PipemanRadio Interviews Grave Digger

0:04 Hey, you have unto censure. For see wow for you young ro whycoume of America. It's time for the Adventures of whipe Man. I'll V four c why dot com best Pompeas is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man's count team. When I saw the name, when I saw out. Right, Dame Love, guys, have to just nay lord, I can't be saved name Love, Guys, I saw stat call.

1:12 This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four CY Radio. And I'm very exciting because our next guest, I am an old fan of from way back, and we have some new music forty five years from the beginning. So let's welcome to the show. Chris from Gravedigger. How are you. I'm very fine, Thank you very much. It's a pleasure for me to be in your show. Oh well, pleasure to have you. And you know, it seems like the trend is going on in this past couple of years. A lot of the old school great German metal bands are all like being visible now in the US. For sure, you know, they were probably still visible in in Europe. But you know, it's just amazing that this great music is coming back. And I'm always in awe of somebody like yourself that after doing this for forty five years, you can still create new music.

2:16 It just blows my mind. How does that even happen? Like how you still have these creative ideas. I think the most important thing is that you love what you do, you know, And I'm gifted because I can do what I want. I can do my creativity. I can record albums, I can play live, and that is the greatest gift as a musician. And yeah, I can feed my family from that, and that give me the power and energy to carry on with the band and to create new records. There you go. And you know, it's funny because I do, like you mentioned records. I'm still intero vinyl as you as we all should be. And like right in front of me is my vinyl collection and in there is heavy metal breakdown.

3:07 That's nice, man. Uh. Ten days ago ahead, it was my birthday, I know, sixty three years old birthday. Thank you. I made myself a present. I bought a record player again, you know, after all, and then I started listening to all my old records on vinyl, and I discovered all this stuff more or less again, I listened to April Wine, you know, the band, Yes, great stuff and to a point of Entry from Judis Priest and yeah, I'm a young guy again with all this vinyl stuff, you know, and it's all right. I listen not so to the new Gravity Go on vinyl and that sounds also amazing.

3:53 Yeah, well how can it not? But and you know, like it's amazing too. Even in my vinyl collection and case collection that I still have, there are bands that I have and albums I have that you can't even get anymore, not even on Spotify or Apple Music or anywhere else. And that's the beauty of vinyl is you just have it forever. It's a keepsake forever. Nobody can just hit a button then drop it off. Yeah, but this is music culture, you know, Yeah, you have his music culture. The other thing what you told me now is on Spotify it's music fast food. You know.

4:33 That's a I've never heard it described that way. That's the perfect way to describe it. Absolutely. I don't even know how anybody nowadays even those songs, because they don't even listen to whole songs anymore. Like people always when they're riding in the car with me, They're like, how do you know the lyrics to every single song? Well, it's because I sat there with my headphones on, spent my hard earned teenage money on an album, and listen to it like fifty million times over and over again while I read the lyrics that came in the album. Yeah, when I am in my car and I drive most of the time with my boy and bring him to the studio. Is also a musician, so he doing me some kind of disco while I'm driving, and he doing all the stuff with Spotify. And then I told him, hey, son, can you do the song until the end and not skip it after one and one and a half minute.

5:34 I want to listen to the song till the end. But this is the music culture of the young people, you know, and you are forced to write songs, so thirty seconds until the chorus is coming. But I don't follow that. I do my old stuff, heavy metal, and I'm an old fashioned guy in this case, and I'd love to do it this way. I love it because you know, I talk about this all the time, and you know, I was doing an interview a while back and we were talking about how they have, and you just mentioned it, how they've actually changed how songwriting is to accommodate the people that have zero attention span nowadays. And I think these people nowadays are missing so much of what music is. It's not just a song. It's an experience. It's a journey, it's a feeling. It's artwork. It has meaning, and it's not a formula like you're saying. Old school metal is not a formula. It's just creativity. And it's interesting to me.

6:43 I said this just the other day that some of my favorite songs, people today would never even hear the whole song because it could be like thirty to sixty seconds of an intro that doesn't sound anything like the song. Yeah, for sure, I see that. That is the reason why I told you that music nowadays is fast food. You know, the bands like Sabaton or Beast in Black, all these oil pop bands, they start or less with the chorus. You know, Yeah, people notice directly, oh wow, you know, and we start with you know, we start with a riff.

