METAL-ZEN

It’s impossible not to like Iron Savior founder/guitarist Piet Sielck – even when he accidentally stands you up for an interview to take in a last-minute vacation out to sea. But it’s also hard to get upset at him when I, myself, did it to Martin Hedin of Andromeda (minus the vacation to sea). Karma’s a bitch.

In a career that has taken him around the world – working with such bands as Savage Circus, Gamma Ray, and, for over 10 years and seven albums, Iron Savior – Piet has become known as a brilliant studio wizard as well as a highly motivated singer/songwriter/guitarist. And yet, as his entry in Wikipedia states, “he maintains a good relationship with many bands” – a relatively uncommon trait I asked him about during our lengthy phone interview on May 15, 2008.

SPOILER ALERT: Piet mentions a few of the songs Iron Savior will play at PPUSA. So don’t read any further if you want to be totally surprised when they take the stage. (Thanks, nailz!)

Enjoy!

PS: Hey Bill.

BM: Hey Piet. How are you?

PS: [laughs] Well, I’m doing ok. [laughs] So how are you?

BM: [laughs] Doing very well, thank you very much.

PS: It’s good that we finally made it.

BM: [laughs] Yeah, no more trips to the Baltic, huh?

PS: Yeah, I’m really sorry about that.

BM: No, that’s no problem. How was it?

PS: Well, actually it was pretty good. We have a really great weather pattern this time. It was all sunny, blue skies, and so my wife and me decided to take a short break and go to the Baltic.

BM: Oh, that sounds great. Sounds like an awful lot of fun, actually. I was going to say, where do you do your surfing? On the Iron Savior site, it lists one of your interests as surfing.

PS: Yeah. Actually, that’s not very much surfing at the Baltic Sea.

BM: [laughs] No.

PS: [laughs] I mean, so for surfing I have to go to the Atlantic border.

BM: Yeah.

PS: To France, or best spot for me is Spain, I love that.

BM: Surfing in Spain? That sounds great. Well, congratulations on landing another gig at ProgPower USA. According to the ProgPower forum, the fans are just nuts waiting for you. They can’t get enough of Piet’s power metal, it seems.

PS: [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

PS: Yeah, that’s good to hear. [laughs]

BM: Yeah. Well, what was it like doing the Savage Circus gig there a couple of years ago? Did that go over as you thought it would?

PS: Well actually, I mean, it was under a little bit weird circumstances, because we didn’t have Thomen [Stauch, drummer] at that time with us. We used, Thomas Nack, our Iron Savior drummer. Actually, we had no expectations at all, and we were very surprised, in a positive way, of course. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

PS: About ProgPower itself, I wasn’t familiar to the festival before that. And I would say I really like the way Glenn [Harveston, organizer extraordinaire] is doing all this, it’s really a great place to go. And I mean, all of us enjoyed very much to play there and to hang out there.

BM: Oh good. Yeah, this is really an extremely well-run festival. And all the bands I talk to just have a great time meeting the fans. And they say it goes pretty smoothly and they just play and have a good time.

PS: Absolutely. I mean, that’s what my memories of ProgPower are, just to have basically having a good time in Atlanta.

BM: [laughs] Well, that’s great. Well, for people who may not necessarily be familiar with Iron Savior, but who did see the Savage Circus show a couple of years ago, how will an Iron Savior show be different?

PS: Well, I mean one big difference would be that on an Iron Savior show, I would sing a little bit more.

BM: Yeah. [laughs]

PS: [laughs] Ok, just kidding. I mean, I’d say that Iron Savior definitely is a little bit, is definitely more classic metal in the way of the, well, New Wave of British Heavy Metal, known from the ‘80s. That’s where Iron Savior is coming from. That’s where the whole band has its roots. And I mean, listen to the new output, Megatropolis [2007]. It definitely sounds a lot different than Savage Circus. Savage Circus is for me a completely different thing.

