The Heavy Metal Madness of Stallion

The Heavy Metal Madness of Stallion

Meet the almighty Stallion, thunderous heavy speed metal from Southern Germany ready to gallop ferociously into your world!  Their latest manifesto is entitled From The Dead, a raging collection of heavy metal anthems guaranteed to ignite fevered head banging all across the planet and beyond!  Now available on High Roller Records, From The Dead by Stallion is jammed packed with powerful lyrics and exhilarating fist pumping musicianship that is absolutely exhilarating to behold!  We caught up with Stallion guitarist Alexander “Äxxl” Stöcker to find out more about this dynamic collective and their staggering adventures in auditory madness and intrigue.  Read on…

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do Stallion and how long the band has been together.
Hey we’re STALLION from Germany and we love Old School Heavy Metal music as played by ACCEPT, SCORPIONS, JUDAS PRIEST etc. and we intend to keep that raw form of music alive. The band was founded mid 2013 by Pauly and me and was later that year joined by the rest of the lineup.

Where is the band based out of and what is the local music scene like there?
We live in the south of Germany near the city of “Ravensburg”. The local Old School Metal scene is made of maniacs form Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. But as Germany isn’t that big and as we travel a lot to the festivals both as fans and musicians we meet with the entire European Metal scene quite a lot.

How did you wind up signing with High Roller Records?
They came up to us quite early and they do share our passion for Vinyl and proper Heavy Metal music in general so that was really an easy decision 🙂

Is there any overall story or concept behind the From The Dead title?
It’s no concept album or something like that, but we’re really worried about what is going on in the world right now. There are things being said in public that were completely unthinkable just 5 years ago and we won’t stand by watching! We have our opinion and we’ll shout it out loud! The cover artwork can be seen as a common theme here.

Select two songs on From The Dead and what inspired the lyrics.
Following that theme the title track “From The Dead” is a big middle finger to a certain group of people who think that right wing ideas and Heavy Metal can fit together in any case. The song can also be seen in a more general meaning: “Shadows rising from the dead” refers to the ideas of fascism and nationalism in Europe during the first half of the 20th century we thought long extinct. “Stand up, it’s time to fight” is what we have to say!

“Underground Society” is our comment on what we think about the music and metal police who keep on trying to tell you what you have to play, what you have to listen to or how you have to look in order to be accepted. We never cared, we just do what love and enjoy it!

Who did the cover art for From The Dead and how much input did you have on it?
The cover was painted on canvas by our old friend “Ben Pehl”. We always had the idea to make a cover like that with a very clear statement and we’re more than happy about how it turned out!

What could one expect from a live Stallion show?
High energy full speed madness from minute one till the end!

What was the experience like playing the Keep It True Festival?
We’ve been visiting “Keep it True” festival for 10 years now and somehow I grew up with it. It was an indescribable honor to play on that stage and I still haven’t realized I actually did to be honest… It was absolutely crazy because we played the night before with JAG PANZER in Austria and drove through the entire night as we had to be on stage for soundcheck at 10am or something. The gig was awesome and even though we were the very first band that played on the festival the venue was packed. Just unbelievable…

Has Stallion ever played here in the States or plan to in future days?
No we haven’t unfortunately, but we’d love to! It’s not so easy for a European band for several reasons. Our friends from EVIL INVADERS we sent back at the border just a few months ago and there are those insane distances (at least for us people from the old world). We hope to make it to the States some day anyway!

If Stallion could open for any band either now or the past, who would it be and why…
Haha, nice question. I think I’d go for METALLICA in the late 80s. That should be fun I imagine, not sure our livers would agree though 😀

Are you currently involved with any other band outside of Stallion?
Olli is actively playing with FLESHCRAWL but for the rest of us it’s STALLION only.

What is your favorite beer of choice and why
Haha, another good question. Hm, I come from a region called “Upper Franconia” that is world-famous for its variety of small traditional breweries but it would be really hard to pick just one. If we’d have to vote within the band it would certainly be “Augustiner-Bräu Edelstoff”. No specific reason it just tastes damn good 🙂

What’s up next for Stallion?
We have two shows in France coming up, one of them is at “Pyrenean Warriors Open Air” which we are really looking forward to! Aside from that we’re already gathering material for the next record so expect even more STALLION madness.

Any final words of wisdom?
Stay hard ’n’ heavy, support your local Metal scene and respect each other! Ah and buy our records so that we can afford to play in the States some day 😉 Thanks for the interview and best regards from Beerland!

Stallion is:
Vocals – Pauly
Guitars – Äxxl
Guitars – Olli Gee
Bass – Stämpfe
Drums – Aaron

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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