EXTREME PARANOIA

OSH

WHEN I'VE LISTENED THEIR NEW ALBUM ALMOST THEY WERE GOING TO SEND ME TO PSYCHIATRIST, BUT THEN I SAID TO MY SELF "HEY, WHY DON'T YOU ARRANGE AN INTERVIEW WITH THEM, MAYBE THEY CAN TELL YOU WHAT KIND OF MUSIC THEY PLAY..." NO LUCK WITH THE INTERVIEW, THOUGH IS VERY INTERESTING( AS THE MUSIC THEY PLAY)... CONGRATULATIONS GUYS YOU MANAGED TO SEND ME TO PSYCHIATRIST :)

1.GIVE US WITH FEW WORDS THE HISTORY OF THE BAND 'TILL NOW AND THE CURRENT LINE -UP.

The idea of forming a band came in 1990, when I was just 13 years young. We were all childhood friends and Queen-maniacs, and we had nearly no musical skills, only the dream of being rock stars, hehe... In 1992 we finally had instruments and our musical taste had developed over Iron Maiden, Metallica and Kreator to Death Metal and other heavy stuff. Osh was born, and we're proud that we kept the original line-up alive for 10 years now! It's Sönke Kock on bass, Lars Scheppmann on drums, my brother Birger on guitar and me singing. Since 1997 I'm also playing several percussions, which have soon become one of our very original trademarks. To keep this "standard question" short here, I suggest that I'll try to get back to some aspects of our history in your following questions. For everyone who's interested, our full history is just a few mouseclicks away on our website www.osh-metal.de! ;) But first read this interview to the end, guys!!

2.YOU HAVE A VERY STRANGE NAME FOR BAND (MAN YOU ARE RELLY STRANGA AND AS MUSICIANS ALSO :) ARE YOU ALIENS?). WHAT DOES OSH MEAN? HOW IMPORTANT IS FOR YOU TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT NAME FOR A BAND?

No, we are NOT aliens, but from Northern Germany, that's almost the same. Musically we're strangers in every scene... People often ask us about the meaning of "Osh" or sometimes give us their own ideas of it, but to be honest: there is no concrete meaning. It's just a short, powerful sound which even the biggest drunkard can still pronounce. For me personally it grew to have some kind of special meaning, due to all the experiences which my mind connects to the name, but I cannot describe that. I definetely feel that it is the right name for the band, maybe because it is as open for interpretation as our lyrics and our music...

3.I REALLY CAN'T DESCREIBE YOUR MUSIC,EXCEPT THAT IT IS VERY ORIGINAL METAL MUSIC. CAN YOU HELP ME ON THAT AND GIVE ME SOME MORE INFORMATIONS?

That's the question we always fear. You're not alone with the problem of classifying us. The "official" description of our music is "extreme progressive grind rock". It really fits, when you compare it to our actual sound, but does it explain anything to someone who's never heard us? People just have to listen, because we don't compose any song twice. It's mostly deep heavy music varying from "classic" rock to grindcore, but there are also jazzy parts, congas and african drumming, different clean vocals, grunts... We don't care about what is "trendy" or "true", or about people who need to put every band in a specific stylistic corner. We just do, what comes into our mind, but we always try to do it in a homogenic way. What makes us recognizable is our musical personalities and the way we four play together. No matter what kind of music a song we play may be, you'll surely know, that it is Osh! Does this help you? I'm afraid, it doesn't... ;)

4.WHAT ARE THE LYRICS TALKING ABOUT? WHAT GIVES YOU INSPIRATION?