BM: Yeah. Definitely. Sounds more, [laugh] actually sounds more Blind Guardian-ish than New Wave British Heavy Metal.

PS: Yeah, I wouldn’t say that Iron Savior rocks more than Savage Circus. Savage Circus also kicks some major ass, but in a different way.

BM: [laughs] Yeah, that’s true. Well, you’ve got seven albums out with Iron Savior. I asked some fans on the ProgPower forum what they would like me to ask you. And one of the things I noticed is, everybody has a favorite album, everybody has a favorite song. [laughs] There’s very little consensus. One guy wrote that Condition Red [2002] is by far his favorite album. Another guy said Unification [1998] is his favorite album. Another guy wrote, “They could play all of Battering Ram [2004] and nothing else, and I’d be as happy as a bee in a flower shop.” [laughs]

PS: [laughs] Yeah, I mean, looking at the band, of course the band made some evolution. I mean if you look at the records like first title Iron Savior [1997] or just a little later, Unification, it’s a little bit different. It’s more production on it, put it like this.

BM: Yeah.

PS: More big choir works and guitar overdubs and all that kind of stuff. Actually, throughout the years, we were cutting down this a little bit, which I think makes just the thing good, because it makes Iron Savior more recognizable to other productions. Iron Savior stands for quite raw metal, and that’s exactly what we want to do. And there’s also, of course, a need to make Iron Savior even more extreme Iron Savior-like, nowadays that I have Savage Circus going, to make those bands distinguishable, you know. But all the albums you named I like very much, and be sure we have a good collection in our pockets that pleases everybody.

BM: Well, I was going to say, with so many albums and so many fans liking so many different songs, how are you going to play a set that’s roughly 45 minutes and yet please everybody?

PS: Well, I think we’ll just pick our guns. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Yeah.

PS: For example, I mean one song that, it’s a must, I mean, it’s definitely, “Atlantis Falling.” That’s a must that also has to be in every Iron Savior show. From Unification is “Coming Home.” A must, also, is “Titans of our Time,” speaking of Condition Red.

BM: Oh yeah.

PS: “Battering Ram” is also a must. So we’ll play those songs [that I just named] for sure. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well that’s good. You know, this one guy said he would love to see you do “Deadly Sleep” from Unification. He wrote that’s his all-time favorite Iron Savior song.

PS: I know. It’s a very good song, but it’s not easy to perform that live.

BM: Really?

PS: Yeah, because at that time, I don’t know. We tried it in the rehearsal room. For me, it’s not easy to sing and play guitar along with it.

BM: Ok, yeah.

PS: It’s a really hard rhythm, I will have to stop playing guitar. I don’t like that.

BM: [laughs]

PS: I do that, though, on a couple of songs. But it wouldn’t work on “Deadly Sleep.”

BM: Yeah.

PS: By the way, I think I know this guy. He wrote me a couple of emails telling me this is his favorite song. We’d really love to please him, but I can’t promise. I’ll bring it up again. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well, the last important question I’ll ask you from the forum is, “Will you bring your long heavy-metal hair to the ProgPower gig?”

PS: Oh, I will most certainly do so if I still have it.

BM: [laughs]

PS: It was, my kids used to have it, and it disappeared. I think it must be somewhere down in the basement.

BM: Yeah. [laughs] That was a lot of fun watching those promo videos [from the Iron Savior web site]. Almost Monty Python-ish. Did you have a good time making those?

PS: [laughs] Absolutely. I enjoyed myself. I had a great afternoon. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] I can tell. Well, let me ask you a lot of questions. I like to ask musicians their history and the current things they’re working on, to give people a good insight into who they are. And tell me what’s been keeping you busy right now post-Megatropolis into 2008? What are you working on now for Iron Savior?

PS: Well, for Iron Savior I don’t do too much at the moment, because right now I’m still on the songwriting process for Savage Circus again.

BM: Oh yeah.

PS: Which is quite a bitch, I must say.

