Taipei Metal

Destruction: Full Speed Thrash

There are not many thrashers left these days that can genuinely say they've been around to see the genre from its inception through to the present day. But Marcel Schirmer, better known to millions of metal heads around the world as Schmier, bassist and vocalist of seminal German thrash act Destruction, has been there from the beginning. Though the years and the miles keep adding up, Schmier has never allowed Destruction to let old age or the wear and tear of the road slow the band down. Quite the contrary, in fact, as the band, which also includes guitarist Mike Sifringer, the only member to stick with Destruction for its entire existence, and new edition Vaaver on the drums, has included some of its most consistently blistering material in its latest album, Day of Reckoning. Schmier points to the addition of Vaaver, a.k.a. Wawrzyniec Dramowicz, a classically trained musician from Poland who has also done time with the Wachau symphonic orchestra, as the reason behind Destruction's resurgence in the speed department.

“We were feeling like, since Marco [Reign], our last drummer, didn't want to play so fast anymore, the songwriting in the last years was lacking speed. I was criticizing after every record, how come we don't have enough speed and thrash on the record anymore? It's because Marco is slowing down the parts all the time. I don't like to tell my drummer what to play but there has to be a certain direction, and we were fighting about this. For the last album it was great to just let it go and write a fast album, and there's no drummer that's gonna whine about the speed.”

Clearly Schmier feels that Vaaver has brought Destruction back where it needs to be sound wise—fast, aggressive, and eternally pissed off. In describing the past few years with Reign behind the kit, he alludes to some discontent in the ranks, and a lack of cohesion in terms of musical direction. While one was slowing down, others were looking to push things faster, harder, and angrier.

“We said let's just thrash and do what we like. When you get older, you get lazy. A lot of drummers, when they get older, the physical aspect, it's very much an exhausting job. Dave Lombardo and Gene Hoglan are maybe the exceptions, but a lot of other drummers are going down with the speed as they age. I'm happy we got a guy that is able to pick up the speed again that made Destruction. We've always been a fast band.”

Schmier is already looking forward to going through the entire creative process with Vaaver on the next album, as Day of Reckoning was written in its entirety before he came on board. Once again, Schmier hints at a certain level of disintegration within the band dynamic prior to Reign's departure—a level of discord that the new guy quickly put to rest, while bringing, according to Schmier, an unprecedented level of tightness, as far as Destruction is concerned.

“He has very great skills and he's a great guy. He brought the good chemistry back into the band. We like to tour again because the chemistry between the members is great again. It wasn't like this in the last years. We're looking forward to doing the next album because now we know how he plays. We know that there's more air for everything. We can write really fast songs and we can write stuff that is technical. It's maybe the best lineup we've ever had. Marco is a good drummer, the guy before, but he's not close to [Vaaver's] playing.”

Of course, no Destruction record would be complete without the usual campaign against the evils of organized religion. From the very beginning, ever since the Sentence of Death EP came out in 1984, Destruction has taken aim squarely at the heart of the church, and Day of Reckoning is no exception.

“I think the most evil thing on this earth is religion” says Schmier, becoming visibly exasperated. “You look around the world and there's wars everywhere, even in cultured circles like Ireland, people are killing each other for bullshit. Everywhere you look around the world there's wars, racial wars, and all the promised stuff about the Arabs and the Jews, it's ridiculous. Why do people believe in such shit and kill for such bullshit?”

Given his abject hatred for the church, it may surprise some to learn that Schmier in fact comes from a religious background. However, it didn't take long for him to cast the faith that was thrust upon him at birth aside in favor of an entirely different path in life. Still, the fact that religion persists, and grows stronger, in modern times, is a subject that vexes him to no end.

“I was growing up in a very religious background, Catholic background, and I started to hate it after a while because it was oppressing me and I tried to get out of that. I still have that in me and it scares me, and it scares me when the pope, a German fucking old man comes to Germany and millions go in the street and celebrate him like he's a god. It's a fucking sin! The Bible says you should not have a god beside me. What is the pope? Another god. Why? And it costs millions! The German government paid millions for the pope to come to Germany, and we're suffering a European crisis right now. It makes no sense. Stuff like that gets me fucking angry.”

Anger; a vital and indispensable weapon in the Destruction arsenal. It has fueled the band through its entire career, and comes from many different sources. But what pisses Schmier off these days?

“I will write a new song this week on this tour because I just tried to find an apartment in Germany, and you know the way I look, it's so difficult. They ask, 'What's your Job? Musician? Oh, wow, how do you make money?' I had some great apartments and I couldn't get them because they gave them away for better looking people. That pisses me off, that I still get treated like a guy that came out of jail. I even showed my record deal and my history but the people don't care. I'm working hard for my money and people treat you like shit. That made me a metal head back in the day and it still didn't change so much.”

Which brings us back to the longevity factor. Schmier has lived the metal scene for thirty years not only as an active participant but as a sculptor of its modern form. He's seen it grow from a minuscule collection of kids with a die hard passion for a very niche form of musical expression into a global movement that quite literally spans every inhabited continent.