7:30 You know. That is the most important difference between those bands and Grave Dig or sexon and except exactly, I would never leave these paths because that is the music I love and I want to carry on. I know that the oilro pop metal bands, they have a huge attention outside you're playing in front of ten thousand people. But I'm happy if I can't play in front of five hundred people playing metal and they love it, you know, And that is much more important than me to play in front of ten people. That's sometimes more fun too as an artist, isn't it. I would think it's more fun like when you get big and not playing clubs anymore. I think artists like that, and I've talked to a few of them there, friends of mine. It's like they miss playing the clubs, you know.

8:20 Yeah, to play in the club is the most direct way to get in touch with your fans, you know. And if we play this time this year, we play ten times of Invaking open air and there's the first row twenty meters. Yeah, and I be on stage with all glasses, I can see only the meat of the people, you know, right, and I can't see anybody in the face because we all glasses. And in the club shows, I have the people directly one meto wanted a half meter in front of me, and I can get in touch and react with them, you know, directly, so that is much more intense.

9:04 You know. It's funny that you say that too, because like the interaction with the crowd back in the day was very different. Like I just saw a video recently of a punk band getting pissed off because people were getting up on stage at a club, and like, I grew up in a time that that's what you did at a punk show, you know, Yeah, it was exactly that. That is like totally anti punk to get people dragged off the stage. The artists the club would try to do that, but the artists never did. And now with the artist, it's just weird to me, you know. And like we were talking about the intros to songs, it's funny the one that sticks in my mind too, as fast as a shark. I remember me and my friends, we didn't even have to listen to the rest of the song. That intro just blew our Mind and then the song of course blew our Mind. But you know it's like and people today when never listened to that, they were just oh, what's this and skip.

10:04 Yeah, that is why we start normally with a guitar riff. I always grow up with this kind of music, and for me, having metal is normally to start with a guitar riff, you know, yes, and with a chorus and some oil pop keyboards or something like that. And how how how can you have having metal without leads like solos and stuff like that, which seems to be eliminated nowadays too. Listen to Sabaton. They play with a five piece band and the main instrument is the keyboards, and they don't have a keyboard, you know. Wow. I don't know if they have guitar solos, but I think but anyway, I don't want to look to the right or to the left. I make grave digger music and I'm happy with that, and I hope that a lot of people enjoy grave digger music too. So it's not necessary to follow these new bands, you know.

11:02 Well, And the key is that's my point is here you are forty five years later with the new album Bone Collector dropping on the seventeenth, and man, it's just as good, if not better, then it's always been. And that's impressive to me too, because listen after forty five years too, there's a lot of bands or artists that just go through the motions. And I can tell from this music that you put your heart and soul into it. Yeah, for sure, and we we try to build a bridge, you know, from Bone Collector to heavy metal breakdown and back to show the people again the signature sound of the band.

11:46 Yeah. We started as a four piece band and nothing else is great to go we are. We had this phase this with Concept Cidies in the nineties. There's a huge success with them. But at the end, we are a band with a guitar, with a bass, with drums and vocals and nothing else, and that is what we use on stage and that is what we want to present the people absolutely. So do you have a favorite song on Bone Collector and why Ah? I like the Devil Serenade. It sounds like an eighty stadium rock track, and I like the attitude and the approach of the song. So this is for me one of the perfect songs of the new album.

12:36 Nice and So you have a tour going on, so that's really cool. Tell me how it feels too forty five late years later to still be playing live music. It's it's amazing, right. It shows up that this tour will one of the most successful tours in the last two two years. Wow. And after all these years, it's it's amazing to be on stage and present your music to the people outside. Yeah, and I love hearing that. Guess that just tells me how much you love music, Okay, because you know it takes a certain person to love being on the road and doing live shows. And to me, that's a true musician.