BM: [laughs] Oh really?

PS: It’s taking me really long, much longer than I really thought it would take me, because I mean the songs must turn out to be really killer. They must be at least as good as on Dreamland Manor [2005]. So that’s quite a heavy job to do that. And I mean, also the situation with Thomen was not an easy one, and of course that, well, drew some energy away. But right now—

BM: How’s he doing, by the way?

PS: Actually, I haven’t heard from him very much. I mean, I heard that he’s forming a new band. I mean, the split wasn’t a good one, I would say.

BM: Yeah.

PS: And so far, we haven’t talked to each other again.

BM: Oh, not good.

PS: Well I mean, I still wish him all the best, but for us, there was just no other way anymore. We tried it very long, and it reached a point where we couldn’t go on like this.

BM: Yeah, that’s too bad. One of the things I wanted to ask you is right along these lines. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, here. Your bio on Wikipedia says that you “maintain a good relationship with many bands, having participated in several of their albums as a guest musician.” I’m not in the music business, but I know enough to know it’s full of egos, and backstabbing and all that. How do you maintain good relationships with so many other bands?

PS: Well, I mean, usually I’m quite an easy-to-get-along-with person. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

PS: That’s my secret. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well, see you’d be unique then, because apparently not many of them are like that out there in musicland.

PS: Well, I mean, everybody has to live his own life, and if you’re good being that way, then ok. But it’s not my way. You know, I mean I like to get along with people. And there are of course people who piss me off, and I don’t have contact with them anymore, but it’s not so many. I mean, it takes really a bit to piss me off. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well, that’s good to know. Another thing I read in one of your bios, or maybe it was on the Iron Savior website – was about Butch [Piet’s dog]. His birthday was the 17th of January. Is he still around?

PS: No, he’s not around anymore. He passed away last October.

BM: Oh no. I’m sorry to hear that.

PS: Well, I mean, he would have turned, he had a real great dog life. He would have turned 17 in January. And so, I mean, he was a really good, a family member, and so of course it was not easy to let him go. But in the end, it was the best. He had lived his life, and he had a great time on earth, and now he’s in dog heaven. [laughs] And feeling good again.

BM: [laughs] Well, that’s good to know. Yeah, 17 is really old.

PS: Really old, for a dog.

BM: Well, let me start at the beginning of your career for a second. Your first band was Gentry with Kai Hansen.

PS: [laughs] Yeah, right.

BM: That was in your mid teens. Did you know at the time that you wanted to be a professional rock star? Or did you just kind of fall into it, over time, because you were so good at it?

PS: No, at that time, when we were with Gentry, and then later on with Second Hell. [laughs]

BM: Yeah.

PS: And Iron Fist, I was absolutely sure that this is what I will be, a rock star. We also with Iron Fist, we planned out our major worldwide tour, having trucks which looked like a fist with the arm on it, you know.

BM: [laughs]

PS: [laughs]

BM: Sure.

PS: At that time, there was no doubt about it, that rock star is the thing that I will become. But later on, when I turned 18, and well, some other interests came to my mind and I lost track a little bit, I must say, for maybe two or three years. But then, well—

BM: Was that when you went to LA to become an engineer?

PS: Well, actually that was the time when I thought, hey, ok, music is really what I want to do. And now I missed that chance being a musician, so at that time I saw myself being more the man behind the scenes, you know.

BM: Oh yeah.

PS: Which was a good thing for me to do, because I learned quite a bit. But then recording and working with so many musicians brought me to the point that, hmm, maybe I can, they’re good, but they’re not necessarily a lot better than me, so maybe I can do it myself.

BM: [laughs] Yeah.

PS: I came up with the idea to record an album, I had the facilities to do it. And well, I just wrote and recorded the first Iron Savior album just as a blind shot, you know, to see what happened. And it turned out to be good, I think.

BM: Well, you were working as a second engineer, I guess, on the first Gamma Ray albums. In fact, you were credited on one of them here as “Piet, the Professor.”