Most of my lyrics can be interpreted in many ways, so it depends on the listener, what he understands in them. So I don't like to explain them, because it may take away the listeners imagination. Only some lyrics are really clear: "Worldsaw" had other words before, but I rewrote most of it after Sept. 11th, but that's only an anchor; it's mostly about how we perceive wars and human cruelty, about "defending ourselves through ignorance"... "For Me" and "Mantra" on the other hand are both very simple and personal. The first one was a spontanous song we did "for me" after a relationship break-up, "Mantra" just shows another side of the feelings you're going through in such situation. The whispered german line which is repeated over and over says the sick sentence: "It's better to lie to yourself than to give up." I guess many of my lyrics seem a little sick. I always try to use powerful words, that awake associations. My inspiration varies from song to song. There are much personal influences, but that doesn't mean that there must be any personal meaning in "Less Beloved Daughter", just to pick one out...

5.WHY THE UNIVERSE IS RED? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY WITH THAT TITLE? IS THE ALBUM CONCEPT?

"Red Universe" doesn't tell a story, but there is indeed some lyrical connection to the album title in most songs. "Red" can be a warning signal, love, anger, blood, the sinking sun... so many things... The "universe" can sometimes be the world around us or the world as a whole, including space, but also the private inner world. The cover artwork will be very calm and simple, so I hope that the listener can find his own interpretation for the title like "the world is bleeding" or "all is full of love" (oops, that was Björk...). We are happy with the concept, because it is highly remarkable.

6.HOW DO YOU COMPOSE YOUR MUSIC? ARE THERE SOME SPECIFIC STEPS YOU ALWAYS FOLLOW?

Most ideas come to us, when my brother and I are jamming with our drummer. We use to put the songs together piece by piece and Sönke later adds his bass lines. Often we start with just one guitar riff, drums and me singing senseless vocal lines, but we also have songs that started with a conga beat, where the rest was built around then. The basic idea of "Threshold To An Embrace" came from a home recording track, where I was just singing to a keyboard. Some songs need weeks of work for the final version, others are ready just after one or two days. There are no specific steps, there is always much argueing and emotion in our rehearsal room, because we all have big egos, but in the end there's a song after all that stress.

7.HOW DIFFICULT IS TO WRITE TECHNICAL MUSIC AND THE SAME TIME INTERESTING?

I don't know. We're so used to doing it the way we do it, that we can't imagine something else. By the way I wouldn't say that our music is very technical, at least we don't put hundreds of breaks into our songs or something like that. I think the fact that we use all those different influences and some exotic instruments makes many people think we're more technical than we really are. The music must work on stage, but there also have to be some details on a record, which you don't discover the first time you're listening, to keep it interesting - that's important.

8.YOU HAVE RELEASD 3 CD (THE ONE IS DEMO - CD). WHICH ARE THE SIMILARITIES AND THE DIFFERENCIES AMONG THEM?

Our first CD "Eternal Verities Vol. 1" was mainly death/thrash metal. During that time we had a second guitarist, but we returned to the four-piece-constellation shortly after the recordings. We already had grunts, screams and clean voices, but they were far from today's quality. We weren't satisfied with the sound, so we did nearly no promoting with that CD, even though it isn't as bad as we made it back then. Three years later "The Sweet Sound Of Greed" was totally different. It started very strange and was all in all very excentric. Too excentric for many people, especialliy my vocals... For the first time we used hand drums, and we had a lot more influences on it: one dark medievil track, one over 8 minutes long nearly-instrumental song, classic death metal or progressive thrash as in "Music Sweet Music" etc. It was a very extreme CD, which most people either loved or hated. I'm sure that our new record "Red Universe" will get much more positive resonance. We're just very satisfied with it! It's tighter and heavier than anything we did before and easier to understand, yet it is also a lot more complex. But things fit together better than in the past. The sound has a strong "live-feeling", there's no triggering and nearly no effects on it. It is the best we could achieve in the studio. You can hear that it is a very special kind of rock music and that it is exactly the music we want to do.

9.THE NEW ALBUM IS SELF-FINANCED OR IT WILL BE RELEASED UNDER A LABEL?

It will be self-financed again. I hope that we'll find some good distributors or a label to help us spreading it over the world. Generally I'm optimistic with this CD.