“When we started there was no metal scene. We were the scene, like 10 people in my region were the scene. There was just punks around and people who listened to pop music. When we started basically there was nothing, and it started to get very big, and at the end of the eighties it was huge. Now, I think it's as big again, and the infrastructure is better. We have a lot of magazines, we have a lot of big festivals, and we can tour a lot more, which is good for us.”

With that being said, bigger doesn't always mean better. In the large markets of Europe and North America, big name bands and massive tour packages roll through town week in and week out, and fans are spoiled for choice. This, says Schmier, lends itself to a certain level of jadedness and entitlement among fans who seem to have lost that level of reverence metal heads once had for going to shows and taking part in the ritual of the performance.

“What I think is a shame is when people have an overdose. People in Europe and many different countries have an overdose of shows. There's shows every day, so people don't celebrate the shows like they used to. When I come to a very exotic country and we play in the rainforest, people travel for hours and they sleep in front of the venue, they drink beer the whole day and get excited like on their birthday—that's all gone in Europe because people are spoiled. The biggest difference is people don't honor it as much anymore as they do in other countries.”

This doesn't mean there aren't still places where a metal show can still be a celebrated event, however. There's still locales Destruction can travel to where that nascent excitement exists. But this just serves to remind Schmier of what his home continent has lost over the years.

“When I go to South America, people still would kill for a concert. Even Destruction played in Sao Paulo in the last ten years maybe eight times, and it was always packed. People still keep the excitement, and that's something that I'm missing in Europe. People are going to a show more like it's entertainment, but it should be a way of life. I'm missing that a little bit.”

This darker side of the continuing insurgence of metal as it gradually creeps its way toward a broader level of acceptance in society is but another chapter in the ongoing saga of Destruction. There have been countless highlights along the way, and Schmier has probably forgotten more than most bands will ever experience. Still, though it does prove a challenge, he's able to pick out a select few moments that stand out.

“It's like tell me your best sex moments. There's so many! I think in the beginning of course it was the first record deal, and then later on it was touring with our heroes like Slayer and Motorhead. Later on it was the big festivals. We only played the big festivals in the past 12 years, and those were highlights to play in front of eighty, ninety thousand people. We just did that again this year in Bogotá, Colombia in front of one hundred thousand people. It was insanity. Those are the highlights of course, but I like also the travel. Every country that is new on the list that we've never played before is also a new highlight for us because we can develop the culture and meet our fans. There's a lot of highlights in the life of a musician.”

That paints a picture of the positive side of being in one of the most widely recognized metal institutions of the past three decades. But of course there is a negative side as well—the continual struggle to stay on top and maintaining the skills that got you there, all in the face of diminishing returns.

“On the other side, it's always difficult to survive. You have to keep on a very high level and you have to play a lot to live on the music. Those are the difficult moments, and nobody's buying merch, the official stuff, anymore. Everybody's stealing it from the Internet and buying bootlegs. It's not so easy anymore for musicians to live on their music.”

It might be getting more and more difficult for metal musicians to make a living, but for Destruction, there is plenty to look forward to, and for fans as well. Currently, the three legends of Teutonic Thrash—Destruction, Sodom, and Kreator—are hoping to put together a Big Three tour featuring all of Germany's biggest thrash exports.

“What everybody wants is Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction to tour together. We want that too. We just need to find a way to do it. Everybody is on their own routine, their own cycle for releasing the albums. For that tour we need to all focus on  one year when we can do it. I think 2013, if it's not the end of the world next year, that would be the 30th anniversary of thrash metal, the release of our first demo, the first Sodom demo, and 2013 would be 30 years of German or European thrash. That would be the perfect year to do an anniversary tour.”No doubt that serves as motivation enough to keep Destruction unleashing wave after wave of white hot molten thrash upon the willing masses. For Schmier and co., this isn't just a band—it's a way of life, their reason for being. There are no day jobs to return to, no safety net to break the fall. It's full speed thrash till death, all the way.

“This is my life. This band became my existence, and of course I want to try to do this as long as possible. I'm still pissed off at many things. When we started mixing up punk rock with metal in the beginning we were pissed off kids, and now we're pissed off grownups. Not so much has changed,” Schmier says, connecting the spaced out dots between past and present before getting back to what keeps Destruction going.

“The more I see the world, the more I see how things are, the more pissed off I am because I see there's just the rich and the poor and nothing in between anymore. It's getting worse and worse. The middle class is dying out now. That's the motivation to play music, to give a message to the kids, and for me music is also my psychological treatment. When I can play this music I'm a happy guy. I can express myself. So this keeps me going.”

There's also a certain element of proving not only that Destruction can still keep up, but that they can continue to show the next generation of thrashers a thing or two about showmanship, musicianship, and capturing all that rage in a furious tempest of razor riffs and full bore pace. But at the end of the day, you gotta love what you do.

“There's all these young bands now, and we have to go in competition with them. That's a big challenge, and a great challenge. I like that. So there's a lot of motivation to do this. First of all, I love what I do. That's the biggest gift you can have. Have a job that you love, because most people have to work for something they don't like.”