PS: [laughs] That’s I think the—

BM: Sigh No More.

PS: Sigh No More, yes.

BM: [laughs] Why “the professor”? Were you just so good at engineering that they called you a professor?

PS: Well, I mean, I don’t know why. I take things very serious, so I was watching carefully to everything was done properly. [laughs]

BM: Yeah. [laughs]

PS: And at that time we had the producer, Tommy Newton, with us. He was a good guy, and he is doing still great work, but he laid back quite a bit. So in the end I was a little bit…pissed is not the right way, but second engineer was not really fitting what I was doing. [laughs]

BM: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

PS: Anyhow, I mean, that’s really long time ago, and I has no regrets about that anymore. But at that time, the [word] assistant could have been not there for my taste.

BM: Yeah. Well, then you were working with the Gamma Ray guys, Kai and Thomen, and you guys just decided to put together Iron Savior. That was ’97. Did you think that, at that time, you’d still be in Iron Savior 10 years later?

PS: No, not really, as I just said. I was not really, I had absolutely no idea what would turn out, if anybody would even be interested in that kind of music. But I got a deal at that time, right away, with Noise Records, the label that Kai was signed on at that time. And I could very naturally put it out, and it turned out to be a really good success in Germany and also outside of Germany. And even the follow-up album, Unification, also was really successful. And so, one thing that I really would be doing different, now that I think back, looking back, is the third album. I don’t like the Dark Assault album anymore.

BM: Oh really?

PS: Yeah, no. It’s, well I mean, as the name already implies, it’s dark. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

PS: Lyric-wise and also music-wise.

BM: Yeah.

PS: Which results in, I mean, in the end, it’s a mirror of my personal situation I was in at that times. You know, I was facing divorce and all that kind of shit. And so I wrote that kind of album. [laughs]

BM: So track four, “I’ve Been to Hell” is literal. [laughs]

PS: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it is. I was in hell. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

PS: I mean, today I can say, “Ok, I was in hell, but I left hell, and now I know what hell looks like.” [laughs]

BM: [laughs] And you never want to go back there.

PS: Absolutely.

BM: Yeah.

PS: Well I mean, two years later, I was definitely in a different state of mind, and I wrote Condition Red album.

BM: Oh yeah.

PS: Which is still one of my favorite albums, because it carries so much positive energy. I mean, Condition Red really is what, for me, heavy metal is all about, you know.

BM: I think that’s probably my favorite album. You know, I like Dark Assault a lot, and I like Unification, but Condition Red’s got some great songs on it.

PS: It just rocks. Unification just fucking rocks, from the very beginning to the very end. I really love this album.

BM: Yeah. Well, you know, your themes, as Wikipedia says, or anybody who’s read your lyrics can figure out for themselves, sci-fi imagery throughout the whole thing. The whole Iron Savior, you know, the self-aware robot spaceship kind of thing. How did that come about? Did you think this up and say, “Wow, this is a killer idea, I better go talk to Kai and Thomen?” How did this whole theme and this sci-fi image come to be?

PS: Well, actually I mean, this whole Iron Savior idea goes back to the time when I was working with Blind Guardian in Copenhagen. I think it was the, which one was it, the one they recorded with Flemming Rasmussen [producer]. I can’t, yeah, “Imaginations from the Other Side.” Exactly, that’s the name of the album.

BM: Oh yeah.

PS: I was working in Copenhagen as an engineer, and at that time I was doing all the guitar recordings with André [Olbrich guitarist]. And Andre is the night owl. [laughs]

BM: Oh really? [laughs]

PS: Yeah, he only can work at night, so I had to work at night also.

BM: [laughs]

PS: Which means I had a lot of spare time during the day. And well, I mean, of course Copenhagen is an interesting city, but after a while, [laughs] I’d seen it all.

