Following the release of their superb new album 'Doom Of Destiny' we just had to catch up with lead singer and founding member Bernard Weib before the band head out on tour with Helloween to find out more about this mighty band who have been treading the mighty metal boards for many a year now.  

MM - Firstly congratulations on the superb album ‘Doom Of Destiny’.
Berny - Thank you. 
 

You know today there are no good drummers left in the business.  Everybody’s playing with mediocre drums and that’s why we asked him to do it professionally because of this risk.  He’s working with Rage now and it’s great to see it’s all coming together now for him.  The other one Rob is also working in the factory too and in his free time he is our bass player.  Apart from Rob everyone else is doing this professionally. 

MM – Having Andre in 2 or 3 different bands must be difficult when you’re trying to plan around the recording and touring of an album?
Berny – I must admit that when he was working in the factory it was difficult too because he did not have so much time.  He’d be working Monday – Friday until 6 pm and that can be a problem some times.  Sometimes he could not make rehearsals until 11 pm.  Now we can save time.  Another thing is with this combination of playing and touring in these other bands, sometimes it can be a little bit of a problem, particularly with some of the Helloween gigs because when we are in Czechoslovakia he is in South America, but now his gigs are cancelled.  Overall it works though and that’s the main thing.   

MM - What’s been the initial reaction from the fans and media as a whole towards the new album?
Berny – Well everybody thinks we can hold the level or we can drop the level sometimes, and I think it’s wonderful that here we have something that everyone thinks we have held that level.  Usually the first interview or review will show us whether we have gone the right way or not.  We have no idea yet as it is still early days. 

I am always surprised that at the end of the day we can get a product that we can say … yes that’s cool! My problem is I am very critical of what I do and I could work on something for 10 years and still get new ideas on how to do it differently.  Thankfully I have Harry to hold me back and say … hey, we’re finished, it’s cool!  When we’re finished I maybe have one month during before I listened to this stuff and it was wonderful because after that month I put it into the cd player and realised it really does sound cool.  I like it very very much because there’s a lot of different music styles and another aspect that’s import to me is to experiment on the opening.  This is another reason why I think it is perfect.

The main thing was that he had decided to leave the band and so we had to start searching for a new guitar player.  We invited a lot of guitar players in Germany, even famous guitar players, but the problem was nobody could play the riff from ‘Kingdom Of The Night’ the right way, I don’t know why.  It’s like with a lot of bands we see in the studios, they have the image and all the girls hanging off them but if they need to tune a guitar they need a tuner!  They cannot do it by their ears anymore and they need a tuner now to tune their guitars and they cannot play any more on the beat or without a group or whatever.  It’s all very very disappointing.

Then we found Marco in a music shop, 22 years old and to be honest with you I didn’t think that this would work at this period of time, but I said Ok let’s check it out, and he was perfect.  He’s really cool and he plays everything great and he’s in the same mood and he’s growing up with UFO, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.  This is not typical for his generation.  He is like a copy of our generation only he is younger, I think this is maybe the reason why this works. 

MM – Did you allow him writing space?
Berny – Well usually we would not have allowed him to do this, but during the solo’s he plays very fast and he was very prepared for the recording session so we said … hey if you want we’ll let you do one song and you will get a good one.   That is the reason he wrote ‘Devillish Belle’.  It’s the song he wrote on and I don’t think you notice the difference to the other songs, it keeps with the tradition of the other songs that we wrote. I compare him sometimes to Walter Pietsch our first guitar player, he’s never happy with his solo’s and is always looking to make them better and better and he’s very very motivating, even for us. 

MM - The album continues where ‘Paradise In Flames’ left off, which for a large extent was used as a benchmark as to how this album had to be so much better.  How did you achieve that?
Berny – You’re right there was a bit of pressure during the song writing sessions because everybody liked the ‘Paradise In Flames’ album very very much, and we had to think about how we were going to top this, or at the very least hold the same level.  It was a little bit difficult for us, but by the end of the day we were just thinking about the way we are recording the ‘Doom Of Destiny’ and try to improve it a little bit. 

We focused a bit more on the drumming on this one.  On ‘Paradise In Flames’ the drumming was good but when we were doing the song writing for this one we decided to feature Andre a little more on the double bass drum stuff.  Maybe that’s why everybody thinks it’s on the same level, because it is perhaps heavier.  The album is very strong.

MM – You’ve started to us different elements to your songs with Lakonia being one of the more obvious elements, using these female vocals to balance with your singing and perhaps trigger different ideas.  She played a part in ‘Paradise In Flames’ and obviously plays a larger part in this new album.  Is this something that you want to concentrate on and take further in the future?
Berny – Well to be honest at the beginning it was only for this one song.  She’s not a real member of the band and is really only a guest musician.  She has her own project on the go Lakonia and the main reason she is featuring on the Axxis cd again is that we are producing her new cd, to help make her more well known.  This works really well but the problem that we have touring with Helloween now is that’s she’s working in a music school too and she has no time because it is for such a big period of time this tour.  This is a problem that we need to check how we can deal with it.  It will be a little bit disappointing for us. 

