[ENTREVISTA] 2006-02-13 - Michael Weikath (Better Than Raw: Expanded Edition booklet)

Helloween had weathered a period of intense turbulence during the early 1990s, winning back the affections of many old fans and recruiting brand new converts with the back-to-basics Master of the Rings and The Time of the Oath albums in 1994 and 1996. Recorded at shows in Italy and Spain on the latter's tour, the double-concert set High Live also confirmed that the Hamburg-based quintet were once again firing on all cylinders. Readers of the Japanese magazine Burrn hailed Helloween as the best band of 1996.

Two years later saw the arrival of the third consecutive release from the line-up of vocalist Andi Deris, guitarists Michael Weikath and Roland Grapow, bassist Markus Grosskopf and drummer Uli Kusch. Though it retained all the key elements that one had grown to expect - the melodically anthemic songs, hummable choruses, tough yet well-crafted guitar licks and Deris' classy and emotional lead vocals - the oddly titled Better Than Raw also presented further proof of the band's reluctance to hang around in one place for too long. The fact that its song credits were more evenly distributed than usual also confirmed a sense of inner professional harmony.

Like its predecessor The Time of the Oath, Better Than Raw is regarded as something of a favourite by the Helloween faithful. From the classically influenced intro Deliberately Limited Preliminary Prelude Period in Z to the briskly executed melodic pop of Falling Higher and the dramatic Midnight Sun, it was an extremely consistent effort.

Previewed by a single of I Can, Better Than Raw even received a begrudingly warm welcome from the previously hostile British music press. On the crest of a wave, the band then teamed up again with management stable-mates Iron Maiden for a successful European tour. Here are a few reflections from Michael Weikath of this particular era in their history.

Before the band set to work on Better Than Raw, Andi and Roland both recorded their solo albums, Come In from the Rain and The Four Seasons of Life. Did that turn out to be a problem?
Not at all. On the contrary, coming back to the band they were in high spirits. I was the lazy one because I chose not to make a solo record. The good thing was that I was fully focused on what I had to do with Helloween.

The recordings sessions were split between the band's home base in Hamburg and, I think, Andi's home studio in Tenerife.
Andi's place wasn't a studio yet, it was still a garage. So we built up a Pro-Tools system and put down some carpets in a side room to finish the vocals. We hadn't been very organised when we worked in Hamburg, and because a phone call wasn't made the vocals had to be done somewhere else.

But it all worked out really well. We quickly found out that Andi sounds a lot better singing in Tenerife than in an air-conditioned place in Hamburg [laughs]. Maybe it's the salty air? If that sounds dumb, compare Midnight Sun to Falling Higher, one of the songs that actually got finished in Hamburg. On the stuff he did at the island, Andi sings like a young god.

Yet again you worked with Tommy Hansen, but the sound is a little different.
We used some frequencies that were new for us. Some people had said we just didn't sound polished enough. Rammstein's first records were coming out at the time and we were being told, "Helloween must do something like Nine Inch Nails. You've gotta be more serious, to make an impression in America you must be more modern". It was talk like that which led to The Dark Ride [a problematic album from 2000 that almost caused the band to implode].

We listened to some of those assholes on Better Than Raw, and consequently not so much money came in. The High Live album had done us a lot of good, but as good as I felt that Better Than Raw turned out to be, we had some minor problems again.

Did the album's title have a meaning?
[Laughing] In a roundabout way, but it's really stupid. Andi and I used to hang out in a rock bar in Hamburg called the Backstage. You could drink there until the lady wanted to close down for the night; we used to hold all our meetings there. Better Than Raw was a reference to making pumpkin soup in a kettle. If it was warmed up, it was at least better than raw. It was so fucking dumb, it had to be used.

This time it was Andi that wrote the lion's share of the lyrics
It was a lot of work for him, but he maybe had a better overview. At the time, two band members didn't like me because they felt I was doing too much. There was some envy starting. But if certain people felt the need to complain, they were forgetting that Andi and I were also doing some of the other less pleasant jobs - two and a half months of promo work each year, and all the other little titbits of work that came our way.

Andi's song Hey Lord! is about the shortness of life.
Yup. It's another of those very stylised songs that he seems to write. Whether you like them or not, he also did that with Pink Cream 69 and now they were also there in Helloween.

Others like Don't Spit on my Mind and Revelation suggested that Deris was doing some pretty deep thinking at the time.
That's a good point, and it's why Deris was in the band. Before he came along, Helloween didn't have too many of those elements; we just made heavy metal records. And I wanted to have a conglomerate of different ideas and styles.

Musically, a song like Time suggests that Helloween were maturing way beyond their speed metal roots.
That's true, and for a while we did wonder if we were returning to the [indulgent] days of Chameleon again. All the same, Time was a special song. It might have sounded a bit like Pink Floyd, but it certainly wasn't phoney. It's about Jesus dying, I mean, listen to the lyrics.

Your own boyhood Latin lessons paid off with the album's most interesting song, Lavdate Dominvm, which was written and sung in the ancient tongue.
By the time I came to write that one, I'd forgotten so much of my Latin grammar. So I sat down again with some help from my old Latin teacher from school and I even managed to correct something that he'd written! Between the two of us we came up with something that was suitable.

Even the influential British weekly magazine Kerrang!, who'd all but ignored Helloween for several years, called Better Than Raw "the band's best album since the two Keeper of the Seven Keys masterworks a decade ago."
Really? That's something I don't recall to well, but it's very nice to hear.

Was that a typical example of the record's general feedback?
Oh, yes, it was a major album, just like The Time of the Oath. The difference was that this time we didn't receive as much of a financial reward. It made us sit down and think about a few things that were going on and to be honest it all got a bit ugly for a while.

On a more pleasant note, Better Than Raw was promoted by a valuable support spot on Iron Maiden's tour for the Virtual XI album.
Yes, on the whole that was a good thing to have done, but in Germany it worked against us a little. After that tour our home nation forgot about us for a while. The fans maybe felt we weren't able to do our own headline tour in Germany anymore. It sent out a mixed message. We've now toured with Iron Maiden three times and that was probably once too many. Please don't get me wrong: I'm certainly not slagging them as band, but in this case the opportunity kinda backfired on us.

Preguiça de ler..

XD

Leia, que tem muita coisa interessante aí Cah

em ingles da uma preguiça do cão!!!

mas é bem interessante XD