BM: [laughs]

PS: And so, [laughs] I sat in my room and though, “Hey, Piet, what are you going to do?” And so I started writing, because of pure, I was simply bored so I started writing a sci-fi story.

BM: Yeah.

PS: Which was the Iron Savior. It didn’t get very much, you know, I finished the first chapter. [laughs] But the idea was there, you know. The plot was worked out, and so yeah, production was over, so the thing was sitting on my hard disk. And when it came to songwriting for the first Iron Savior album, I remembered this and I thought, “Hey, yeah, it might be a good concept. Why not?” And so I pulled out this Iron Savior story and wrote lyrics about it.

BM: Well, what did your band members say? Did they say, “Gee, this is really cool?” Did they think, “Gosh, Piet, what have you been smoking, man? This is kind of out there?” [laughs]

PS: Well, I mean, Thomen, at that time, he was not very much into the songwriting process and also the lyrics, but Kai liked it very much.

BM: Oh yeah. Yeah.

PS: I mean, Kai also is, I mean with Gamma Ray he also used a lot of sci-fi stuff, and he’s into sci-fi also.

BM: When it comes to sci-fi literature, if you read a lot of sci-fi, you know that sci-fi in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and maybe even in the ‘50s sort of depicted the future as a utopia. People sitting around with robots waiting on them, and they’re just writing poetry and books and all that. But in the ’60, ‘70s, and ‘80s, the future became dark and nasty, and a totally different take on the future. How do you see the future? Are you more thinking the future’s going to be a great utopia, or are you thinking the future’s going to be dark and we’re all going to die? [laughs]

PS: [laughs] No, no. I’m more the utopia kind of guy.

BM: Yeah. [laughs]

PS: Yeah, I really love to believe that everything will be good in the future.

BM: So no Terminator 2 or Matrix sort of future for you, huh?

PS: I mean, it’s definitely absolutely interesting and fascinating story lines. Of course, I mean nobody can foresee what will happen. But you know, being, as I said before, basically a positive guy, also my vision of the future is actually more a positive one than a negative one.

BM: I always like to ask what musicians remember most about their albums. You told me a little bit about your first one, so I won’t ask you that. But how about the second album, Unification. What do you remember most about that album?

PS: Major pressure, because it had to be really good. I mean, it was the follow-up of the successful Iron Savior album, and I really worked my ass off. I think I recorded everything the most brilliant way it was possible for me, and I mixed like hell. It took months and months to finish this album. Way too long. [laughs]

BM: Really, yeah. [laughs]

PS: Yeah, because I wanted to make everything just as perfect as possible. And so I really put a lot of energy into it. I spent basically all of my time in the studio, and yeah, that’s what I remember about Unification.

BM: I love the cover of “Neon Knights.” Like you said, the album rocks, man. Great album. How about Interlude [1999], the EP that’s part live, part studio. What do you remember about that?

PS: Well, actually, we recorded at the Wacken Open Air.

BM: Yeah.

PS: I liked the show very much, but it was too short to make it, to make a live album out of it. And on the other hand it was too early, after the second album, to come out with a live album. And remembering how long it took me to come up with Unification, I thought, hey, this would be a good idea to have something in between. That’s why I called it Interlude.

BM: Yeah.

PS: [laughs]

BM: Clever. [laughs]

PS: And it also started, you know, there are also these divorce things that I just mentioned earlier, and they started to come up with this album. So it also has some strange moments on it, which I like. I must say I really like the album better than Dark Assault [2001]. And but it also is the prelude to Dark Assault, put it that way.

BM: Pre-hell, the slide down. Yeah. I won’t ask you about Dark Assault, because I just did, but Condition Red [2002], as you mentioned, is a totally different, brighter, rocking album. How did you get to that place outside of hell to do Condition Red?

PS: Well, as I said, I left hell.

BM: [laughs]

PS: I stepped back into life.

BM: It shows, really. The sound of that album and the tone is just bright.

