SCANNER (EN)

– Hello, thank you so much for answeing our interview. How is the band currently doing?
Thanx, we are fine so far and we are preparing for some festival shows coming soon on our schedule.

– You are about to release your new album, tell us a little bit about the final outcome. How has the recording been?
Well the album is already out in Europe since January and in the USA since May this year. It was the first time that the situation was to manage all recordings in our own brand new studio including the mixing and you can say this was a bit more from a direct approach than with the other albums. You can determine all the time scales by yourself and you are not dependent on anyone else. This had a lot of advantages. So the recordings were stress less you may say.

– This new album is entitled «The Judgement». Would you mind to elaborate a little bit on the idea behind the title and the cover artwork? What does SCANNER sing about in this opus?
Thematically and basically „The Judgemnent» means doomsday for us. As seen on our cover. And on that very day the SCANNER (the character/ figure) returns back to earth and witnesses what’s going on. Did evil triumph over good finally? And how will the future be on earth after this. Thus, in the broadest sense it comes to religion and we detail songs about different groups in our society (Pirates, The Legionary, Warlord), all of their own religion and values throughout. The alarming thing about it is that almost all people who rely on religion are directly related to violence also, especially when it comes to conflicts. One can see that especially in the extremes in Syria and Iraq with IS. So the question may arise what religion actually contributes to peace in general? Or more fundamental, if religion isn’t the root of all evil perhaps. The exciting question is: If there was no religion and man would not believe in a higher power would the human race succeed more to live in peace than all the millennia with religion? This is the question the title song «The Judgement» is dealing with. The main idea in almost every song of the album is that something is going wrong on the planet in terms of our ethical value system. And that runs up through all religions and societies.  But today, it is really getting worse and is actually unworthy for a highly developed and technologized human race of the 3rd millennium.

 
– I have had the luck of listening to the record and I think is fatastic; you have taken back a lot of the essence of your early albums. Are you pleased with the result? Has it ended up as you expected?
Yes, we attempted to receive and revive the sound and the spirit of our 80’s and 90’s Speed Power Metal on „The Judgement“ and we were guided by our own old stuff from this time.  And therefore the album sounds old school metal by default. Our fans will get an intense and passionate SCANNER album they were awaiting for a long time, I think.:-)

 
– Efthimios’ vocals are also something noteworthy; this time closer to your early releases. How did he join the band? Were there any other candidates?
Well, Efthi did join the band in 2003 after an audition we made. He had a strong and powerful voice and his intonation was accurate. Also, he character wise was fitting totally to the band.  So he was our first choice. He was influenced by opera singing style mainly and we worked on his rock performance through the years.  So he is an excellent singer who is able to present the whole range of SCANNER’s vocal challenge. You may say compared to all our former singers he is the most reliable and versatile singer and a real friend, what’s indeed so much more relevant than anything else.

 
– Something else that I would like to emphasize is the freshness of the album and how straight-froward it is. Have you already thought about how many songs off this album will be part of your live set?
Yes, since there are a lot of old fans also joining our shows which want to listen to the elder songs we try to find the right mixture between elder and newer material. So we will play round about 4 or 5 songs from the new album in our normal live set.

 
– As I have the chance of interviewing you, I would like to talk a little bit about the band’s story and its early years. How did SCANNER born? Some of you were coming from LIONS BREED, right?
Yes , SCANNER was formed out of LIONS BREED. The story is Michael “MAJOR” was a big SF fan and I was studying Astronomies at that time when we both decided to make a concept out of this for our new appearance. We wanted to rename “Lions Breed” into something more modern sounding. So when Michael found the word SCANNER in a Perry Rhodan book we presented it to the rest of the band. After checking out that there were no appearances already under that name (even the movie “scanners”) we decided to choose this name. Later many different things were named SCANNER, what we could not guess at that time. 🙂

 
– Your first albms, «Hypertrace» specially, are nowadays considered cult albums but, how did they work back in the day? Did they get the response you expected?
Well they worked out very well at that time. Sales were quite good the record company NOISE REC. was satisfied, but they did not support us due to this. After HYPERTRACE they said we had to wait for the success of some bands they signed before us, as there were RUNNING WILD and RAGE especially. This was sounding funny at first but was meant seriously by them. That was why our first singer MAJOR messed up.

 
– And during those years, how and with whom did you your? How was the period tour and shows-wise?
Well we toured through Great Britain with a band called SADO and played our shows in Germany and France and Switzerland as far as I can remember. In South of France we also played a festival with Baron Rojo as far as I can remember.

