[AliceInHell] - “Antigone” is your last beautiful full length album, and it takes me and makes me fly under colors of a new sky… It is a very well structured work, under a musical point of view and under the aspect of lyrics and messages. This theme of freedom, this imagine of a Sofocle heroine, this riot act against every imposed thoughts… Is there a link that connects music and lyrics? The violence of riffs, the hammer of double pedal, the agony of screams, the slap of bass… to the anti-conformity of your ideas…?

[Matthias] - Thanks a lot for your nice wordsJ it’s really cool to read such an description of our music. Our guitar player Maik always explains it in that way: “Our music is the missile and the lyrics and the message are the warheads!!!” The music should spread our word. So we have something to say and wanna make the people think about the things we say or the lyrics, we write. We have fun with the music, but we also “use” it to get our word spreaded. If the people dig us and are interested, they’ll probably also try to find out about the issues of HSB. We don’t really know if it works in that way, but we’re trying it. That’s the least we can do. There are things that disturb us and we wanna let the kids know about that. We definitely don’t wanna preach or anything, but we wanna let the people know and make them think. HSB is not about telling what’s wrong and what’s right, but we try to divulgate our point of view.

[AliceInHell] - Could you tell me something else about HSB inspirations..? What’s the story of the heavy, passionate, full of ideals “The Weapon They Fear”? What’s about oppression? What’s about the son of Chile…?

[Matthias] - “The Weapon They Fear” is about Victor Jara. Victor Jara was an chilenian actor and a singer. He got killed during the military coup that happened in 1973 in Chile. This military coup brought a fascist regime of General Pinochet and killed thousands of people within the next 16 or 17 years. So Jara was one of them. His songs had so much power and were really able to reach the people’s hearts. He was always stating his conviction. So of course he was against the barbarian general Pinochet and his troops. They shouldn’t play a role in “his” Chile. Due to his ability to reach the people, they were afraid of him. The only way to keep him quiet was to kill him. So Pinochet’s troops did. During the military coup in 1973, the troops caught thousands of people and brought them to the football National stadium in Santiago de Chile. It was the place, where they executed many, many people. Victor Jara also has been there. When he arrived in the stadium, he just got a guitar and started to play his songs. The watchmen just hacked his hands. They wanted to stop him playing his songs... they just didn’t succeed. Jara kept on singing and screaming until hundreds of bullets killed him. So he’s the “Son Of Chile”, we’re talking about. We always liked to have lyrcis that are related to biografies or stories in an historical context. There are so many things that are worth to tell and things, many people don’t know about anymore. So you can really say that the world’s history and the things that happened in our world, are influencing our lyrics and our thoughts. We already had songs about the former chilenian president Salvador Allende, about Nelson Mandela, about “Die Weisse Rose” (a german resistance group in the Third Reich) or even lyrics written by Primo Levi (a survivor of Auschwitz). We had songs with lyrics that are based on books. For example “The Seventh Cross” by Anna Seghers or “Naked Among The Wolves” by Bruno Apitz.

[AliceInHell] - Yours is a musical style that is being lucky in U.S.A. in particular. But Heaven Shall Burn is a German band: what’s the role of European scene in this moment, under a point of view of music and political ideas?

[Matthias] - It seems that this so-called “Metalcore” is doing well in the US right now. We’re also getting an really positive feedback from over there. I guess European bands are also really “accepted” in the US and people also started to care what comes from abroad. I think that’s a really cool developement. The hype around all this Metalcore-bands also has some effects for sure. Needless to say that not everything is positive. On one hand you have many bands who are around for years already and who finally get the well-deserved attention at the very moment. On the other hand, there are lots of bands who just appeared and who just wanna get a big piece of this “Metalcore-cake”. I don’t think that there are that many bands with something to say. Most bands just say something, because they think that they have to do it...just to be accepted by the scene and the kids. So, actually, i don’t care about today’s scene that much. I just count on the people i know for years...that’s it. HSB is band that started in the HC-scene and that is still playing shows there. But, more important, over the years a network of friends developed and there are people, bands and people involved, on who you could always count. Be it bands from the US, bands from South America, bands from the whole European Continent etc.... As long as those people are there, i’m fine and i don’t care about the rest. You’ll always find people who are trying to tell you that some years ago everything was better, people have been more active, more political, more open-minded. But that’s bullshit in my opinion. Some dickheads have been always around, all the time. That’s not different today.

