Emil Bulls – 21-10-2009

Interview with: Christoph von Freydorf
By: Nina Mende

Before seeing Emil Bulls on stage in Weinheim, we joined them on their wonderful red tour bus which was full of Rockstar Energy Drink to have a 20 minute interview with Christoph, the singer.
Here it is:

How’s the tour so far?
“Pretty amazing, we are overwhelmed. The tour has been very successful so far. A hundred people more per show than on last year’s shows. In Karlsruhe we had 550 people there. But usually more than 300 people. One city was almost empty, so will be today here in Weinheim simply because it’s a little town. We have been all over already. This is our 13th show of over 30 I think. We’ve played in Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Hannover, Konstanz…
Best so far? That’s hard to say. Somehow every evening was astonishing because the people just love our new stuff and rock out big time to it. But very amazing was Hannover, we didn’t expect anything. Usually Hannover’s crowd is more quiet with hardly anybody coming. But this year it was crowded and the people rocked the house. So did the people in Karlsruhe, but there it’s quite common. Very amazing as well was Hamburg, but that’s simply an amazing town. After parties also go a little bit longer there. We spent three days in Hamburg, so two days off after the show. All of us enjoyed the two days off there with even more drinking and partying.”

Did you expect the album to be so successful?
“Well, you can’t really say it’s been successful yet. That will show in about half a year due to the sales. But the first feedbacks from the fans are very positive and we are all very happy about it. Of course we didn’t expect the fans not to like the album since we are very satisfied with what we created. It would be weird if our fans liked something completely different than us. Then again it is always exciting. Our last album “Black Path” was much harsher and so probably some people expected us to stay like that. On this album there is more melody and some slower songs as well. So it is very nice to see that Emil Bulls fans like both equally. With “Black Path” many were happy that it was that harsh but with the new album there were also people hoping that it would be with more melodies and some slower songs again. On “Phoenix” you can find it both. Kick ass songs and very slow melodic pieces. But that’s what the band is all about, we have two sides and I think they are pretty well shown on this album like never before. And we like it.”

Were you worried about what the fans would think about the very slow songs?
“Sure, but for me personally I like slow music a lot. So why shouldn’t I do something like that with my very own band if I like it anyway? I so wanted to put the piano ballad “I Don’t Belong Here” on this album. Of course some of the band members were shocked “Oh my God, are you sure about that?” but I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t do stuff like that. It’s a part of us and why shouldn’t we show it. I am very grateful to be in a band where you don’t always have to kick ass and rock it hard, but also can do stuff like that and be yourself, slow down and relax. The cool thing was, we have also been performing “I Don’t Belong Here” on this tour, and it is nice to see that hardly anybody goes to the bar during that song or goes out for a smoke. It is amazing to see that the fans love this song to. We trained them well. *laughing*”

How do you perform it?
The piano is coming as a playback and the guitars set in later. It’s a live version.

You played with Deep Insight in Helsinki at On The Rocks. How did you get to do that and how was it?
“You mean the band Deep Insight? No, we played with LoveX (Deep Insight couldn’t play). It was weird to play with LoveX. It was great to play in Helsinki. There were about 70-80 people. Surprisingly there were just about as many people to see LoveX as to see us. Mostly Germans were there for us. It was a great trip. We met many great people there and get some contacts. We are planning to go back there. Definitely.
*drifting off chatting about Finland*
We also played in Kuopio and went there by car. We had a show in Helsinki, a day off and then went to Kuopio, played the show and went to the airport in Helsinki during the night. It was amazing and amazingly cold.
But yeah, it is definitely a plan to “conquer” the rest of Europe with this album. Finland was a first step and we hope to be able to expand it to all the Nordic Countries, so play like Stockholm, Tampere, Helsinki, Oslo, Gothenburg . I was four weeks in Stockholm and I liked it. But it really is like Hamburg *drifting off chatting about that as well since I found Stockholm and Hamburg looking a lot alike too*”

Where would you love to play, like in general?
“Definitely Japan. It would be so cool to play somewhere where you don’t understand anything anymore. Like you can’t read anything and are totally lost in translation. Bands who have been to Japan only tell positive stuff about the Japanese audiences and the country. They are totally ecstatic about rock. But I think that is something with every band. The dream of being “Big In Japan”. I am sure every band wants to go there. Besides that… well… we are happy with Europe for a start.”

How did the artwork of the new album came to existence?
“The title was set already. So the bird, the symbol of the phoenix was more than logical to take. So our illustrator designed it. We were all shocked about the colors and asked him if he’s serious. Five minutes later we all loved it. It’s not yet another black cover with skulls and such. This cover also draws a lot of attention. As we put it online for the first time several reactions were negative but also many positive reactions. We were quite scared about making shirts with this logo on it. What if nobody would buy them because of the colors. Surprisingly the shirts are selling very well, more than ever actually.”

Emergenza – long time ago, but how did you celebrate your winning there?
“Gosh, that’s really long ago. We won the finals in Munich. Then we went to the Europe finals in London. We spent four days there altogether including the show day. It was amazing for us since it was the first time we were out of the country with the band. It is a cool feeling to be in a plane with your band flying to a place like London. We were drinking and partying hard emptying all alcohol in the plane and so on. It was the first journey with the band and we felt so much like being rockstars now even though we were so far from being that. But through winning Emergenza we met our management. So basically it was the first step into being a professional band. It still took us four years till we got our first record deal but we played so many more shows after winning Emergenza. We weren’t popular and famous nor rich after winning but at least it was a little step into the right direction. Maybe we wouldn’t be here today without that, you never know.”

That was it, thank you very much for the interview.

Check out the new album “Phoenix”.

Links:
Emil Bulls MySpace
Emil Bulls Official