Poltergeist

After seeing the Swiss Power Thrashers ‘Poltergeist’, a while ago, live in Oberhausen, Germany. I got recently the request to do some promotion for this band. So welcome guys in our chat!

-At the time when the first demo was released, you had relocated to Frankfurt, Germany, tell me about those early days, also about your previous band Carrion?

V.O. Pulver (Guitars): That’s not quite correct. We used to have a Manager from Frankfurt who wanted his contact address on the demo sleeve for requests. So we did that, but as far as I can remember, our swiss address was also on the cover.. ;-)

We actually never re-located to a different country. But as we live directly at the Swiss/German border, it was given that we had a good connection to Germany, where the whole scene was bigger and better organized.

The early days were exciting, one of the first shows was actually in Frankfurt (organized by this very Manager) together with Tankard and Messiah. We had some great shows back then and played with bands like Destruction, Kreator, Voi-Vod, Whiplash, Sodom, Drifter, Hellbastard and so on. This was the total contrary to Carrion, where we only played about 2-3 shows in total. With Poltergeist the international reception was much better and it definitely helped that our good friend Schmier from Destruction helped us with the production on the two demos we made.

-Please give us a rough live overview of the band! You’ve ever played in The Netherlands and do you have good memories about?

V.O. Pulver (Guitars): We played some shows together (I think) with Messiah in the Netherlands and Belgium. Back in those days, I used to help Messiah as a guitar player for live shows and we did some shows together. Besides this, there were no other shows there, as far as I remember. But I was at the brilliant Dynamo Open Air in Eindhoven as a guitar tech for Destruction when they played with Testament and Stryper there in 1987. I’ll never forget this outstanding event!

Ralf W. Garcia (Bass): Since the reunion Poltergeist hasn’t played in the Netherlands yet. Since 2014 there were clubshows with bands like Slayer, Destruction, Amon Amarth amongst others and festival appearances at Metal Assault in Germany or the 70’000 Tons Of Metal cruise. We even had the chance to play two shows in a row at the famous Z7 venue near Basel (Switzerland) amidst the current pandemic situation exactly when our new album was released.

-How many original members are still left in Poltergeist and did you had a lot of line-up changes in the past?

V.O. Pulver: When we did the reunion in 2013, it was André and me from the original line up of the first album and Marek Felis, who joined Poltergeist in 1990 and debuted on Behind My Mask. Later on, he didn’t want to play in a Metal Band anymore, so we had to find a replacement. Sven Vormann (Ex-Destruction) was the Drummer for the reunion, but wanted to concentrate on his Wine-business which he started recently.

Over all these years we had our share of lineup changes, mostly Drummers… at times we felt like Spinal Tap.. ;-)

Ralf W. Garcia: At the moment only V.O. Pulver (Guitars) and André Grieder (Vocals) are the remaining original members. There’s our second guitar player Chasper Wanner, he’s part of the band since 2013, myself since 2016 and Reto Crola (Drums) since 2018.

-Who is your songwriter in the band and where did he get his inspiration from?

V.O. Pulver: That would be mostly me I guess… The first two albums I wrote completely alone, from Nothing Lasts Forever on, other band members started to write songs too. Since the reunion, this slightly changed and Chasper and Ralf also started to write more of their own stuff. I feel this brings more diversity to the table. For me, the most inspirations I get from life and from stories I heard or experienced myself; Self reflecting stuff, social grievances, interesting science facts, documentaries, books, movies… everything which I find interesting flows into my lyrics!

Ralf W. Garcia: Nowadays or rather since the “Back To Haunt” album there are several songwriters now. V.O., Chasper and myself write songs and of course all of us work on our own individual instrumental parts.

-Are you happy about the result of your new album? Please tell me something about the lyrics and or concept of your most recent LP?

Ralf W. Garcia: Well “Feather Of Truth” is released since about roughly two months now. So it still kind of feels very new and fresh eben though the song material is obviously older than that. Reviews and feedbacks are still coming in almost on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s not that easy to get a feeling for a new album. To me personally at least. I usually need some time to get a feeling in comparison to older albums for exemple. Additionally these feelings about your own music changes through the years I believe. A particular album is just a snapshot of a certain moment in time. It’s the culmination of a certain period when you as a musician participated in the creation of the album. These things change. At the moment and obviously I can only speak for myself. I’m really happy with the result and the feedback we received so far but I believe we all share that satisfying feeling with this particular album. As a musician you do what you do and you wouldn’t have a clue at first how other people might perceive your music etc. Apart from that I think that this album really expresses the current state of our teamwork as a band unit. There’s a lot of elements in that album from everyone and that’s a really satisfying thing I think.

