Devil May Care Tour – Annisokay live show review and interview
Date: 2nd March 2017 (London)

Once Germany’s best kept secret, ANNISOKAY are rapidly becoming rising stars of modern rock/metal music.
Currently they are on tour in Europe, which is to support their latest album Devil May Care. During the UK leg of their tour in March, we had a chance to meet up with them.

ANNISOKAY are;
Dave Grunewald – Shouts
Christoph Wieczorek – clean Vocals/Guitar
Norbert Kayo – Bass
Philipp Kretzschmar – Guitar
Nico Vaeen – Drums

 

 

Interview with Christoph Wieczorek
Words by Johnny Correia

Yesterday was your 1^st show promoting your new album, how did it go, did it go as you guys expected?

Aah, we had no expectations at all, because we were like, let’s see what happens. It’s really exciting to on a headline tour for the first time in a new country, because you don’t’ know at all what happens. Maybe there’s no one coming and you’re like F*** or maybe it’s a fuller crowd, we were in Birmingham on Wednesday actually and they were really into our band they sang all the lyrics and were taking photos and all the rest. Really really nice show actually. For us, it’s like I said really exciting and tonight is even more exciting, because it’s London. We’ve played here before with Fearless Vampire Killers in 2015 but not as headliners, we were only support and that’s different because you just go with it and see. Like you have a crowd in front of you who doesn’t know you most of the time, but here they came only because of you, that’s a totally different story and a different feeling. It’s more fun actually, cause even with the smallest crowd, they are really into your music and going crazy.

One of my questions was actually going to be if you had played London before, but you already answered that there haha. Do you think this show is going to be better compared to your previous London show?

Honestly the last one was at the Underworld and it was a pretty crazy one. It was the hometown of the band we supported, Fearless Vampire Killers. There were 400 people, I think it was even sold out and they went totally crazy when they heard us, it was a great night. So let’s see, it can still be really cool.

Awesome, So with this tour you guys are doing promoting this album, it’s quite a stretch of shows with 4 in the UK and 19 in Europe, which is amazing! Are there any cities you guys are looking forward to more or really excited about?

When we were touring Germany, we had obviously the most people coming down and our shows are the biggest there. And it’s quite a lot of fun, cause most people have know us where our home base is, and that’s where we really look forward to playing, but also there are some dates in the Czech Republic and Austria and Switzerland. And we even have some dates in Russia coming up in Autumn, and Russian shows are crazy ones as well, we have a huge fan base over there, it’s great. You know every show is different, even if the crowd is small, then maybe the town is really cool and you meet nice people every night and yeah that’s what it’s all about. We Love touring, I mean it’s why we are doing this.

So, this is your third album you have released, “Devil May Care”, how did you guys come up with the name?

The thing is, with this album, we moved into a… not a political area but we thought more about humanity problems in general. So this new topic needed a title. And what we think is one of the biggest problems of humanity that people don’t give a sh** about what happens after me, “if I can live good, then everything is good and I don’t care about others, I don’t care about the planet” and that’s what the title is about. There is a saying in German which basically says something like “may the flood come after me”, and actually when we looked up this phrase and the translation of it our name came up. The artwork is also about this. It’s a satire, you see this little kid wearing a gas mask but she’s also wearing a fairy dress and holding a wand. It’s such opposite things. Even with this, we aren’t a political band, most political band have a fixed meaning, but we are just telling people our thoughts and ideas about everything.

With this album, how long did it take you guys to write it, I know it difficult to gauge, but from the first song you guys wrote for it till it was all recorded?

Actually we didn’t have much time to write the record. Our last record came out in March 2015, and this one came out in November 2016. So basically when our last album came out in 2015, we started to write our latest album. As a band, if you do this kind of professional with a label and stuff, you have to finish your album about 4 months ahead of the release. So we had about 8 months to do everything from writing to recording and to produce it. Actually I am the producer of this album as well. Because it’s actually my job, it’s what I do for a living. I also produced the music videos, just because of the fun of it, and we also like to save some money and doing it ourselves. And that way, we don’t have to give the money to other people. You can imagine with recording, producing and doing all the videos all in this time frame, it was an interesting time! Haha! 

Amazing I didn’t know you produced the album, it sounded really great! I should actually speak to you about producing my band Cute Cute Death on our next release!

Yeah, definitely do it! Actually when a new album comes out, I get a lot of requests for production. The last two weeks, I was in London already, and I produced a band called Shields. They are from here and I was at this house from Sam, he is the nephew of Stanley Cooper the director, and we had this big house and we were able to track everything in some of the rooms. And it was a great time! If anyone who is reading this hasn’t heard of them, you should definitely check them out!

So I know it’s nearly impossible, but if you had to choose one band that shows where you guys get influence from, who would it be? I know it’s hard to say haha!

Haha! That is really hard, as it could be a trap… haha let me name 3. The 1^st one I would say is Limp Bizkit, cause Wes Borland was like the first guitarist I looked up to and he made me into playing guitar. The next band is Northlane, I’m actually friends with the drummer and the singer as well. Marcus did a feature on one of the songs on the new album and it’s one of my favourite songs. I have to say for the catchy parts and the mainstream poppy influence we have, it’s Bring Me The Horizon.

Brilliant! And on your album, do you have favourite songs or do you just love them all?

Yeah, one of my favourites is “What’s Wrong”. If someone asked us to choose one song to describe band, I would choose that one. And also we have a song called “Blind Lane”, it’s the last single we drew up, and a kind of the most cheesy one, but also the most poppy one but the song wasn’t written to make a mainstream song. We just wanted to make a song that more about the singing less about the screaming, less about the hard stuff and more about the melodies, cause the topic is really sad as well, and I’m really happy with this song. And it’s different and a lot of people like it. We have asked a few of our friends online “which one is your favourite song from the new album” and this one actually got the most interest by far and that’s one of my favourites as well.

Well, the time has come to end our interview there. I had a great time chatting with him.

Devil May Care Tour Live show review
Date: 2nd March 2017
Venue: O2 Academy Islington, London
Words by Johnny Correia

Walking into the Islington Academy grabbing a dink form the bar as you normally do, band getting ready, crowd doing their own thing and chatting while the support band gets ready to go on. Interviewing Christoph Wieczorek from Annisokay before I came in, I sadly missed the first two bands. The third band Exist Immortal go onstage and smash it, getting the crowd going and warmed up for the main act by some light moshing. Then Annisokay get ready and BOOM! they come on and it’s obvious they have done this a fair bit as they have a great presence on stage. Front man Dave Grunewald has a big yet quirky metal scene vibe going on but really works well for the band. Some huge growls, and drops later they get the crowd moving. Doing a not so pop cover from the pop legend Michael Jackson, the crowd sing along and move along to the groove. The smooth clean vocals from Christoph mixed with some atmospheric backing track the room is filled with an airy wash of shimmer, till the dirty Djent influenced riffs drop back in. This was no doubt a great performance from the band even though they had a bassist short on this show, they still pulled it off really really well!

Germany’s gems, Annisokay are ready to fascinate music fans on a global scale with their new release Devil May Care.

To find out more about ANNISOKAY, visit their sites using the links below;
Facebook: www.fb.com/annisokay
Instagram: www.instagram.com/annisokay
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/annisokay/id354880204
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7lAi1Cv19DsukgGjbZQxFg
Twitter: www.twitter.com/annisokay
YouTube: www.youtube.com/AnnisokayTV