Although it is a lot of fuss, it is also a lot of fun to work with a female singer on stage and the people liked her very much.  This is the reason we included her on this cd too, but this will be her last one.  We will never work with another female singer again.   It is not Axxis in the regular way.

MM – Well people have become accustomed to hearing her feature as part of the record.  If you suddenly turn around and not have her, could you perhaps loose an element that gave you a slightly different audience?
Berny – Well we want to loose this element on the next cd, we want to bring in another new element on the next cd.  We are working on a few ideas and it may be that we bring in another singer or something else, we’ll see what happens.      

I thought … let’s produce a whole Lakonia cd.  The problem is that nobody knows Lakonia and that was the reason why we thought … hey, let’s put Lakonia on our band’s cd, like I said before, to help with both bands development.  In the whole scene female voices are now cool and so it fits perfectly. 

It’s a bit like introducing a new instrument into a rock band.  In the beginning we did not have keyboards in the band, but then the producer said on our debut cd … ok, let’s see how it works if we have keyboards.  At this period of time everybody hated keyboards, it was a risk to work with a keyboardist on stage, but we were doing this and we got a lot of possibilities to work with other intros and things.  That is why Lakonia was like introducing another instrument into the band, we could work in different creative ways, both during the song writing and during the production. 

It’s also interesting for the ear not to just hear only one singer all the time.  The other thing for me, to be totally honest with you, is that on stage it’s great to be with another singer as we can confide in each other when we're on stage together.  Like Meatloaf, I love Meatloaf very very much and during one of his shows he was fighting with this background singer on stage and it was wonderful to watch.  It was great entertainment, really cool.   

MM - Since the bands debut release ‘Kingdom Of The Knight’, each album since then has taken the band to another level, do you think the bands attitude of trying new things has assisted in keeping the bands music fresh sounding?
Berny – Both at the beginning of the digital century and the beginning of our looking back to what we did in the past with the ‘Kingdom Of The Knight’ thing, the ‘Matters Of Survival’ and ‘Voodoo Vibes’ were very important for us because they were a time of learning phase where we were finding out what we had to do, because we were trying to find our orientation at that time.  But during the ‘Back To The Kingdom’ phase we went back to our old studio and we decided we wouldn’t use another producer, we would work in Germany and take our time for that cd. 

That was possible because we had this old digital studio and the equipment was cheaper and we didn’t need a studio with costs from 2,000 euro’s per day.  All these times are gone and that makes us totally independent from all this producer business stuff.  It was cool and we were successful after the ‘Back To The Kingdom’ stage. 

MM – What other artists have you produced?
Berny – Well we have produced Lakonia and also a small trash metal band here in Germany.  We had an offer from Magica in Romania and actually I had word back yesterday that their singer Ana will be coming out with us to sing with us on the Axxis tour.  This is not a secret but I only found out about this yesterday by SMS.  

MM - What motivates the band to keep going when metal music has always been somewhat of a taboo genre?
Berny – Well we are selling around about the same amount of cd’s as Gamma Ray in Germany.  When I was growing up and listening to this metal music and enjoying it, it was very important to me that is was not all that popular at the beginning.  Then later it did become a lot more popular and became very well known in the business.  I was growing up with Judas Priest and ‘British Steel’ and a lot of Samson for example and bands that nobody knows these days. 

I don’t think the scene has changed all that much.  It’s the same amount of people who are listening to this music but over a period of time.  This is an advantage because the younger rock people are discovering rock music in a different way.  They say this is against my parents and nobody is listening to this kind of music except me.  I think it is coming back but hopefully not too popular because I think when it became really big business it was not necessarily a good way to get good bands into the business. 

I think even today you have so many releases with mediocre rock bands who cannot play live on stage that I think it is a shame.  For example when you are playing on a festival, 90% of these bands are playing with a computer in the background.  We are signing by ourselves and we need to sound check but they don’t because they always get this perfect sound because it’s coming from a Mackintosh.  I think this is a shame.  It is modern technology in the wrong hands.     

MM – Do you know how long you will have to play when you are out on tour?  Have you had a chance to think about what your setlist will include, will it be old classics or more of the newer material?
Berny – I think when we are playing we will only have around 35 minutes.  This is just a relatively small period of time but hopefully if the people like us we will get longer.  In Germany we will have maybe 45 minutes.  The problem is nobody knows this album so well so sometimes it is better to play all the older stuff because then the people can sing along with us.  If we had released the cd in July then maybe we could include some new songs but this tour is very very close to it’s release.  I think we are maybe playing 3 or 4 songs then some old stuff.  We are going out to entertain and are going directly to the point.   