Regarding the lyrics. There are quite a lot of different topics reflected in all of the lyrics. It’s not a conceptual album but rather a collection of topics that reflect our daily life as average humans. Even for example the content of the title song which is about one aspect of ancient Egyptian mythology: “the weighing of the heart of the deceased against a single feather”. “Feather Of Truth” is based on a story that’s derived from the ancient Egyptian mythology. It’s about the goddess Maat, the goddess of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. In the “Duat”, the Egyptian underworld, the hearts of the dead were said to be weighed against a single feather. If the heart was found to be lighter or equal in weight to the feather, the deceased had led a virtuous life and would go on to Aaru (heaven). So Maat and the story represents an ethical and moral principle which can be translated to our modern world too of course. In addition there are a lot of real life topics on that album as well and even the mythological and or gnostic ideas in some lyrics have a direct connection and meaning to the environment and circumstances in this world we live in at the moment.

-What’s your favourite Poltergeist album of all time?

Ralf W. Garcia: That’s a rather difficult question since I like a lot of the old songs. But currently I’d say “Feather Of Truth” just because of the deeper personal connection I have with the whole album.

V.O. Pulver: for me also ‚Feather Of Truth‘, I really love the way it turned out!

-How was it to be one of the few Thrash Metal bands from Switzerland?

V.O. Pulver: In the beginning very ‚lonely‘.. there were almost no other Thrash (or Speed Metal, as it was called back then) Bands in our area, beside from Destruction and Necronomicon right on the other side of the border. Of course there were Bands like Celtic Frost, Messiah, Coroner or Excruciation from the Zürich area. But in the beginning we had almost zero contact to this scene, this came later on.

-What was the Swiss Metal scene like in the 80’s and how is the scene these days?

V.O. Pulver: It was a rather small scene for real heavy music. there were concerts where everybody would meet (mostly in Zürich). But not so many places to hang out. Or maybe we just didn’t know them… ;-) But on the other hand, bands helped each others to organize and play shows all over Switzerland and over time, it was getting better and better and there was something like a ‚family-feeling‘ coming up.

These days we are old farts and have no time for nothing, because life keeps us busy enough… But I think the young bands still work like we did back then, helping each other out and organizing shows etc… and nowadays (at least before Corona), there’s a healthy infrastructure of clubs and online mags and social media, which makes things a bit easier than in the 80ies…where we had to write letters and find a telephone cell to call our buddies..hahaha…

-Are you visiting many gigs by yourself and what are your favourite new and old bands?

Ralf W. Garcia: Well I’m or rather I was working on stages for a lot of in and outdoor events and festivals before the pandemic thing shut everything down. So yes I’m still at many gigs. My personal taste has expanded since my teenage days in the 1980s. I listen to a lot of 1970s rock and prog bands but of course I’m still into a lot of metal. My favorite old bands are for example artists like Rush, 1970s Kiss too, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, 1970s Scorpions etc. bjt at the same time I’m very much into stuff like Forbidden, Dark Angel, Fates Warning, Solitude Aeturnus, Bolt Thrower or Napalm Death. So my listening habit is quite diverse. As far as newer bands go. That’s a good question. I haven’t been really thinking about it. I like stuff like Clutch, Down, Crowbar, Type O Negative but also bands like Skeletal Remains or Venomous Concept too. But none of that is considered new either. I particularly like new albums from old bands like the upcoming album from Armored Saint. I’m looking forward to that for example.

-Any goals you still want to achieve with the band?

Ralf W. Garcia: Well all of us play in bands for way over 30 years now and we had the chance to experience a lot of good gigs, tours, festivals and so on and as we all know the music industry has changed dramatically. So the old way to look at achievements as a band are not the same ones as today. We’d be happy to tour and in general play more gigs with these new songs for example. Nowadays it has become quite difficult to stand out of the masses. Especially since we as music fans are constantly bombarded via social media streams with new and sometimes very interesting music. So what really matters, at least to me, is to have the chance to write and release more interesting and authentic music for the next couple of decades. That’d be a great achievement in general. I guess we all have to wait and see how this current global situation pans out and then we’ll just go from there.

-Any last word for the readers in The Netherlands and worldwide?!

Ralf W. Garcia: Thanks Marco for having us, thanks for the interest in Poltergeist and the support. To all the readers out there. Stay healthy, give our new album “Feather Of Truth” a listen if you’re inclined to classic Speed/Thrash metal and make the best out of the current situation where ever you are. Cheers!

V.O. Pulver: POLTER TIL DEATH!!!

-Patchman Marco-