well live. We’re able to transport aggression and energy to a live audience and don’t make any compromise on stage.

13. How is the mood in Germany these days concerning cooperation between musicians and the relationship between musicians and audience?

The cooperation and support between musicians and bands works very well, especially in the underground scene. We don’t envy or begrudge each other. The relationship between bands and audiences is probably “typically German”. Very reserved in the beginning, but if you’re able to touch someone with your art there’s a huge appreciation coming in in return.

14. On an international level, how has your music been received? Do you try to promote your music on a large scale?

As for now, we only have had feedback from our European neighbors like France, Belgium or Austria, but it was really positive altogether. Of course, we wanna reach out to a wider audience, worldwide ideally!

15. Let’s conclude this interview with you telling your future plans with Insomniak. I hope you enjoyed the interview.

We will release our album, which we completed just days ago, in the next weeks and looking forward to playing live extensively next year, we already got a lot in the works!

¡Muchas gracias por la entrevista!

https://insomniakthrash.bandcamp.com/music