by Vpower
The band: Hammer King
Country: Germany
Answers by: Titan Fox
(vocals, guitars)
Featuring talented
musicians from Germany’s heavy/power metal scene, HAMMER KING emerged last year with their debut album
“Kingdom Of The Hammer King”. Now, it is time to unleash their second opus
“King Is Rising”, with a nod towards faster paced songs compared to their debut.
Titan Fox was talking to Metalbrothers.es and we enjoyed it, a very interesting
chat.
Hello Titan and
congratulations for your new and second album "King Is Rising"
Titan: Hello Metalbrothers, Hello Spain! Thanks a lot, we
are happy to see "King Is Rising" released and it's great talking to
you!
When was the band
formed and how did it happen?
Titan: The legend says that the band was spiritually formed
in 1978 by the Hammer King – we started working in 2014, recorded "Kingdom
Of The Hammer King" in 2014, released it in 2015 and started playing shows
in 2015.
“Kingdom Of The
Hammer King” was your debut album, released just last year 2015. The machine
doesn’t stop...
Titan: We really hoped to have a strong follow-up within 1,5
years and thankfully the songs came along really great – and our label Cruz Del
Sur Music has been able to put the album out equally quickly. The machine
doesn't stop, right. A new band needs to live through putting out albums and
playing shows. We try to fulfill both jobs at the same time!
Comparing “Kingdom Of
The Hammer King” with "King Is Rising", I think the second is wining,
how do you see it?
Titan: I am really glad to hear that! Honestly, it was tough
writing songs for the second album as the first was such a spontaneous effort.
This time we really worked very much in the depth of the songs, the demo we did
for the studio was absolutely worked out into the smallest details. So after
some months of hard work we knew that "King Is Rising" was gonna be a
strong album – but after we came out of the Studio Greywolf (Hail Charles!) we
felt that the album was very much a natural thing. We could feel the confidence
and the strength of a grown band. Still it's hard to compare the albums – they
are brothers, maybe "King Is Rising" is the bigger brother of the two
:-)
Some people calls it
power metal, but I think "King Is Rising" is more heavy metal than
other thing, although with some roots in other styles, as it’s common in the
Metal nowadays.
Titan: Well, I am old enough to remember Heavy Metal before
someone brought up the term Power Metal. So I never really got the difference
between the two "styles". I think Hammer King's sound is not as
"fat" as most Metal bands' sound is. We play many traditional open
chords, use less deep strings than it is mostly done nowadays – we do not use
samples or keyboards at all, so actually we are quite Heavy Metal in its
original sense. We sang all the choirs ourselves, we played everything
ourselves, one guitar on one channel, the other on the other – strictly and
always. We played the twin leads with two guitar players, not one guy playing
both tracks. We even played the recorder (wooden flute) and the castanets
ourselves. How much more Heavy Metal can you be?
Horns up! Let’s talk
more about it. If your first album was released last year...the Mathmatics say
that you preparaded all the pack in less than a year, how was it?
Titan: Yes, we really did. I can't remember how soon the
King wrote the first songs for "King Is Rising" after "Kingdom
Of The Hammer King", but it must have been quite early – and honestly,
there are already bits and pieces for songs for a third album. I personally
love doing new stuff, it's what I find extremely exciting about being in a
band. Right now the demo-computer is empty, it's a thrill seeing it filling up
again!
But we have become really very structured and focussed. We
have equipment in the rehearsal studio at Castle Rockfort and we record and
arrange all the time.
Who has more power inside
the band to decide about the composition?
Titan: The KING has all the power! All songs are written by
the KING, of course each of us has a certain realm he is responsible for. Dolph
does the graphics and designs, the online things, orga work – Gino the
financial stuff, K.K. takes care of the warehouse and the inventory, I sort of
am the musical director and I do the talking. Plenty of work for everyone!