13:27 Yeah. Look, we have brothers in mind. I have a motive. Nice, Yeah, I love it. What a good What a good pick I made? Then? Huh, this one is warm, It's it's awesome. I love Motorhead and I've wear that every day. So in summer time, I also wear metal shirts. When I told you, I'm such in my heart, I'm a heavy metal kid. You know. I met Rob Halford two years ago for the very first time, and he invited me to his beckstage area and then he told me, hey, you are Chris singer of Gravity and said, wow, you know all these years and I told him, hey, when when you when I was young, I was was in your first row so many times screaming hey Rob Ray Rob, and touch his boots and like like a crazy guy. You know, guys, which we hate now when we are on stage screaming the whole show and touching you, and I was one of them, and he left his ass out as after all these dream came true to to meet my own idols.

14:35 You know. Well, that's one thing I think is true of metal is that most of the musicians in metal are metal fans first, and you know, like even doing press, like when I go on tour and I do uh, you know, coverage at festivals here in the US, UK, Europe, and and it's like, you know, I'm meeting people that I was probably in their mash pit. I was head banging to them. And then I see other press people that like don't even know the music, and I think to myself, to be doing press for metal, you should be a metal head because there's a certain passion that we share and things that we share that I don't think anybody else can. It's like we're all big family, and there's a lot of people that maybe don't understand our family.

15:33 Yeah, we are a statement against all this establishment, you know, m hm. So when we were young, we some kind of rebellion. We are rebeging against our own parents and growing the hell long. And after all, this is insight, you know, it's just a statement against something again, establishment against politics, and that is that deep insight. Yeah. And you know what really kind of I don't know, kind of bothers me is that in twenty twenty five you can still write the same heavy metal songs that you did in nineteen eighty about things like nuclear or for example, or any of those topics that we talked about back then. It just blows my mind that we can still write about it today. Yeah, it's actual, and now I think that it is totally.

16:31 And I think war we'll never stop to I have so many wars in the in the world, and you can in ten years. I hope that we can stop one day and all everybody live in peace and freedom. But things that is an illusion. So I think the only way that will happen is to have one major metal festival that were the whole world. Is that, because then they'll find out what it's like to be united and every bloody be an insider from different walks of life, different types of people, and where you could be somewhere where everybody can be friends but not be the same.

17:11 And you know the name of this festival, go for World Stock. There you go. I love it. We need to start that then, you know, and yeah, so tell if you were to give me one story, good or bad in this whole forty five year journey you've had, what's the one that sticks out in your mind most of all? Ah, there are so many stories. But I think it was in the year twenty ten we made a mute show at the Bucking Open Maya with bagpipeers and all this stuff, and I met behind the stage. I met a ninety years old clans man. Huh, original klansman from Scotland.

17:59 That was the really impressing. He was so nice and you told me stories about freedom walls and it was really impressing. That was one of my highlights in my career. Wow, that's pretty cool. I love it. How many times have you guys played Vucking because you're playing this year too, right? Yeah? Yeah? How many times have you played Vaking? Yeah? We played ten times now there. Wow? Have you played Speaking and Motorhead? Have you played hell Fest? No? So you gotta go to hell Fest because they have this huge, larger than life statue of Lemmy it's made. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah, Oh it's cool as hell, Like it's totally cool as hell. Uh, No pun intended.

18:44 Of course, a way to play the one day. Yeah, let's make it happen, for sure, I'm surprised. We gotta make it happen now, well, let's make it for twenty twenty six. I'm putting it out there on the air. So how do people check you guys out? Get your new album? You have a lot of cool merge. Check out your merch all that good stuff. You can't go to the graft, your homepage, Grave Minus Digger dot E or to our store and you will find everything. We have a good shipping rates and what I think with the new album, you can find Grave Digga everywhere. I love it and I recommend everybody check out this new album cuz, man, it is definitely badass and true metal.

19:33 And I'm so happy you guys are still rocking it all these years later. It's not only a testament to you guys, but it's a testament to metal itself. Because who would have ever thought when we were in the eighties that in twenty twenty five we would be talking about metal. And watch out the Adventures of the pipe Man. I love it well, you know what, thanks a lot for that, Thanks for being on the adventures of my pipe Man. I came to speak now and I look forward to a lot more from you guys. Thank you very much, my friend. Have a nice day you too. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipe Man.

20:14 I'm w for CUI Radio. Hi Screen Wauldner from Grave Digger, and you are listening and watching to the pipemin on four, five, six, eight, nine five Radio