We’ve actually got a German song on the cd, it’s the bonus track on the cd called ‘Engel Aus Hass’.  It is actually one of our favourite songs but everybody in the band said we cannot do this as no one will understand it, also it is a little bit risky, that’s what they think.  So we said ok let’s do it as a bonus track because we had to release this song and I like it very very much.  I have to get used to it and that is why it is special for me. 

The other song is ‘Arabia’, the title song, that’s special to me because there are many different styles of music that went into this song.  There’s some double bass drumming at the beginning of it from Andre, some very fast drumming, and then we have the special melodic lines for Axxis.

Then we have the songs ‘The Fire Still Burns’ from the opera and ‘Astoria’ which is also from the opera, because ‘Astoria’ is about a virtual state without a territory where somebody’s imagination is in a state.  Everything was influenced by this theatre thing and so these songs are my personal favourites. 

MM - What can you tell us about the artwork for the cover of 'Doom Of Destiny'?
Berny – Well the ‘Blood Angel’ is on there, is you look at it you can see some blood on the neck.  The ‘Doom Of Destiny’ stuff is hidden by these kinds of gods who are influencing mankind over a period of time.  The ‘Doom Of Destiny’ and ‘Better Fates’, these are the gods, the idols for mankind.  ‘The Fire Still Burns’ really only has the fire on the cover that’s all.  ‘Father, Father’ is about a conversation between god and a girl, where somebody is talking and when they are saying ‘Father, Father’ they are saying a prayer.  This comes in combination with the gods.   

We don’t take every line of the songs too seriously, we just try to take those ideas and add them into the cover.  We looked at the ‘Blood Angel’ and the ‘Doom Of Destiny’ and some of the titles of the other songs on the album to see how they could combine in this artwork. 

We used the same artist we have used in the past.  He tried to speak with us to get a different style because he’s an artist and he doesn’t want to do the same stuff all the time.  He wanted to only use the Axxis logo on the cover but nothing else, that’s fine but I wanted something more.  The problem with a cd as opposed to vinyl is that you cannot see a lot of things so you need to make sure the cover is very worthwhile, I feel this is very important for copy protection.  If you have only the logo on the cover it may have class but if you have something more than that then you make it a bit more of an expensive cover.        

MM - With a long and varied career, what have been the highs and lows since the bands beginning back in 1989?
Berny – Ah there have been so many.  Falling on the stage when we were playing at the Rock im Park show, I fell down about 3 metres and it hurt but I was singing all the time while lying on my back.  As they say the show must go on!  Even on my back there was no problem! (laughs).

The beginning really was a highlight for me because signing the demo cd to EMI over here in Germany and getting a major contract with them worldwide, which was an advantage for Germany but a disadvantage worldwide as we never really got the chance to play abroad from Germany.  We just concentrated in Germany and there we were very very successful and it was wonderful.  We were selling a lot of cd’s but at this time we didn’t know this was a huge amount of cd’s.  We were selling 150,000 cd’s and everybody was saying that this could not be right because it was so many cd’s.  That was very strange for us.  Then people did not realise we were coming from Germany and the press saw the band very critically, the German’s are sometimes very strange with how they see their own artists.  It does not matter if it is with the music scene or with actors.  It’s not the fans it’s the press people, if you are successful they are very harsh on you.  We never got a chance to play in other countries though. 

We also had a problem with the cross-over grunge scene which followed because we began to loose our orientation.  We didn’t know what we had to do and how we could put our style into this new style.  Then we went ‘Back To The Kingdom’ and we had smaller records and no major labels and we returned back to our roots and everything was wonderful. 

We played our first time in Spain and it was an unbelievable gig.  We came on to the festival area and there were maybe only about 200 people there at the front of the stage.  Then we started to put up our back-drop and people were coming out from all over the corners and shouting out to us, they knew all our songs and all the words.  I was totally surprised because we were selling our cd’s there and I didn’t know how this would work.  In France we have the same kind of thing so now the cd sales are growing and growing outside of Germany and this is why I am now  here in England talking to you.  Monday I am in Italy, Thursday I am in France, so it’s great that everything works now.    

MM - With such a long career there have been vast changes in the music industry over the years, one notably being the Internet, how have the band grasped these new innovations, are you able to take full advantage of what the World Wide Web has to offer?
Berny – On one hand I think it is horrible because the music industry has gone down the drain.  I think today maybe my local bakery get more people in their shop than EMI have working for them now.  It’s a sad situation and I think that is maybe why the music quality is going down the drain a little bit because now the record companies are signing every hobby band and they don’t have any money left for the professional bands.  It’s a strange development the way the music business has gone. 

