Monday, March 17, 2014

Blessed Hellride Interview

1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the band?
We are Blessed Hellride, a Heavy Rock band from Trier, Germany. Established in early 2010, we developed our music step by step to Heavy Rock. A few cast changes, which are propably indispensable in a bands history, left us 5 morons, who since 2012 perform together. Tiny Fuel at the vocals, Jack Stoned at the lead Gibson, The one and only goddamn Oos at the rhythym guitar, Zed Undead is our Weapon of Bass Destruction and the Cptn takes over the drumkit. Our music is true and hard Heavy Rock with groovy riffs, catchy hooklines and stories, which are drowned in whiskey, asphalt and feeling. The selfgiven motto „Booze n Roll“ says it all!
 
2.A few months back you had released a new ep, how would you describe your musical sound?
Well, we often get ask this question. We like to descripe it as: HULK SMASH LITTLE MAN! If you don´t understand this message, turn up the volume and listen again!
 
3.Can you tell us a little bit about the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the music?
As in question one already indicated, we love topics like the easy way of life, freedom and brotherhood. We decided once, to bring a good mood and an easy spirit to our listener, because people walked through enough in life, they have to handle with. We even have the one or another sad or serious topic in our songs, but the main focus of attention is due to „take it easy“, enjoy your life“ and „let the good times role!“
 
4.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'Blessed Hellride'?
The name Blessed Hellride means what it means. There are no secret hints or profound meanings hidden in. To be honest, we sat in Jack´s living room, confering about a catchy bandname.The allmighty and lovely Oos and Jack stood in front of Jack´s CD rack, proposing several names to the rest. Black Label Society are one of our idols we are inspired by, so naming our band after our favorite BLS Album seemed legit to us. Thats how the band name comes to life.
 
5.What are some of the best shows that the band has played over the years and also how would you describe your stage performance?
The best shows were always that ones, where the audience celebrates our music with us the most. In our case this were the Metallergrillen 2012, Rockenhausen, Germany and a show in Deidenberg, Belgium, in a shed called „Take Five“.
To describe our stage performance is barely impossible for us. We don´t see us, you know? Everything we can say, is, we do not dress up, we have no concept show and we try not to puff ourself up. The 5 guys on the stage are the same you meet on the bar after the show. We have fun playing and celebrating with the audience, not more, not less.
 
6. Do you have any touring or show plans for the future?
The next shows we play is on 29th April. at the Monopol, Leiwen, From Dusk Till Dawn party with livestrip. Is an institution we play once a year. Afterwards there will be the „Metallergrillen Warmup“ in Diehlkirchen on the 17th of May and on the 2nd August we perform at the Festivalkult in Porta Westfalika. On the 30th of August we perform at the FARK, Reden and the 27th Septembre we play in Düsseldorf. More shows are not confirmed at the moment. We are looking for another festival in Summer, but our main focus is due to the recordings of our album in late 2014. Therefor we are organizing financial concepts and searching for labels at the moment. In summer we will try a crowdfounding project to get money for the records. You will get all informations about when you like and subscribe to our facebookpage (www.facebook.com/BlessedHellride) or to our newsletter on our Homepage (www.Blessed-Hellride.com). We appriciate every support we can get!
 
7.The new ep came out on Monster tapes, can you tell us a little bit more about this label?
Sorry, but no, we can not. We published our EP online with the Newcomernetwork in Germany. They work together with Monstertapes. They are a pure distribution label, only for online distribution. They brought our music to Amazon, Itunes, Musicload, Spotify and so on. That´s all we know about.
 
8.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of metal and rock?
The main feedback we ´ve got till now are from ths US and from Europe. But it seem to be one guy from India, who is an outstanding Blessed Hellride fan. That totally suprised us and we appreciate a lot!
Most non-german feedback came from Belgium, where we made good friends by performing there several times. A fact we are proud of is, that in Amsterdam, the bartender of the bar „Excalibur“ - which is probably a household name for one or another – likes our music and plays it, as far as we know.
Feedback we got till now is without exception positive.
 
9.Where do you see the band heading into musically during the future?
We are always balancing on a narrow ridge between Hard Rock and different subgenres of Metal and are always trying to keep our songs interesting and convincing at once. That are the parameters we considering, writing our songs. This is the way we will go further. There are no ambitions to add modern, electronic or core parts to our sound. Oldschool is the keyword - that is significant!
 
10.What are some bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
The name Blessed Hellride reveals apparantly one of our main influence from the beginning. Beside Black Label Society there are Clutch and Down influencing our Style the most. We try to pick up the aspects we like from all three and mix up our own sound.
The question for musicstyles influencing us isn´t that easy to answer. We are five guys who came from 5 different subgenres of Rock. Beside Jack, with its roots in Classic Hard Rock and Tiny with Southern and Hard Rock roots we combine the gracefull and glorious Grindcore Junky Oos, the Psychobilly Punk Zinni and Mr. Progressive Rock Captn to the bunch of meanings, we are. It´s needles to mention the discussions while songwriting, but thats our recept to wirte our songs.
To name our ideals concretly: our guitar fraction is manly influenced by Zakk Wylde and Randy Rhoads. Tiny seems to orientate itself to Ronny Van Zant, Phil Anselmo and Big Daddy Rich while Zinni looks forward for Geezer Buttler. Captn smashes the sticks on the drumheads in order to reach Tommy Cluefetos, Simon Phillips and Maik Portnoy.
 
11.What are some of your non musical interests?
Some of us are outstanding tattoo freaks and its on you to guess who. Two are sharing a youtube-gaming-channel or having a second band. It is an outstanding issue for The unconquerable and magnificent Oos, to have private time with its first lady, its couch! Jack loves to trim the bushes in its garden - Good for us, so we have a nice place to have barbecue and drinks in summer, where we can stratch a point and enjoy life. We hang together most of our spare time. Cozy evenings at the bar or chilling in the rehearsal room are items of our agenda.
 12.Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?
At first we want to thank you for the chance to get this interview. We had a lot of fun to answer your questions.
We use this part to set a call up to everyone who feels adressed! We recognized, that small concerts with new bands not get recognized anymore. It seems to be „out of fashion“ to give small bands a chance and it seems also that the audience became lazy to explore new music. We ask everyone who reads this to support lokal and underground bands. In every region you can consume possible good music of three or four Bands once a week for low money.

Concluding it rests to say thank you for reading, take it easy and let the good times role!

Booze n Roll forever, Motherfuckers!

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