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Three Sides To Every Story With CHRIS HARMS From LORD OF THE LOST · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Chris from the German band Lord of Lost
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: and we're actually coming to Australia next year in February,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: so we are leaving the cold German winter and come
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to one of your hottest summer months I suppose. And yeah,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: we have a new album in the pipeline actually part
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: one of a trilogy which is coming next month. And
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: happy to be here.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, thanks for joining us tonight, Chris, thank you
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: my pleasure. So we'll start on the album first, mate.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: So a Lord of the Lost are dropping a new album,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Opus Noir on August eighth, so not long now, am
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I are you feeling.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling good and actually can't wait to put it
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: out because we spend a lot of time producing it,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: we like and writing it last year. We started writing
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in January and we had like a full year of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: writing than the production and we were emotionally. We got
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: so invested in this record because it's something if you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: do thirty three songs about you know, all the darkness
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: which is inside of us and also the beautiful places,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: because darkness for us is not just a scary thing.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Otherwise we wouldn't do that. You know, if you spend
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: so much time and working so intensively on something and
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: then finally putting it out. It's just great. We cannot wait.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Like the first songs we put out there so far
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: people love them and I'm so happy actually to see everybody, yeah,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: feeling the same way we do. And because for us
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: music it's the most the most important thing for us
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: about music is like transporting emotions. And I think it
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: works really well with that record.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Ah, So can you dive into it a bit taper
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: from a musical point of view and tell us what
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: you're going for.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing is where we came from. Like the
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: last record, Like also visually it was very much glam
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: rock and so blood and glitter. Also the way we
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: use the language here. It was more record about like
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: daily life problems, politics, society. It was it was a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: different it was working on a different level. It was
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: working more like on Earth, you know, like the way
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: around us and Opus Noir is kind of like the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: cellar door to yeah, you know, to the basement of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: our hard mind. So call it however you want. So
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: it really goes deep emotionally. If you want to express
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: this musically, you maybe also have to give it a
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: different level of death. So we went back to working
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: with lots of elements like church organ and lots of
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: orchestral elements, because if you go more like film score,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's something which is moving much deeper on
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: an emotional level, and to kind of give it this
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: dark flavor, you know, this le say Tim Burton's soundtrack flavor.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Looking at composers like Danny Elfman and so on, working
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: with lots of Chileicester harpsichord and all these kind of
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: weird elements that are in there, like bits and pieces,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: like dark little spices. I think there was actually very
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: interesting to work with also harmony wise, you know, like
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: it's it's a very minor record if we talk about
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: musical terms.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, actually you're right actually, because I'm putting all
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: those electra nuances and stuff in, like they had to
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: be placed in exactly the right place. Wouldn't they like
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: to create in the atmosphere here after? So that'll be
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: a quite a painstaking process, wouldn't it.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: No, not absolutely not. You know, it's like this kind
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: of darkness. It's nothing that makes us unhappy, you know.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I think some certain people are bond that way. They
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: just you know, enjoy horror movies, and they don't watch
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: horror movies to feel bad. Some people they want to listen,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: you know, for since a band like Slipknot is making
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: me very happy. When I listened to Slipknot, I don't
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: feel bad, you know, not at all. In the same
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it's the same thing with our music. It's not like
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: creating something like that makes me sad or whatever. And
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I don't actually need to be We don't need a
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: certain inspiration. We don't need to go to the North
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Pole in winter, whereas like the sun doesn't shine for
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: a couple of months to be inspired, you know, like
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: if either you're bond that way or not. So this
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: feeling and this album and these songs, this is something
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: that comes to us naturally. We didn't have to force
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: ourselves into a certain kind of environment to be inspired
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to create something dark and as I said, it's not
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: a bad mood record for us. That's a happy place.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And now wear black clothes because it makes me happy.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: You know. It's not like I want to express my
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: sadness or whatever. So I think, and some people get it,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: some don't. And isn't that beautiful? We all are so
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: different and that this is what makes our world interesting.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Now you've released the singles My Sanctuary and
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I Will Die In It, So are they good sonic
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: representation on whole album or do they just scratch your
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: surface a little bit?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Well? My Sanctuary for me is more like a gateway
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: song because it's it's still pretty uplifting and kind of
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: very easy and very easy to digest, but it has
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: these dark elements. And we chose this as a first
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: single on purpose because it's really like the gateway to
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: this world, whereas I Will Die In It is already
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: for me, pretty much the core of the feeling of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the record. Two weeks ago or so, we put out
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: another one called Ghosts, and it features the cello player
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Tina Guo. I don't know if you know her. She's
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: one of she's the Chinese cello player moved to the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: US when she was a kid. And she's playing with
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Hans Zimmer when Hans Zimmer is going on too or
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: with the sound, you know, all this scores, he's doing
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: this world tours. She's one of the shallow players playing
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: with him, so she's on that level and it's actually
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: amazing to have a song with someone of that caliber
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: playing an emotional shallow, an emotional instrument like the shallow,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: which I do play myself since I'm five years old,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: but not on of course, I do not have her skills.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Otherwise I would play with Hans Zimmer. That's actually that's
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: actually a very interesting mixture. So you really should check
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: out Ghosts. It's it's maybe even more a bit closer
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to the core of Opus Noir.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I think now you mentioned before that it is a trilogy,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: the first part of a trilogy. So personally, can you
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: run aside with the overall concept dark and the three
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: albums and secondly explain how and where I put NOA
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: fits into it.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: There is no let's say, fixed concept. We once did it,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: like three four years ago. We did Judas, which was
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: an album about the character of Judas. Before we did
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: an album called Thorn Star, which is based on some
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: kind of mythology, So there were like very kind of
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: narrow concepts or like a very distinct story you can tell.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Opas Noir. We call it an emotional concept because it's
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: more like these we have thirty three songs, and it's
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: these thirty three shades of darkness. Somehow, because when you
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: go into the cellar door inside your heart, your soul,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: your mind. There's many shades you can explore from, you know, comfortable,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: melancholy to fear and some scary parts of the darkness,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: and there's like so many there's like haunted places, there's
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: beautiful places, there's memories, there's sentimental feelings. So there's a
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: lot of like, there's a lot of explore. So this
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: is like the emotional concept, like this darkness inside of
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: cell inside ourselves, but it's not like one story that
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: we're telling and about how it evolved. Actually, we didn't
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: plan it. We just said, let's just make another album.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: We knew it it should be a dark album, but
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: we said, let's just do a very normal album. And
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: then we started writing and we wrote more and more
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and more and more. And normally when we write, there's
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: like a selection process where we feel like, no, that
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: doesn't fit, that doesn't fit, that fits all right, So
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: you throw stuff away and you use it later as
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: maybe some other artists needs a song, or you never
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: use it or it was just chit. But this time,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: this time, we didn't feel like we want to throw
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: anything away except for one song. So we wrote thirty four,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: we threw one away it didn't feel Opus Noir, and
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: then we were like, okay, what are we going to
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: do with the rest? We don't want to do an
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: album and twenty bonus tracks we actually want to put out.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: We actually don't want to put out everything because they
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: all feel equally important to us. So we came up
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: with the trilogy idea, and our label said like, yeah,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: let's do it.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: So all three albums are written and recorded already.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, they were all written. That's a beautiful thing.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And what makes it not fall apart? We wrote all
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the songs last year, or like some were written before,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: because sometimes you write a song and it doesn't it
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't fit to the era of the band at this moment,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: so it has to wait and then reproduce everything. And
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: during the production or like at the end of the production,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: we decided which track goes on Volume one, two, three,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: and the selection process was mainly with Volume one. We
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: really wanted to show the essence of Opus Noir, because
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: if we present something new, you want to present the core,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: like the major feeling, you know, and then it's opening
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: up a bit more and more through volume two and
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: three and getting a little more experimental, a little brighter,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: a little more hopeful here and there. But it still
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: feels like the same world because it was really everything
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: written and produced in the same time. And this is
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: why we release it like so shortly, one after the other.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: You know, Part one is coming in August, Part two
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and December, Part three in April, so we count this
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: as one album which is just being released, you know,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: like we see it a little more like Guns N'
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Roses use the Illusion one and two. For me, it's
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: also the same record or system of a down Mesmeriz hypnotized.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: It's kind of the same same thing, and I think
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: they did the same I think they did it the
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: same way. It was all recorded at the same time,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and it captures a certain moment and a certain feeling
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: in our lives, and this makes it one big record. Nice.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Now, you mentioned your previous album Blood and Glitter before,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: and that was a very successful album for you guys.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: That helped you get to the se final of the Eurovision
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, help you break the mainstream market and
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: get a bit more accepted. So was it tempting just
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: to rehatch that winning formula this time around, because you know,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: what so was it important to you to move away
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: from that?
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. You know, all the experts in the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: industry they said like, hey, this wasn't most successful, was
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: a number one record, and it broke all our records,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: and so just keep going that way, just stay in
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the lane. Some even said like, hey, you know, after
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: so many years of searching for something new and always
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: trying something new, finally it was the most successful in
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the mainstream. And we were like, okay, do you think
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: that we always changed because we were searching for the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: one recipe and now we found it and we stay
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: like that. And they were like, yeah, of course, otherwise,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: why would you change all the time? We were like,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: we do because that's what artists do, not all of them.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Some bands they like to you know, let's say ACDC,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: they have that traditional thing going on. Of course they
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: did some experiments, but more in a narrow lane, and
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: I would expect that from them. But some people really
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: think that we always tried something new because we were
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: looking for some kind of recipe. And so I said, like,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: look at David Bowie, do you think he did all
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: genres that exists in the world because he was looking
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: for success or do you think he did that because
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: he just wanted to explore the space. Yeah, he followed
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: his heart. And this is what we do. This is
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: what we always do. And with Blood and Glitter, we
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: kind of left our artistic framework quite a bit, you know,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: we kind of stretched it out, and now we were
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: pulled back, gravitated back to our core or oh sorry,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: that was my mobile phone, and we don't know. Maybe
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: we stay there for a while, or maybe we go
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: out again, or maybe we go even deeper. That's what
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: we always did. And of course it would have been
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: the most easy, easy way to just stay in the
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: red and gold costumes and keep going, but it wouldn't
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: be interesting. We want to explore this. We music became
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: our job, but we still make all the decisions like
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it was just our hobby. And this way we stay
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent true to ourselves. We don't even check
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: what fans would expect from us. I think the way
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: we can respect our fans the most is to not
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: care about their opinion. Why because if we would do
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: things for them, we wouldn't be authentic, and they deserve
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: a one hundred percent authentic band. So it might be
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: a weird thing to say, but not caring about their
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: opinion is actually giving them the highest level of respect
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: because they get one hundred percent us.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: That makes a hundred That makes sense, buddy, very well,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: put right, very well. Put well. Before I'll let you go, brother,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: we've started a new thing called firo bombs. So basically,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: before I'm spiking with your approbary social media, I want
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: to know a little bit more about So. Yeah, and
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: it's one like they are saying, a band who pisses
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: together stays together.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh that's so cool. There was actually like pre Eurovision,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: like there's a German Eurovision fan fan community with the
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: website called e sc Compact, and they did like like
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: a photo session on the streets of Hamburg, our hometown,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: with us, and we were just looking for random places
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and I think we found that and it looked so beautiful.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Back then we were a five piece band. And isn't
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: it funny that the bass player has his own cabin
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: on the side, you know, there's there's.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: So many there's so many jokes about bass players always
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: like you know, like musician jokes, and most of them
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: about bass players always being the kind of special guy.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: So he has his own his own stall. I love
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: that al right.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: The other one I've found is at first off, oh,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: this is a really cool place for me to play
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: a gig, but then also baseball bats and flowers and
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: it doesn't look like a normal gig to me.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's that's not a concert. Actually, you see me.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: There's two guys in the middle. It's me and the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: other one is Swiss, a singer of a German band,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and him and I we have a podcast together which
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: is called Swiss and Harms. Sorry it's in Germans, so
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really make sense for Australia to listen to it,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: but we have a podcast because we're both in bands.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It's two very different bands. We're doing like this gothic
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: metal stuff and he's he's he's doing German music mixture
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: of punk and hip hop, like punk raps. So to
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: say crossover somehow, let's let's say it's rage against the
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: machine in German. And so we talked about lots lots
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: about the music industry, about politics, about this and that,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: about touring life and what we did there. For a
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: couple of days before Christmas, we were doing a live
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: podcast in a church together with my keyboard player. That's
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the guy with a baseball bat and his guitar player.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: So we played some music in between, but we were
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: actually recording live episodes of a podcast in a church,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: and that was like the most special thing to do.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It was really magical to have fans from both bands
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: together sitting there in a church, and yeah, recording a
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: couple of podcast episodes.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Fantastic. That's nothing like what I thought. You get a
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: report you for that, that's beautiful. Yeah, now you guys,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: you've got something similar on your Facebook page or jo
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Fold lost the Weight tell us a pretty interesting concept.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, you know, because you want to give
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: the fans that actually wanted a stage. You know, some
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: of them they prefer to stay in the background and
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: they do not want to be seen. But in the
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: alternative music scenes, especially when you touch things like goth
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: and things glam rock or whatever, people that go more.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And also like Eurovision fans, which are very colorful, and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: many of them they really like to show themselves. They
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: invest so much time in outfits, makeup or whatever, or
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: maybe tattoos, you know, fan art tattoos, and so we
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: thought like people can just send us or send us
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: their pictures and then we post like one, two, three
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: for five however like lost Ease of the week, like
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: weekly and showing them if they want, we can tag
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: them on Instagram, so people so they can connect, they
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: can get friends whatever. I think that's a beautiful thing.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: So there's like five to ten people sending us their
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: pictures every week and keep them coming. It's nice for
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: us to see them, to see how they look like,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: how they kind of are inspired by our makeup or
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: copy it or do fan art, tattoos whatever. I love
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that and it's it's connecting all of us so much more.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful. Mint right Churstal, Thanks for you, Tom
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: M's been a pleasure speaking with you. Opens Noir Boy
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: in one is out August the eighth, Lord of the
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Loss of being a strike divery, So busy time for
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: you brother, take care of yourself.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. Looking forward to coming to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Australia next year. Finally,