Everyone knows about German web-zine Doom Metal Front which authors made unbelievable thing - after few years of on-line publications they've reached a status of real paper magazine! Those who already read 10th issue of Doom Metal Front of course have noted professional approach of Sven and Florian, so I just couldn't pass up the chance to publish here this interview writen by Daniel Thalheim. Welcome to the worlds of doom freaks!
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The question regarding the first gig is being answered by Florian with a shocked "Jesus!" - However, Sven does remember immediately that he went to see MANOS in a youth club in Spremberg around 1991 or 1992: "This was at times of La Bum, die Fette - their first Fun Grind release. Possible that I've seen a brass band live before that." All of a sudden, Florian remembers: "I experienced the first gig relatively late as far as I can recall. That was the farewell tour of FEAR FACTORY in 2001 in the AJZ, Chemnitz."
Well, you have to start somewhere. Of course, I was interested in the very first self-bought album of the Doom heads. In Florian's case that would be ROXETTE's successful album Joyride (1990), followed by GREEN DAY's Dooky. Sven is going back a bit further and tells me that his first LPs had been fairytales of the BROTHERS GRIMM. Thinking about it in a Doom perspective, he still finds it matching. "During GDR times, my first pirate tape was by DIE ÄRZTE." Songs like "Die fette Elke" were played on school trips. The first original self-bought LP was from a market in Poland, where you could by licensed copies of important Metal albums. "So it was either MEGADETH's Rust In Peace or - Wait! - OBITUARY with Cause Of Death and NAPALM DEATH's The Peel Sessions." Sven was being drawn to Doom by BOLT THROWER's and ASPHYX' heavy tunes. Lost in thought, he says to my recorder: "I chose the slow numbers especially, because I always took more interest in the sluggish tracks." The guys in his area were usually wearing KREATOR and SODOM shirts and were more into Trash or Death Metal. After he saw a guy with a CATHEDRAL logo, he became curious. In a Metal shop "I heard my first CATHEDRAL album, Forest Of Equilibrium, which just blew me away." With sparkly eyes he states how incredibly slow their music was. In 1992, ANATHEMA's Serenades was added.
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I'm amazed that he found the debut of PARADISE LOST too rumbling, however he bought their Gothic album (1991) on vinyl. A lot is based on a Rock Hard special about Death Metal that had been released in 1992. "They had a double page on Slow Death with bands like PARADISE LOST.", Sven is digging in his memories for his development towards Doom. At that time, he didn't speak of Doom, didn't even know about it. Probably still a reason why some people only come up with MY DYING BRIDE when they are being asked to name a Doom band. Sven thinks that everybody is referring to something different when talking about Doom and that there have always been bands, which played Rock and Metal slow. "Take TROUBLE as an example," Sven is stating, "Until some point in the 90s they were being related to White Metal. Only later they were put into Doom." Immediately, Florian is mentioning the song "Black Sabbath", which in his eyes is the milestone and blueprint of Doom itself: "BLACK SABBATH never saw themselves as being a Doom band. With the dark atmosphere they were spreading with their early songs, you can count Ozzy, Tony and Co. as pioneers of the later genre." One thing Sven is certain of: "Doomers are referring to the self titled song." In his eyes, this is also the most Doom-ish song there will ever be. "Still gives me goose flesh!"
The question after the influence of SAINT VITUS and COUNT RAVEN on the musical socialization was not being answered, cos this becomes really clear after a good think. I tried CONFESSOR, a band that wrote a very different history. Sven is laughing out loud and says: "They did neither have anything to do with Doom nor with Grind. I heard of them through the Gods Of Grind compilation of Earache. Also their music was a confused Rhythm carpet with unnerving vocals. Only after the singer had died did they release a genius Epic Doom album five or six years ago." My thought that Doom bands need an awful lot of time between their album releases is being nipped in the bud by Florian: "I beg to differ. There are a lot of bands releasing on a regular basis." - "Typical bands like SAINT VITUS or rather their members are also doing other stuff. We are the Doom freaks, who collect everything from those guys, not themselves! They are all old Punk Rockers.", Sven is pondering on. Florian adds that they had a break for almost a quarter of a century and I was informed that the guitarist David Chandler simply had to work and also had another band - DEBRIS INC. Scott WINO Weinrich was being busy with his own projects and homeless before founding SPIRIT CARAVAN.
Florian adds, "that the musicians aren't really thinking about sounding like belonging to a genre. It's just about fun. However, the more recent and modern Doom bands are releasing more regularly own albums, tracks on compilations and Inch singles." I wanted to know if the two guys are seeing themselves as a memory for the Doom scene with their site and the paper. "Probably a bit much, right?", comes the reply from Florian. "We're just having fun with what we are doing. The point is to collect and present events and to have people to get to know new things, they would not notice otherwise." - "The paper is being made by fans for fans!", adds Sven.
The first PDF issue of DOOM METAL FRONT was published in 2009 and a first try to leave something in a written form. Sven remembers: "I wrote in the editorial: ‹Print the magazine and read it on the toilet!›" - Florian: "It reaches back even further. At the start we only had the blog. Actually everything started in winter 2004 without even thinking about publishing a paper."
Sven had the idea to do something about Doom, because he couldn't find bundled information on the topic anywhere at that time. "Also there haven't been any nicely printed tickets with the band names at the underground gigs. It was my thought to archive the experiences in form of a blog, to have some pictures from my cheap digicam in the Internet and to have other people joining in." Also, the pictures are helping his memory, because he's a eye-minded person. Furthermore, both guys felt committed to the Independent and DIY idea, whereas the information aspect came first. The thought that some people might collect the magazine and open it again after five or ten years to re-read the articles would be an honor to Sven. "All we wish would be to leave something meaningful to the Doom posterity." For Florian it would be enough to be a part of something like a file in the archive. - Sven laughs: "As mentioned before, it's more like a memory help for me. The paper sums up what we have seen and thought."
How was the step done from Internet to print? Both are explaining to me that the big challenge is to integrate all incoming information into a set workflow that is being dictated by print appointments and deadlines. Such a project would not be working anymore without clear structures and planning. A premise for a working project is the distribution of tasks, because the intensive hobby has become a real amount of work in the evenings and nights, after their working day. "We need to cover the printing costs in the first place.", says Sven, "It's even a curios idea to believe one could live from Doom or get rich at all. - With the current team arrangement it isn't possible to do more than two publications per year and stay true to your own demand for quality." It is a financial question in the first place, because the production costs are mainly being prepaid from their own pockets. I started to realize: Sven and Florian have set clear and realistic objectives for themselves. When asking about the changes in perception of DOOM METAL FRONT from record labels and bands, Sven explains: "When we started printing, we realized that clicks don't mean anything, which is the main problem of the Internet. Nowadays people only browse, like things or dislike. It's different with the print and our target audience. You are actually holding something in your hands, you see the intention and work behind the product. In a time of regression in physical articles, it's both weird and awesome to be taken seriously and the work is being delivered to the audience directly." - "But this is normal as well", Florian is stating, "Everybody can do something in the Internet. Only through the existing product something is changing in the perception of people. Our paper is not low-budget stuff but well-produced." The homepage will remain in place to offer actual scene news: "The detailed and profound stories are in the magazine."
![]()
Doom is filling a small gap in the huge Metal scene, which Sven sees as the main malady: "Mainstream people think us to be a subscene or niche, but funnily enough always present. Often I'm doing an interview with a musician important in the Doom scene and run around in circles all excited, but everybody is just asking: ‹Who are you talking about?!›" Luckily Doomers are down-to-earth people you can have normal conversations with - without backstage barriers. - "Backstage at Doom gigs?" Florian is laughing. Sven: "Yeah right! That is non-existing." The gigs are usually taking place at underground locations, rather small venues. You can notice that the musicians are playing for the fun and not for fame. "These people are living for it. They go to work and rampage in their spare time. Therefore it's admirable that this is resulting in genius music." Sven feels comfortable in the Doom scene as it's "more personal and honest". He doesn't see himself as pure Metalhead anymore. - "With Doom it's not important to be a groupie, other things count more." Fortunately, it's all without the fries fork and the Hobbit rituals, which are normal at common Metal gigs.
I want to know: "How do you bang your head to Doom?" - "Well, just slower!", says Sven and shakes his mane in slow-mo, "What a question!" - "Sometimes it's a bit quicker!", Florian answers back. I'm being told that at Doom gigs the bands are coming out from the audience to go on-stage. The band going off-stage will stand in the audience to support the one that's playing. "It's all a big family, the musicians respect each other.", says Florian. - Somehow this reminds me of the good old Blues scene, which didn't have any competitive thinking. "This is the thing I love so much about Doom", concludes Sven, "I have found my family and my heart's rhythm again." Slowly but surely I start to understand the whole Doom thing. However Florian is explaining it to me once more: "I know that from my old band, where it was always said that we want to play harder, quicker and more complicated than all the others. It's different with Doom. It's all rather relaxed, and the musicians are helping each other. Everything is interconnected, so many Doom fans are playing music themselves or arrange concerts. One of the reasons is that the scene itself is quite old and never turned mainstream. You'll hardly find people younger than 20, if even. Doomers left their fast times behind. It's more about feeling music."
I start to realise that Doom is more than sitting in your dark secluded room far away from life's reality and feeling sorry for yourself helped by depressive music. Sven says: "Death and Black Metal heads, Punks, Hardcore freaks or the odd Power Metal fan meet each other at Doom gigs. It is a meeting place of people who are bored of their original scene and just want to listen to good music." There's a certain age when a person starts to feel embarrassed to like certain kinds of music. - "When growing older, you are abandoning that fact. Today I have no problem with admitting that I was listening to MILLI VANILLI earlier in my life. After you have left behind all the extreme phases, you can admit that you just like music."
WORDS & PICS BY DANIEL THALHEIM.
Doom Metal Front
Doom Metal Front | Facebook
Doom Metal Front | Bandcamp
The question regarding the first gig is being answered by Florian with a shocked "Jesus!" - However, Sven does remember immediately that he went to see MANOS in a youth club in Spremberg around 1991 or 1992: "This was at times of La Bum, die Fette - their first Fun Grind release. Possible that I've seen a brass band live before that." All of a sudden, Florian remembers: "I experienced the first gig relatively late as far as I can recall. That was the farewell tour of FEAR FACTORY in 2001 in the AJZ, Chemnitz."
Well, you have to start somewhere. Of course, I was interested in the very first self-bought album of the Doom heads. In Florian's case that would be ROXETTE's successful album Joyride (1990), followed by GREEN DAY's Dooky. Sven is going back a bit further and tells me that his first LPs had been fairytales of the BROTHERS GRIMM. Thinking about it in a Doom perspective, he still finds it matching. "During GDR times, my first pirate tape was by DIE ÄRZTE." Songs like "Die fette Elke" were played on school trips. The first original self-bought LP was from a market in Poland, where you could by licensed copies of important Metal albums. "So it was either MEGADETH's Rust In Peace or - Wait! - OBITUARY with Cause Of Death and NAPALM DEATH's The Peel Sessions." Sven was being drawn to Doom by BOLT THROWER's and ASPHYX' heavy tunes. Lost in thought, he says to my recorder: "I chose the slow numbers especially, because I always took more interest in the sluggish tracks." The guys in his area were usually wearing KREATOR and SODOM shirts and were more into Trash or Death Metal. After he saw a guy with a CATHEDRAL logo, he became curious. In a Metal shop "I heard my first CATHEDRAL album, Forest Of Equilibrium, which just blew me away." With sparkly eyes he states how incredibly slow their music was. In 1992, ANATHEMA's Serenades was added.
The question after the influence of SAINT VITUS and COUNT RAVEN on the musical socialization was not being answered, cos this becomes really clear after a good think. I tried CONFESSOR, a band that wrote a very different history. Sven is laughing out loud and says: "They did neither have anything to do with Doom nor with Grind. I heard of them through the Gods Of Grind compilation of Earache. Also their music was a confused Rhythm carpet with unnerving vocals. Only after the singer had died did they release a genius Epic Doom album five or six years ago." My thought that Doom bands need an awful lot of time between their album releases is being nipped in the bud by Florian: "I beg to differ. There are a lot of bands releasing on a regular basis." - "Typical bands like SAINT VITUS or rather their members are also doing other stuff. We are the Doom freaks, who collect everything from those guys, not themselves! They are all old Punk Rockers.", Sven is pondering on. Florian adds that they had a break for almost a quarter of a century and I was informed that the guitarist David Chandler simply had to work and also had another band - DEBRIS INC. Scott WINO Weinrich was being busy with his own projects and homeless before founding SPIRIT CARAVAN.
Florian adds, "that the musicians aren't really thinking about sounding like belonging to a genre. It's just about fun. However, the more recent and modern Doom bands are releasing more regularly own albums, tracks on compilations and Inch singles." I wanted to know if the two guys are seeing themselves as a memory for the Doom scene with their site and the paper. "Probably a bit much, right?", comes the reply from Florian. "We're just having fun with what we are doing. The point is to collect and present events and to have people to get to know new things, they would not notice otherwise." - "The paper is being made by fans for fans!", adds Sven.
The first PDF issue of DOOM METAL FRONT was published in 2009 and a first try to leave something in a written form. Sven remembers: "I wrote in the editorial: ‹Print the magazine and read it on the toilet!›" - Florian: "It reaches back even further. At the start we only had the blog. Actually everything started in winter 2004 without even thinking about publishing a paper."
Sven had the idea to do something about Doom, because he couldn't find bundled information on the topic anywhere at that time. "Also there haven't been any nicely printed tickets with the band names at the underground gigs. It was my thought to archive the experiences in form of a blog, to have some pictures from my cheap digicam in the Internet and to have other people joining in." Also, the pictures are helping his memory, because he's a eye-minded person. Furthermore, both guys felt committed to the Independent and DIY idea, whereas the information aspect came first. The thought that some people might collect the magazine and open it again after five or ten years to re-read the articles would be an honor to Sven. "All we wish would be to leave something meaningful to the Doom posterity." For Florian it would be enough to be a part of something like a file in the archive. - Sven laughs: "As mentioned before, it's more like a memory help for me. The paper sums up what we have seen and thought."
How was the step done from Internet to print? Both are explaining to me that the big challenge is to integrate all incoming information into a set workflow that is being dictated by print appointments and deadlines. Such a project would not be working anymore without clear structures and planning. A premise for a working project is the distribution of tasks, because the intensive hobby has become a real amount of work in the evenings and nights, after their working day. "We need to cover the printing costs in the first place.", says Sven, "It's even a curios idea to believe one could live from Doom or get rich at all. - With the current team arrangement it isn't possible to do more than two publications per year and stay true to your own demand for quality." It is a financial question in the first place, because the production costs are mainly being prepaid from their own pockets. I started to realize: Sven and Florian have set clear and realistic objectives for themselves. When asking about the changes in perception of DOOM METAL FRONT from record labels and bands, Sven explains: "When we started printing, we realized that clicks don't mean anything, which is the main problem of the Internet. Nowadays people only browse, like things or dislike. It's different with the print and our target audience. You are actually holding something in your hands, you see the intention and work behind the product. In a time of regression in physical articles, it's both weird and awesome to be taken seriously and the work is being delivered to the audience directly." - "But this is normal as well", Florian is stating, "Everybody can do something in the Internet. Only through the existing product something is changing in the perception of people. Our paper is not low-budget stuff but well-produced." The homepage will remain in place to offer actual scene news: "The detailed and profound stories are in the magazine."
Doom is filling a small gap in the huge Metal scene, which Sven sees as the main malady: "Mainstream people think us to be a subscene or niche, but funnily enough always present. Often I'm doing an interview with a musician important in the Doom scene and run around in circles all excited, but everybody is just asking: ‹Who are you talking about?!›" Luckily Doomers are down-to-earth people you can have normal conversations with - without backstage barriers. - "Backstage at Doom gigs?" Florian is laughing. Sven: "Yeah right! That is non-existing." The gigs are usually taking place at underground locations, rather small venues. You can notice that the musicians are playing for the fun and not for fame. "These people are living for it. They go to work and rampage in their spare time. Therefore it's admirable that this is resulting in genius music." Sven feels comfortable in the Doom scene as it's "more personal and honest". He doesn't see himself as pure Metalhead anymore. - "With Doom it's not important to be a groupie, other things count more." Fortunately, it's all without the fries fork and the Hobbit rituals, which are normal at common Metal gigs.
I want to know: "How do you bang your head to Doom?" - "Well, just slower!", says Sven and shakes his mane in slow-mo, "What a question!" - "Sometimes it's a bit quicker!", Florian answers back. I'm being told that at Doom gigs the bands are coming out from the audience to go on-stage. The band going off-stage will stand in the audience to support the one that's playing. "It's all a big family, the musicians respect each other.", says Florian. - Somehow this reminds me of the good old Blues scene, which didn't have any competitive thinking. "This is the thing I love so much about Doom", concludes Sven, "I have found my family and my heart's rhythm again." Slowly but surely I start to understand the whole Doom thing. However Florian is explaining it to me once more: "I know that from my old band, where it was always said that we want to play harder, quicker and more complicated than all the others. It's different with Doom. It's all rather relaxed, and the musicians are helping each other. Everything is interconnected, so many Doom fans are playing music themselves or arrange concerts. One of the reasons is that the scene itself is quite old and never turned mainstream. You'll hardly find people younger than 20, if even. Doomers left their fast times behind. It's more about feeling music."
I start to realise that Doom is more than sitting in your dark secluded room far away from life's reality and feeling sorry for yourself helped by depressive music. Sven says: "Death and Black Metal heads, Punks, Hardcore freaks or the odd Power Metal fan meet each other at Doom gigs. It is a meeting place of people who are bored of their original scene and just want to listen to good music." There's a certain age when a person starts to feel embarrassed to like certain kinds of music. - "When growing older, you are abandoning that fact. Today I have no problem with admitting that I was listening to MILLI VANILLI earlier in my life. After you have left behind all the extreme phases, you can admit that you just like music."
WORDS & PICS BY DANIEL THALHEIM.
Doom Metal Front
Doom Metal Front | Facebook
Doom Metal Front | Bandcamp