When listening to
"King Is Rising" I was thinking: these guys have to burn it up on
stage. In that sense your songs remind me of bands such as Hammerfall, Grave
Digger, etc that are a bomb in the live shows
Titan: Very honestly: Yes, we are! We Are The Hammer, we
bring you fire! We can certainly say that we do deliver, no matter how tired,
how far travelled, how big or small the stage is, we love playing live, we love
to sing about the King. And we proudly play all you hear, we sing everything
live, no tapes except for the intro!
The cover is stunning and we get the hammer in
the middle, kind of an icon already?
Titan: The KING rules with the Reichshammer, so the hammer
will always be an icon on the cover, absolutely! We always bring our Hammer on
stage and I have used it to rest my feet and hands on in the studio as well –
and the people love taking a picture with the hammer at the shows!
I can imagine it
hehe. As I said before, I was surprised by the variety in your songs. For
example, King Is Rising offers a great heavy power song, with excellent
melodies
Titan: Thank you very much for this compliment! We have
always been very much into keeping everything melodic, big chords, big
melodies, the sort of songs you can directly understand when hearing them live.
We are a live band – and we want the audience to sing for the Hammer King.
We get also some epic
heavy metal approach in Warrior’s Reign
Titan: Ross The Boss once said to me "You know,
everyone tries to play faster all the time. I try to play slower, that's more
difficult" – he is right! I love to play moody and slow solos, so I am
very much into doing epic stuff. We had Chancellor Of Glory on the first album,
Warrior's Reign is like its successor, we also have Dolph's marching snare in
the intro and the melodic bass lines. Actually the entire song was a jam
session we recorded at Castle Rockfort, we only added vocals later on. I love
the vibe of it!
Cool, a very
interesting vision. Even we will find some speed metal dose in Battle Gorse. No
one can say you repeat the same song once and once again
Titan: We are happy to have such a variety of songs in this
very specialized musical path that Heavy Metal seems to be. Many people have
requested more fast songs at our shows – and when we got the story of the
Battle Gorse, we knew it needed to be fast song! The riff was first, the rest
was a jam session. The song was good on the demo, but it got a killer in the
studio. The high screams were the last thing I sang for this album. It even is
on the studio report video!
What is your favorite
song?
Titan: It changes, at the moment it is Last Hellriders,
Battle Gorse and Eternal Tower Of Woe.
If you were to make a
tribute album, what bands would you cover?
Titan: Ohlala! That's a tough one, really! Maybe we would
spare out all our obvious influences like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and so on
and just do unexpected stuff like Simon and Garfunkel, Wishbone Ash and die
ärzte – I can't tell! Maybe we would just never do that – who's ever been
better than the original band itself?!
Anyway, we thank the
effort answering. You have signed by Cruz del Sur Music and the official presentation
of "King Is Rising" will be in Rome at the "Burn This Town
Festival", sharing stage with other bands in the Italian label’s roster as
Sacreed Steel. How do you feel about it?
Titan: That's really great! We are so much loking forward to
that! Gerrit came on stage at a Keep It True show we played with Ross The Boss
many years back and sang Secret Of Steel with me. So of course I am absolutely
looking forward to meeting him again. I love Sacred Steel and I am also looking
forward to seeing Gianluca Silva and Battle Ram again. Some old friends from
Italy will also be there, so this is really gonna be one hell of a night to
kick the second Hammer King chapter into action!
Apart of that event,
do you have any other touring dates for next months?
Titan: We are constantly looking for shows and at the moment
we are getting more shows than before. We will have a release party at the
Hardrock Café in Kaiserslautern, there's Mannheim, Cologne and Ludwigshafen
coming up. Two summer festivals have already been confirmed. But we are looking
for support shows with bigger bands and we are looking for a booking agency. We
want to play more and more, you never improve more than by playing live – and
the King wants us to play His songs to as many people as possible.
Thanks Titan for this
chat and we wish you a big success with the powerful "King Is
Rising", hopefully we will see you through Spain!
Titan: Thank you very much, brother – the pleasure was all
mine! Thanks a lot for the support! God bless the King, may the King bless you!
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