Udo Dirkschneider – U.D.O. – Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Matt Phelps
Saturday, 18 May 2013 03:30
U.D.O. return to the heavy metal front line this month with their fourteenth studio album. With the band having gone through a few line-up changes in recent times during the run up to recording the resulting ‘Steelhammer’ is the sound of a band invigorated with fresh blood. I recently caught up with legendary frontman Udo Dirkschneider for a chat about the album-making process and an insight into some of the new material.
Udo, it’s good to be talking with you today. How are you?
Very good, thank you.
You have a new album, ‘Steelhammer’ ready for release. How did you go about moving the band forward from your last album, ‘Rev-Raptor’?
Well we have different guitar players now. It’s not Stefan (Kaufmann) or Igor (Gianola) on this one. The whole album was done with Andrey Smirnov, the new guitar player. Stefan was not the producer either and he was not involved in song writing. All the song writing was done by myself with Fitty (Wienhold), our bass player. That was something new for me. I think the difference between ‘Rev-Raptor’ and ‘Steelhammer’ is, for me, the sound, the whole feeling on ‘Rev-Raptor’ is a little bit cold. Stefan was more into all his computer stuff, doing everything over the computer. With ‘Steelhammer’ we went to a different 
studio. For me an important thing this time was to get all the musicians to the studio and do it face to face and not have the guitars over a computer. Real amplifiers and real cabinets, the real sound, you know? For me that was really important with the new album. I think when you listen to both albums now you can really hear the difference, made by humans and not a computer.
So did you have the album all written before you went into the studio?
When we started composing we didn’t have our new guitar player, we were still looking. So the whole process of doing the new album revolved around me writing songs with Fitty at his small studio. Then we found Andrey. Before that Igor had been doing guitars for the new album but he came up and said he didn’t have the time to spend three or four weeks constantly at the studio. He only wanted to be there for two days, then go home and come back. That was not possible. So we were lucky in a way that Andrey had come over, just for an audition initially but after his audition he ended up playing all the guitars on the album.
This new album really reflects what the new line-up is capable of then?
Yes. Andrey was very important. He has his own style of playing guitar and what was also important was that Francesco (Jovino) our drummer was more involved with arranging the drums. We have real drums on this album now. I mean there was a lot of changes going on recording wise. In the end Igor didn’t play any notes, not a single note on this album. I wasn’t expecting to be also changing the second guitar player after Stefan’s departure but earlier in the year Igor came up and said U.D.O. was touring too much. We had an offer to do a festival in Ecuador and had to say yes or no. I think, in a way, that was point that Igor finally said he was out of U.D.O., that it was too much work for him, that he couldn’t handle it any more. That’s the reason we also have our other new guitarist, Kasperi Heikkinen from Finland. I did the show already with these two guys and I feel very comfortable. Playing with them together on stage it felt like I’d been playing with them for years already. At the moment everything looks very good, I have a fantastic guitar duo on stage and I’m really happy with the new album, Andrey did a great job on it. I’m really happy.
If we could talk about a couple of the songs then? ‘Metal Machine’ is first single, I believe…
Yes, it’s the first single. The whole meaning of the lyrics are, well, maybe one day machines will be taking over the humans. If you see the factories, the robots are doing more and more jobs than people. Already we are directed by email and stuff, computers and the internet, all that stuff. In a way the machines are already taking over. I think we have to be more careful, we’re losing a lot of our human touch.
Another one that’s very relevant lyrically at the moment is ‘A Cry Of A Nation’…
Yeah, we don’t want to hear the cry of a nation. There are lots of crises going on in the world, especially at the moment in Europe. In Spain, in Greece, now in Cyprus, Ireland, stuff like that. Financial crisis, people are losing jobs, they don’t have any money. The meaning of ‘A Cry Of A Nation’ is the rich people are getting more and more rich and we have more and more poor people. That’s not the right direction.
You also have a track called ‘Basta Ya’, which is sung completely in Spanish. I have no idea what it’s about so could you give a little insight into that one?
‘Basta Ya’, well we had this song first in the English language and the meaning of it is again a bit about the crisis have in Europ
e. The idea to sing a song in Spanish was an idea we’d been toying with for a couple of years. We were always thinking we would do something singing in Spanish as a ballad but we were watching TV in Spain, Fitty and me, when all the people were demonstrating in Madrid saying they had had enough of the government and the situations that were going on. So we started writing some other lines down in Spanish, translated some English words to Spanish, started singing and it worked. We called Victor Garcia, the singer of Spanish band WarCry, and asked him to help finish translating the lyrics from English to Spanish. He did it very quickly and it worked very well. In a way that’s the story of ‘Basta Ya’.
‘Never Cross My Way’ stands out as one of the most accessible tracks on ‘Steelhammer’ but at the same time it has quite a menacing air.
Hmm, yeah (laughs). You can take ‘Never Cross My Way’ as a lot of different things. I don’t wanna name somebody (laughs). But a lot of people had better never cross my way. It’s a private thing you know, my wife left me after twenty five years after falling in love with somebody else. It’s nearly a mainstream song, not a typical metal song.
‘Book Of Faith’ ends the album, some really nice orchestral accompaniments helping wind it down.
Yeah, maybe not a typical U.D.O. song. There was a crazy writing process with this song. Fitty came up and said he had a bassline he wasn’t sure about. I listened to it, got the microphone and tried to think something along it, bit of singing, bit of talking. It really developed during the recording session when he came up with a melody for keyboard stuff, like an orchestra but simulated. It would be a great ending for this song. The meaning of ‘Book Of Faith’ is the bible and you can believe in it or not.
You’re starting to promotional tour for ‘Steelhammer’ in America but what plans do you have to follow that up in Europe and possibly the UK?
The main tour in Europe will start in the middle of September as for the UK I just don’t know. We always try. Before when we had a European tour coming up we tried to do at least one show in England but the offers are very bad. Last year we were asking for a festival and the management said we wouldn’t talk about money, just come over for promotion and do the show and they said no, they were not interested in U.D.O. What can I say? Now that we have a new booking agency and new promoter in the UK so we will try again and hopefully we can at least one show in London. We can play almost everywhere so I don’t know why the UK is such a big problem for us. We try very hard, we’ll see.
Well that’s our time up for today so I’d just like to finish by saying thank you for talking with us and we wish you all the best for ‘Steelhammer’, hopefully we may get that UK show.
Thank you, I hope so.