It’s been more than five years since I talked with German horror punk legends The Crimson Ghosts. This time, they have an awesome new album which I reviewed couple of weeks ago and it was about time to talk with them about various themes.

It’s been five years since our last talk, so what is new in last couple of years?

J: Well I guess the main news would be a pandemic that kicked us all in the teeth big time and our new album ‘Forevermore’ that will kick you all as well but in a much more positive way! 18 years after our debut album ‘Leaving the tomb’ we´re still alive (…and screaming…) and I´d say our newest output proves once more we´re not doing what one might expect from us…

The new album is upon us. So, tell me the story behind the concept of the album? How long was the songwriting and recording? Did you do physical copies or only digital like some bands do?

J: I started writing new material maybe a year after ‘Yet not human’ was released but when the pandemic came my creativity pretty much was gone since I had the feeling writing songs etc makes no sense anymore and no one could say if there will be live shows again or a record release etc…during that time I didn´t touch a guitar for at least half a year maybe longer. Then when there was a light at the tunnel I did a lot of research about instruments routing on stage and monitoring because I wanted to bring in more samples and keyboards without the need of an additional musician. And yeah – as soon as I knew how to achieve that I wrote songs like for example ‘Me or you?’ which has a piano playing along, or ‘From the underground world’ with a lot of in time samples. The last song I wrote for the album was ‘Devil in the white city’ and this was about a month before the actual recordings took place. Looking on the 11 tracks of the album I´d say they couldn´t be more diverse and I am very proud on how they turned out.
We released the new album not only digital (Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, Bandcamp etc) but also as a digipack CD with a fat 28 pages booklet, as limited LP with white vinyl and a 16 pages LP sized booklet and as strictly limited cassette for all the nostalgic people among you.

Could you talk us thematically song by song through the new album?

J: Well it would be easy to do so but since there are certain songs where you can read between the lines and find a complete different meaning than it seems to be on first sight I want to leave that up to the fans and even encourage you all to write to us and let us know what you THINK they are about.

I kind of think you always had problems with changing drummers? Is the line-up now complete and stabilized?

J: Well actually we never had problems with drummers until our original drummer Rev. had to leave the band for health reasons in 2016…then we had a hard time to find a good drummer at all but then in 2018 Ol Nick joined us and is still with us.

I saw that you had some gigs booked for promoting new album. Where do you play, is it going to be an European tour?

J: yes we will play a few single shows in Germany during mid 2023 but the main event is coming during October/ November 2023 when we will go on tour finally! And even if I can´t go into details but the band that we share stages with on said tour hasn´t been seen for a long time and EVERYBODY in the horrorpunk community will probably cry tears of joy when they read the name on a tourposter.

You are so tight as a band, there are years of experience here, but I always wondered, how many times a week do you guys practice?

J: Usually we gather once a week but when there was a longer break during holidays and a show is coming up we do rehearsals twice a week

How does Vlad keep his voice so great and so beautiful? He sounds the same on the records and live and he is for sure one of the best voices in the scene? Do you guys have formal musical education or you learned it all yourselves?

J: The blood of countless virgins. Thats the key.

Question like a blast from the past, taken from your songs. Who is Mary you sing about, and who is Ophelia?

J: Well since the 4th chapter of the Necrobabe story (‘Of a guilty man’) is released on our new album I´d say it´s a blast from the past as well as it is mega present. Mary was a girl that was loved by a sick and driven man who murdered her only to keep her for himself…in the end he did regret his deed but it was too late of course. And that’s where the lyrics ‘Of a guilty man’ start.
I am afraid i can´t tell you anything about Ophelia since that’s one of the song lyrics that the Rev wrote back in the day…    

How is life in Koln besides the carnival, I know practically nothing about your city. I am lying I know you have a nice cathedral there.

J: I´d say Cologne is as every other big city..lot´s of people you don´t wanna see or hear…noise…dirt…I´m rooted to this city but I know all of its dark sides and therefore prefer to stay home.

Are there any new music you would like to recommend? What are you listening to at the moment?

J: I am not good when it comes to discovering new music I am more that ‘yesterday’s stuff is best!’ guy…so when not listening to ‘Live shit, binge and purge’ at least once a week it´s probably 90’s death metal, 2nd wave black metal or some nice and lovely aggrotech…but I can enjoy stuff like Wardruna or Heilung during work pretty much!

How do you like all these new horror movies that are coming to cinemas, kind of mainstream cinema horror, did you like new ‘Evil Dead’, ‘Boogeyman’ and couple other new horror movies or do you still prefer oldies goldies.

J: Long story short – new movies mostly suck. Lack of innovation, the only goal seems to be that it has to be more gross than any other movie before no matter if the script is shit etc…I couldn’t recommend a good horror movie that came out in the last 5 years.

That is all for this time. Hope you come to Croatia one day. Is there anything you would like to add and I didn’t ask you?

J: Hell yeah we wanna play Croatia! SO – if any Croatian promoter reads this – GET IN CONTACT! Until then – check out our new album ‘Forevermore’, join us on tour and stay undead!