On the other hand a lot more people know of Axxis now, especially across America, and they invite us to come and play across their country now.  One the one hand the cd’s are selling very poor, but our gigs are stuffed with people.  The cd’s are now only for promotion.  The other thing is the costs of production, which are maybe 20,000 euro’s or 25,000 sometimes, for promotion then this is just too much for a cd.  That is the other problem because we need that money back and if you take the risk to invest the money into the production then you need to know you will get that money back.  If the people don’t buy the cd or maybe download it for free then you have a problem. 

On the other hand I do think it is a development and a bit like Radiohead, it makes you independent from the record industry if you are getting to release it on a smaller amount.  It’s a new direction to be independent from the business, sometimes this can be better for the good bands.     

MM - After the tour with Helloween and Gamma Ray, is there any chance of a headline tour to support the new album?
Berny – Yes we have to do a headline tour because a lot of our fans, particularly here in Germany, are very disappointed that we are only getting 35-45 minute shows.  They want to see us headlining.  I like support tours because then we can play early, then we can drink and everything else, so it is a perfect situation and we can visit the show and see the headliners.  We have only to work for 35-45 minutes so it’s a very comfortable situation.  On the other hand we need a real tour and we’re doing this tour as people expect a full Axxis tour and I think they will perhaps get that in March (2008).  After this tour we do a break then we go straight out again.    

MM - What new merchandise will be available on tour for fans to buy?
Berny – We do have a lot of merchandise but on this tour we are only allowed to offer 2 articles.  This is the business deal but it is ok.  We got this regular tour t-shirt and we also have this smaller XS logo’d t-shirt in black and white.  This is very important for us because it helps promote the cd and it looks great on the cd.  In Germany we will get a t-shirt called Blood Angel only for the girls and we will have another t-shirt with a bit more aggressive colour scene.  In Germany we will have a total of 4 shirts, caps and stickers.  

MM - For you personally, what are your plans for the future? Is there still a special goal left that you want to reach as a musician?
Berny – To be honest when I was 16 years old I wanted to be a rock star.  Ok, so maybe I’m not a star but I get to play my music and I can sleep whenever I want.  I can work now in a studio totally independent from the business and I get money for being creative and writing songs.  It’s a great situation.  I don’t really have any goals in life as such.  I have a lot of friends that are really cool and I want to keep those friends, this is very important to me. 

My goal for Axxis on the business side of things is simply to make Axxis more known outside of Germany.  Now it’s the beginning for me and I will give us 5 years to make it more known for example here in England and in Sweden and Italy.  This is the next step for us. 

MM – Is music something you would say you can learn or is it a talent?
Berny – Well I can give you two examples here.  We have people coming to the studio who are straight out of university and to be honest with you they can play their instruments but they are not talented.  Then we have another thing, for example Joe Cocker, can he sing really?  But he has a great attitude, he is a great performer and you get a lot of emotion in his voice.  If you look from a university point of view what is singing then he’s not talented, but if you look at it from the fan base then they will say he is a unbelievable artist.  So this is the problem sometimes.  I know that a lot of musicians, even here in Germany, are perfect musicians but nobody could play ‘Kingdom Of The Night’ with a good groove.  Yes they can play the riff but it was very hard without emotion, there was nothing, no grooving, no feeling, nothing, it was cold.   

Then we get Marco who can tune his guitars without a tuner, he plays the riff with the feeling and it swings a little bit and that is the reason I think … What is talent?  What is music?  It’s not so easy to describe.  If someone can send emotions on a cd or send it from a stage to the audience then he’s talented.  It doesn’t matter which way he is playing his instrument.     

MM - Finally thanks again for taking the time out to chat with us, we really appreciate it and can I ask do you have any final messages for our readers out there?
Berny – Well for me this is very interesting because when I was making music and got the record way back in 1989 and I was playing with Black Sabbath in the Hammersmith twice and the show was sold out.  Brian May was on stage and working with Tony Martin and Cosy Powell on drums. For me this was an unbelievable experience and it’s great to be back in London after all this time.  

Now 20 years later I’m sitting at this table with you and we’re speaking about the new album ‘Doom Of Destiny’.  It’s very interesting speaking about the bands development and its history is all coming back now.   

I hope that the 35 minutes will be enough to show the people how Axxis are now because maybe they have Axxis differently in their minds when we had our wonderful haircuts in the late 80’s! (laughs).     

MM - With that we bid our goodbyes to Berny for this interview and would like to thank him again for taking the time out to chat with us today and we look forward to seeing the band when they visit these shores in January 2008.

Special Guest Interviewer - Our Man In The Pub

All content copyright of

unless otherwise stated.

Site affiliates: