Exploring the Emotional Side of Metal with Kärbholz at Wacken Festival

0:04 Hi, you have learnt to es crue for see Wow crazy Young. This is the pipe main here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio and I'm here. With Carepules from Germany near Cologne. Nice. Nice, and so fucking you're on the holy ground. How does that feel? It's fun? It's amazing fun, yeah. Right, and also feels like really uh kind of honor because I think playing here is a dream of ninety nine percent, maybe one hundred percent of all rock and metal bands around the world. Oh yeah, and being blessed to be able to do that it is. It feels really really good. We just said, like a talk we talked about that and were.

0:58 Like, fucking amazing. We meet, we meet like hour some of our heroes backstage. How better could it be? I know, right, yeah, it's awesome. It was like the first time when we played here, I was okay, I can die happy now. Right exactly. It's funny too because you think of, like, okay, so how are you top being at the biggest metal festival in the world, Like what do you do the top? Back? You know, you think in your head because once you've gotten here, you've like you've arrived. Yeah. Absolutely It's like the cherry on the top of the ice cream. That is so amazing life playing music and having fun all the time, you know, right, absolutely great.

1:38 Yeah, so now let's go travel back in time to the very beginning of each one of you entering music, not even necessarily in this form, but what was that first time in life that you knew music is what you wanted to do. My parents bought a guitar when it was fourteen years old. They tried it before when they go to the organ lessons and something. Like that, and I hated it, so they bought a guitar. When I was fourteen. I went to the teacher and he teached me to play poly from Nirvana, my favorite. Bad back then, and I was like, what the fuck? I will be the hero and every campfire, so this is amazing.

2:21 I can play the songs of my heroes. So this really catched me and this was the beginning for me. For me, it was I had the when you're little child in Germany, you go to a kind of pre education like kindergarten musical wise, and after that I learned the piano and then I started with the drums, and this is where I stuck because that's where I got the most talent, and always music touched me on an emotional basis. So for me it was like, yes, a music is why I can leave my sorrows, where I can get pumped up again, where I can get power, you know, regain power. And yeah, so for me it was like, yeah, I want to do that. I want to I want to feel the emotion and I want to share the emotion as well.

3:11 You know, it's so true. Music is the best therapy for you the artist and for me the listener. Like you're getting it out of you, and then we're taking that and it's using to get. It out of us. I always say, like the marsh pit, people don't understand not go in there to hurt main people. You go in there so you don't hurt main people in the outside world. They're assholes. Yeah, it's absolutely true. Yes, right, you know, I know there's there's quite a few people that did not get their ass kicked because I went to a marsh pit. I think it's not I think in life in general, it's all about like energy, Yes, getting energy and releasing energy, and music is quite for us and for millions of people it's the perfect way to get energy and get rid of energy. So playing a show is really like it's it's hard work, but you get rid.

4:06 Of all these like emotions and energy. You'll just stuck in your body and totally you go into the most pit and you will leave it like released from all these. You leave it in the pit. You leave it in the pit. A couple of years ago, unfortunately, my grandson passed away and I was doing sorry to yeah thanks, and I was doing coverage at this festival, riot Fest. I left the festival, went and did all the family and funeral stuff, and that was the year Slayer came back to do a headlining show, and they're my all time favorite band. I was at their first show ever in like a thousand others. After that, I went back to the festival and I went into that Slayer pit, and I took all five stages of grief and put them in that pit, and it was healing. You know. It made it so much easier and faster for me, Like things tough for us for anything that happens forever, Yes, but to what degree and how much it really affects your life?

5:15 Yeah, that's absolutely true. I can identify with that because when I'm on stage, when I play music, or even if I'm in the crowd and listening to music, sometimes everyday emotions that I can't get rid of through on an everyday basis, I can leave that there. I I can cry, I can laugh, I can have a good time, I can have a bad time, but after that I'm all good again. That's yeah, it's really good. And also we have a quite old song. It's called mood Mater. It's more like it's about like you bigger than you think, than you might think, and you're strong and you can reach everything you want to. And there are so many stories around that, like people coming to us and telling their story what they connect with this song. And I remember a girl we just were shaking hands and the after a show and she was she was in second row, and then she came to me and well, I don't want to shake your hand, I don't want to have an autograph or something.

6:09 I just want to tell you are. And this song is the reason why I'm still alive because I was like suicidal and you told me in that song I shouldn't do that, and so we were thinking, like it wasn't quite a I was crying afterwards backstage, because how much more can you achieve with like doing like stupid music. You save someone's life and this is. That's beyond Valkin. Yeah, like that's it you have that happened once and that's enough that you're like, it just confirms why you do what you do. Maybe this is why you are born saving one other life? Could see? Could be? Could be? That's totally the point. And I'm sure there's others that you don't even know about, you know, And that's why I also think with songs.

6:58 There's two types of artists. There's an artist that I have a meaning to a song and they want to make sure you have the same meaning to it. And then to me, a true artist lets the meaning be whatever it needs to be for that person. They don't have to have the same reason, the same meaning as you do, as long as it's doing it for you and it's doing it for them. Yeah, this is the point where we come back to energy, you know, like, if you're a real if you really truly believe in what you're doing, and we know what our. Songs are about for us, Yeah, but. Somebody else can can interpret it in another way and that's just fine. But as long as we put all our heart and all our energy in that song, either on a record or on stage, then it's true for us, and it's true to anyone who's listening, you know.

7:55 You know, what I think is pretty funny is that everybody in the world thinks us metal heads are like tough, mean, evil And there have been multiple artists just here at VAK and then I've interviewed that talked about getting emotional and crying over certain impacts, and that's really what I know about metal heads. We're just big, you know, like Teddy Bears. Yeah. Absolutely, it's like people going around, somebody who's not into the music coming here and looking at all the black shirts and people and like, oh, they're looking so evil and so mean. And then afterwards everybody is hugging and dancing and crying and laughing and having a fucking good time.

8:44 Nobody gets hurt, nobody gets I don't know, fucked up in any way. And it's just a big community, and it's all about emotions, all about feelings, all about the true feeling behind it, whatever you feel about it, you know. And the perfect example is I went to get at lunch earlier on the like rare break I had in all. Four days, and they had some like. Celtic but dowb not even totally Celtic, but a Celtic band playing an evansn song, very mellow, and there was a circle pit and it looked to me like the most fun circle pit ever because nobody was like it was just like, you know, even less violent than.

9:33 A scop pit. It was just like they're just playing ring around the rosie. And I'm like, that's fucking goal as shit. And I wish the whole world would get that message, you know, because I have a belief if we put the whole world except for the political leaders, in a mosh pit, we could work out all our fucking problems and leave the fucking political leaders out and we all love each other then. And I think in Marshpid is a perfect example for people can be friendly and. Really like warm to each other, say like they are. There are people in the moshplit. They're voting for different parties.

10:14 They have different opinion opinions about the about the world, about politics, about love, about whatever, but they share it in this moment and there are no borders between people. They shouldn't. It's like communication, and this is a way to communicate and show I respect you, I can do have fun with you. Yeah. Also if you have another opinion about some things. Exactly. It's a place for a community. It's a place for being together totally. And we are one race to human race. We don't have to all be the same. I don't know why we're in a world now. Well, I'm only gonna be friends with people that think. Just like me. Like, that's not how you learn.

10:54 You learn from people that don't think like you, you know. And then the fact the matter is, to your point, Last night, a bunch of us at the end of the night while Running Wild was playing, we're hanging out talking and and somebody said something, and somebody else said, we don't talk politics here. And that's the point. We gotten here to escape. We come here to get away from all that shit that's fucking pounded into us and that people are obsessed about. And that's why we can get along because we leave all that shit at the door. Yes, And that's what we try in our songs most of the time. We try to leave politics out of it, and we try to you know, we don't we don't want to teach people because we don't know the truth. No, we don't have you know, we have don't have access to the truth. And my truth is not your truth or his truth, you know. So we try that to have a good time with the people with ourselves in the band while playing on stage, why rehearsing, and also you know, like but most of the time we tried to teach peo, try to teach you just try to say to people love, just have a good time and love each other exactly the rest, you know, have a good time forget about the rest.

12:15 Perfect example, what you're saying too is I have a brother that if somebody doesn't agree with him, they're uninformed and uneducated, and I always answer him. Or they grew up somewhere different from you, or they had different friends in you, or they had different education in you, or they had a different job, or ten million other things that form their belief system. I believe nobody's belief system is wrong. It just made me wrong for me. Yeah, this is like telling or try to tell people the truth. I think this is the problem. So I think like politics and should have also their room also in heavy metal music, but trying to tell people kind of truth.

13:06 This is the problem we. Get like politically, we have political songs too, but they are more like, Okay, if someone offers like an easy solution for a big problem, just oh, just be careful with this, yeah, just be open mind, never know, just be skeptical, just be smart, educate yourself, just know what you're talking about, and then you can make your decisions. But do that first and perfect example my country is everybody is so polarizing right now, and only their truth is the truth, and the fact is not fucking one of us really knows the truth. We don't know. I get these arguments with people all the time. How do you fucking know? You're not there in the government or behind the scenes. You don't really know what the truth is in anything unless you experience it yourself.

14:02 It's also so funny because we had kind of the same conversation last night when we were on the other FESTI where we played yesterday, And it's always like, you know, people living in their bubbles, and everybody in their bubble has the same truth, you know, but they're not they're not stepping out of it because they are in their bubble and they're like Okay, here everybody is like minded and everything's fine, and I can talk like I talk and I get no nobody's contradicting me, you know, yeah, and so yeah, okay, right, But how can you learn or how can you convince somebody maybe that your truth might be his truth or her truth exactly. That's why in debate class in college you learn to debate both sides, not one. Well, you guys are badass.

14:47 Your music's badass. I'm so glad you're here falking. Thank you. Tell everybody real quick how they can connect to you on socials. Buy your merch because they can't listen my show unless they buy your merch and anything else like that. Your albums all that stuff. All right. So we're releasing a new album on September the eighteenth this year, twenty twenty six. It's been called stumpsy Off. You can get it on Spotify, on Amazon, you can get it everywhere. You can stream it, you can buy it. We do our march ourselves check out shop, dot carepos, dot dee, and we ship took America, we shipped to Canada, we shipped to fucking everywhere nice and hopefully if enough people in the United States and Canada buy our shit. We can come over and play a show.

15:38 We would love to. I'm putting out there. I do all the festivals over there. You guys need to be there, and I love that you send to America too, because not everybody can. But we have a worldwide oient, so anybody in the fucking world can buy your merch So no excuse if they don't buy it or not lessening my show. No fucking excuses. Thanks a lot for being here and banking forever. Ventures of Pipe Main, Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for c u I Radio M