10.HOW THE FANS AND THE PRESS RECEIVED YOUR MUSIC?WHICH WAS THE WORST REVIEW YOU HAD?

The fan reactions we receive for "Red Universe" are mostly very enthusiastic, the first reviews had the highest marks, but this will surely change in time. With the previous CD we had both, very good and very bad reviews. But I am happy about every review, I just hate it when people receive our stuff and don't say anything about it. The worst review we got was one that started with the admission, that the reviewer didn't listen to the entire CD at all and didn't want to - sorry, but that's just crap! It's ok not to like a CD, but before you write something about it, you must hear it!

11.WHICH IS YOUR BIGGEST DREAM YOU WANT TO MAKE TRUE?

I think we all would love to support Voivod. Ok, there may be bigger dreams in life... But supporting Voivod would definetely be great! And Thought Industry should be in the package, on theit first european tour... yeah!

12.CAN YOU FIND 5 WORDS THAT DESCRIBES YOU AS PERSONALITIES OR MUSICIANS?

strange
friendly
independent
manic
open-minded

13.WHICH IS MAN'S BIGGEST TEMPTATION?

I won't tell you, because it's dangerous to know it! Just one hint: it's RED! :)

14.HAVE YOU LISTENED SOMETHING INTERESTY LATELY FROM GERMANY? WHICH ARE YOU 5 MOST BELOVED METAL ALBUMS OF ALL TIME?

I'm not very deep into the actual metal scene, I must confess. Most bands I know are those we have some kind of contact to, and there are indeed some very good acts among them. I don't care if the music I like is metal or something else, but there remains enough metal in my collection to make the top-5-decision really hard. But I'll try:
THOUGHT INDUSTRY - everything! Their five records are all totally different, but each is an unreachable masterpiece. To decide for one I chose the latest "Short Wave On A Cold Day".
SKIN CHAMBER "Wound" - the heaviest and most brutal record ever.
CYNIC "Focus" - totally unique jazz/progressive/death metal.
SPINAL TAP "Break Like The Wind" - Nigel Tufnel rules!

DREAM THEATER - always the latest album.

15.CAN YOU DESCRIBE US A TYPICAL OSH LIVE SHOW?

We're very natural and spontanous on stage, and we don't take ourselves too serious. There's always a paddle with us to punish anyone who plays something wrong. It makes a very brutal sound and can turn our gigs to really hard SM performances, haha... But back to the music: We often try to do special things also for people who already know us. That can be rearrangements in CD-songs (especially "soccer-versions"), improvisations, cover parts... things like that. And if the location is totally empty it may happen that we play our most brutal songs sitting on chairs...

16.IF SOMEDAY YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO MEET THE CREATURE THAT CREATED THE UNIVERSE, WHICH WOULD YOUR BIGGEST QUESTION BE?

Easy: "What's your favorite colour?"

17.WHAT PROLOGUE AND TITLE WOULD YOU LIKE THIS INTERVIEW TO HAVE?

Osh - The universe is red. An interview with Stephan Ohlsen, singer of the greatest german hopefuls since Modern Talking.

18.WHAT QUESTION HASN'T ANYBODY DONE SO FAR TO YOU AND YOU'D LIKE TO BE ASKED? ANSWER IT AS WELL.

Q: "How did you feel after playing SLAYER against the wall?"
A: "hmmm... ... ... bored..."

19.WHICH IS THE MOST IRRITATING QUESTION SOMEONE HAS DONE TO YOU?

question number 18

20.THANKS A LOT FOR THE INTERVIEW. GOOD LUCK WITH THE NEW ALBUM. CLOSE THE INTERVIEW AS YOU LIKE...

Thanks to you, Nick, for the interview! Some questions were tough and I'm happy to be through with it. ;) People, please contact us! Support progressive grind rock worldwide!

NIKOS "William_Kidd" PARASTATIDIS

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