[AliceInHell] - In your music, I can find historical death bands like At The Gates and Earth Crisis… What’s the role of each one of you in writing songs? What’s about the balance of death and core? Is this a way to link violence to melodic lines…? And by the way, what could you tell me about the singular and delicate Intro and Outros?

[Matthias] - As i said before, we’re just playing the music, we all love. Bands like At The Gates and Earth Crisis are still really important to us, but also stuff like Kreator, Napalm Death, All Out War, Amon Amarth, Bolt Thrower. The list would go on and on... So we also don’t care about a “balance”. We just write songs and if we like them, we record them. It’s just as simple as that. About the Intro etc: A guy from Iceland wrote that stuff. He has been just 17 years old, when he wrote those tracks and actually we just wanted an Intro and one Outro. In the end we liked all of his tracks and so we decided to use everything. We’re all really into Icelandic acts like Björk or Sigur Ros and so we love what the guy did. It make us even happier to know that you can find the tracks on our record only. So we didn’t use any samples from movies this time. It’s really cool to have something unique!

[AliceInHell] - You have a contract with Century Media from the past “Whatever It May Takes” (2002): by comparing major labels to underground scene and auto-production… who is the winner, and why?

[Matthias] - We just did the switch to Century Media in 2004...just with “Antigone”. We have been really happy with the work that Lifeforce did for us, but we got the offer to work with CM and were really impressed how much they were interested in us. I know that many people think that, but CM is still no major label. It’s still independent and the biggest acts are selling around 100.000 copies. That’s Shadows Fall and Lacuna Coil i guess. Lifeforce was working really professional already, but of course CM are able to do more things for us. I wouldn’t really like to compare, because both labels are doing the best they can do. If there would be a winner, it would be HSB...hehehe. we’re the ones who really benefit from all their dedication and support! By the way, the production of the album was different, compared to our previous released. We just did the mix and ther mastering somewhere else this time. Besides that, everything just worked as before.

[AliceInHell] - What’s about your purpose…? Which is your will by playing your music…? To make people think, to make people knock down their indifference…?

[Matthias] - Yeah, we definitely want to make people think. But besides that, we also wanna have fun, travel around and meet new friends. We didn’t start the band to become rich or famous and it’s still that way. First of all, we just want to satisfy ourselfes. We really have fun with everything, concerning the band. We don’t see it as work and that’s also the reason, why we don’t wanna turn something special into a average job. So we could keep it quite short: We wanna have fun and reach the people’s hearts with our thoughts and our message. Not to make them follow us, but to make them using their head...

[AliceInHell] - Have you got any project for the future yet? And what about your present tour? Why don’t you come here in Italy, goodness!! Eheheh!!

[Matthias] - At the moment we’re writing on new songs for another Split with our buddies from Caliban. The Split will be out in summer 2005 on Lifeforce!!! Don’t miss it!!! There are no real tour plans yet, but we’ll try to play the US in 2005. Besides that, we’re busy with studies or work and so there’s not that much time to tourL We also really wanna play Italy again, since we’ve been there just once...in 2000!!! It’s a shame that we didn’t come back yet. But i promise that we’ll also work on that...hehehe.

[AliceInHell] - To end this interview… Could you leave Kinetic readers with a personal thought…?

[Matthias] - Yeah. They should hesitate to get in touch with us. If they should write, whenever they wanna know something. We’re always happy to get any kind of feedback or to just meet new people. Oh...and they should check the Split with Caliban....hehehe