PS: Yeah. Sometimes before, a couple of months before, I started writing, and I met my, now my second wife, and you know, that really turned me on quite a bit. And yeah, I just had, I can remember the songwriting. I just had so much fun with the songwriting, just totally different than Dark Assault, which really was hard for me to come up with the, I mean, sometimes songs just come to me, burst out of you. And that was the kind of songwriting I had with Condition Red. That’s why the album is like it is. Also, these funny videos, these things that you mentioned, that was the state of mind I was in at the time. So that’s why the album is that way. And that also is why the Condition Red will always have a big place in my heart. I really love this album.

BM: Yeah, so do I.

PS: I have a lot of good memories with this one.

BM: The cover song “Crazy” is great. I love the line, “We’re never going to survive unless we get a little crazy.” [laughs] That’s a great choice for this album. How about Battering Ram [2004]. Tell me about that one.

PS: Well, with Battering Ram, I really wanted to make Iron Savior solid. That was the basic idea. I really was, because I thought, hey, we have too much, put it like that, we have too much complicated songs. We must get some more easy songs, easy to come along with. Because I thought to myself, oh man, when you listen to songs like “Protector” or “Titans of Our Time” [from Condition Red] which are great songs.

BM: Yeah.

PS: But the lyrics, if you are not familiar with Iron Savior, you come to a song and you say, “What the hell is this guy singing about? I understand nothing.”

BM: [laughs]

PS: [laughs] And you know, if you have no idea what somebody, even though you understand everything, but you have no idea the lyrics are just in there, out there, you cannot connect with the songs. And with Battering Ram, I really tried to write song which are simple structured, and which are just, yeah, catchy. That was the basic idea for Battering Ram, to write catchy songs.

BM: Well, you succeeded.

PS: And of course, really metal songs.

BM: Yeah, it’s got a great vibe. The riffs on Battering Ram are fantastic. I mean, you succeeded well with that one. The, three years passed then between Battering Ram and Megatropolis [2007]. In your liner notes to Megatropolis you wrote, “Thank my family and fans who finally gave me back the powers to create this album.” Was that a difficult time between Battering Ram and Megatropolis?

PS: Yeah, actually it was, because in 2005, my brother died in a car accident. And that was really, it was really a shock. And it really brought me down quite a bit. Yeah, I mean, not much to say about it.

BM: No.

PS: I’m still sad that he’s not around anymore. No, I mean, the Megatropolis album, just a little bit of my brother Tim is in that album.

BM: Your dedication to your brother on Megatropolis was so well written, very touching. It’s in German. But, literally translated, it says, “I endlessly lack you.” That’s a beautiful sentiment.

PS: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s the case.

BM: Yep. So when you look back on all your albums—

PS: So anyway, just one more, one addition. On the other hand, that album is also a very important one to me, because this, even though this was a very sad incident, I didn’t want to transform my sadness again into music.

BM: Right. You wanted to avoid the Dark Assault approach.

PS: Exactly. I didn’t want to come up with a second Dark Assault. So I really had to push myself to, well, to overcome this. And I think in the end I really succeeded. And well, the songwriting also for Megatropolis was really fast, because once I started to write, and it took some time to, well, to make some peace with the situation. And once I did that, I was able to write songs again, and I had a really great time writing the songs. Just like on the Condition Red. And also the production was really fast, because I wanted the album to be really pure, even more pure than the Battering Ram one. So there’s not much choir vocals on it, there’s not really much, not too much production on it. It’s really Iron Savior pure.

BM: Yeah, Iron Savior pure. [laughs] Well, for somebody who’s just starting out, getting to know Iron Savior, which album would you recommend that they start with?

PS: It’s really hard to say. Mean question. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

PS: Because there is an evolution.

BM: Oh yeah.

PS: I think, well I mean, Condition Red is still an album I really would recommend.

- end part one

NOTE: The entire interview can be found in the ProgPower USA IX program given to all attendees at this year’s metal fest.

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