Near Death Experience

You know, it's a strange feeling to have an interview with a person who was in a coma twice and who already looked at death's face. Mortification's singer and bassman is definitively a person of which you have to have respect, because I think that barely one of us has the courage and the will to struggle and vanquish such a tremendous cancer. And thats not all, this guy had in addition to this produced a blockbuster album, which sounds completely different than its predecessor and which is pretty thrashy. Another hint that Thrash will soon enter into our CD-Players again.

What did happen after the last album "Triumph of Mercy"?

Well, this album is based on the experience I had with cancer. While recording "Triumph of Mercy" I got sick again. This time it wasn't cancer but I was addicted to the medications such as morphine, which I got during my cancer sickness. So I had to start a withdrawal from these medications and I got in a coma again. I had to sit in a wheel chair and they told me that I'll probably never be able to go. But we had booked a tour and so I took myself to a rehabilitation center where I learned to go again. In August of the last year we played 25 shows in one month in America which all were pretty successful. During my sickness we built our own studio and there we recorded our new album "Hammer of God". First, we actually wanna tour in Europe after the publishing of "Hammer of God", but now we are already here and the shows are fantastic.
In Reutlingen (Germany) there were even 550 persons at our event. Therewith I really hadn't have reckon. I think we really have many "Die Hard" Fans. In July we'll play a big festiveal in Norway and I think it'll be pretty nice. We are now together for 10 years, so we wanna record a live record to our jubilee in October in Australia. I hope that it'll be released at Nuclear Blast also. I also think that "Hammer of God" is our best album with a distance. It is also a different album than its predecessors. In the eighties I was a member of a classic metalband and I always loved Thrash à la Sodom or Slayer. I wanna take this music and present this music in a new robe. I think this mixture is really original and I hope that the people will love it.

Where do you get your iron will from, that you obtain in life again and again?

The hardest time was the phase before "Triumph of Mercy". I mean, I laid two weeks after that again in a coma and the production suffered a lot because of this. My desire was to record another album. This kept me alive. Actually I had to die five times. One time the doctors only gave me two hours to live, but I told them that they shouldn't give me medicines to softly fall asleep and I really got the curve once again. From this moment I lost my fear, in every relation. I completely concentrated my attention to the upgrading of the studio and I got remunerated according to "Hammer of God", because this album is well-elaborated and also well-produced. If you turn up your CD-Player as far as it will go the CD still sounds clear and at the same time aggressive. This wasn't that easy at all.