 
– Until the mid 90’s you didn’t record again. What happened during all that time? And how did this period affected the «Mental Reservation» and «Ball to the Damned» albums?
Well we spent a lot of time to find a new singer after our second singer S.L. COE was fired by our record company NOISE RECORDS due to nearly the same issues and trouble between the singer and the company as it was with MAJOR before. This was throwing us behind again at first. But finding Haridon Lee for vocals brought us to MR and BOTD. And we had our second good start with MASSACRE RECORDS J.

 
– During all that time you have had one singer, even one female singer, in each album. How did this affect your music and why was it so hard to make a vocalist last?
It just looks like as if a line-up was changed sudden from one to the other album. But it never was a one day process or so. Over the time the one or other member left the band because of personal reasons at different points of time. It is hard to survive as a musician in Germany. So some members had to find other jobs for example or their “normal” job did not correspond with their activities as a musician. There are so many reasons to leave a band since you can’t be payed satisfying for your living by the band leaderJ. Also, sometimes there was a lot of egoism playing a role when team playing was asked for example, which was quite often the reason of changes. Or there were some “simple” dislikes and struggles underneath band members, and very honestly spoken, I had the less fights. So what can I do? It is somehow destiny, since I cannot keep members in the band by paying them some extra money. J But would that help at all, if there is already disharmony underneath?  But every loss of a member is quite a hurdle to overcome and robs time for a band. Especially if you have to replace a singer. So it is a challenge to come back as fast as possible. And it sucks a lot of energy, which could be better invested in songwriting and creativity in general. A come back is always connected with hard efforts for the band.

 
– In the most recent years you have released an album in 2002 and now this new one. Another big gap of time. What have you been up to throughout these years? Were you getting the band ready or did you feel more suppotr from new fans thanks to new technologies?
Well after SCANTROPOLIS in 2002 the band has found new, so to speak. This does not mean that we had split up in the meantime. We definitely did not split. But after it was clear for us that we would not continue with the former cast we were again looking for a singer. We came back to concentrate more on the traditional strengths of SCANNER to distinguish ourselves from the concept of Scantropolis clearly. With Efthi, our “new” singer, who is faithful to us until today, we then played our shows from 2003 on, and the poor man J  had the almost impossible task in addition to interpret 4 SCANNER singers +  Ralph Scheepers of our recent albums. Not an easy task. Especially since a singer included still was a woman’s voice When our cast has finally appeared as stable, we decided that it would be time now for a new SCANNER album. We started doing so in 2013 after we had built our own studio. So we must no longer produce so expensive and with too high risk somewhere else.  After our show in Moscow in November 2013, we have included ourselves in the studio and finished our album. In the summer of 2014 it had finally come: Our new baby was born J We do not need as long to write the songs for a new album, but in 2003 our first effort, it was not to run into the studio to record our next album, but first just to play primarily live. I mean we had a repertoire that could be put together out of 5 albums and have always been able to deliver an entertaining show of SCANNER classics from the Bands history.  And this can also make very much fun for a while. But the point was the requests for a new album became naturally louder after some time at our concerts. And then you do not you tell the people that you do not intend to make a new album, but promise a new one coming soon. Then when you are playing for the second time there and the new album was not done in the meantime, things get tight and somewhat embarrassingJ.  However, we had to do something. The time had come to make the album finally.

 
– And well, coming back to the present days, how’s the tours and shows situation?
The business is hard as usual. And since we are mainly interested in a few good shows only, we cannot take every offer. Sometimes they do not even want to pay the artist at all. And I can say we are nearly  a non-profit but enthusiastic band, but somehow we also have to pay our bills, if you know what I mean. So, it could be more nice offers honestly spoken, but our booker is working on things to bring us around Europe and the USA.

 
– I know you will be playing in Madrid at Pounding Metal Fest, so I hope te see you there but, first of all, could you already tell us how will this show be?
I hope it will be a great day. (And it was J) And we are looking forward hopefully to see the crowd enjoying our set.

 
– And on a view to the future, does the band have a steady line-up for future releases?
Who knows? Compared to what I described before you will never know. I wish it will be steady.

 
– That’s all from our side, out best wishes and hope to see you in Madrid next May. Lots of thanks.
Thank you and a big CHEERS to all our fans, we appreciate you.

Paco Gómez
paco@queensofsteel.com