A Chat with Ralf Winzer García of Requiem and Poltergeist

Requiem Photos by Nati

A Chat with Ralf Winzer García of Requiem and Poltergeist

The almighty Requiem has returned with Collapse Into Chaos, their eighth magnum opus, now available worldwide via Massacre Records.  Created during the pandemic age, Collapse Into Chaos continue Requiem’s legacy of hard hitting music and intensive death metal reveries.  Highwire Daze recently interviewed Ralf Winzer García to discuss the making of Collapse Into Chaos during Covid, being committed to a metal entity for 25 years and counting, his participation within the ranks of the legendary Poltergeist, and more!  Read on…

Let’s talk about the new Requiem album, ‘Collapse Into Chaos’, is there any overall story or concept behind that title, ‘Collapse Into Chaos’?
There’s no specific single concept to the whole album as such. It’s just that we just picked that title cause it is like a summary of all the lyrical content of the new album. We always pick an album title that would reflect current situations in our personal lives and in what would be going on across the world. As you might know, this is our eighth album to date now since 1997, since we formed the band. That’s just it, we just picked the best song title of all the new songs and that became the album title as well.

Let’s talk about a few of the songs on the album. Mankind Never Learns. It’s very true. They never do. But tell me about that song and what inspired the lyrics?
Well, in general, all the lyrics on past albums as well on the new one are like a summary of observations of– Sometimes, they go into the direction of what a news report would look like and sometimes it would be rather something that we as individuals would reflect on. What kind of experience we’ve made throughout walking around on this planet, and so on. So ‘Mankind Never Learns‘ is just one of these titles that I pick because it encapsulates so many historical, philosophical, and psychological studies and facts that I observed for the past thirty, thirty-five odd years or whatever. I think it holds true to a certain level.

What I do with all the lyrics; if listeners or readers of the lyrics would take the time to think about them, to have their own interpretation of the content of the lyric, and that’s just another example of that. Obviously, we as human beings are able to change, to develop, and so on. But on the other hand, as it seems, at least as a collective, we’re not so much evolving like we should maybe but at the end of the day, what we’re doing with the lyrics is kind of food for thought. So it’s up to the listeners and the readers of the lyric itself what they’re taking from it for themselves.

Well, I did want to ask you about one more song, but I do like the idea that you’re letting listeners interpret the lyrics for themselves. Let’s talk about ‘Mind Rape’, and the story behind that song.
‘Mind Rape‘, by the way, the video for that song was released for listeners who would be interested in watching the video clip. It’s quite self-explaining because as we all know, with our current technological state, and with all the social media platforms we have in our lives, there is almost a 24/7 wave of information going on in our lives and we can’t really escape that. We’re completely confronted with all that unfiltered and sometimes very biased information. It’s such an amount that a lot of people have trouble to process it. I picked ‘rape’, quite a controversial word, but in relation to what I just said, it’s almost like your mind as a human being gets raped every day because of the flood of information, that it’s almost shell-shocked. They’re firing away in the news, media, mainstream sites, and on social media and so on, and so on. That’s what the song is about.

What has it been like to record and release new music in the middle of a pandemic and so much social unrest in the world?
That’s quite an interesting question I’ve had in the question in other interviews as well, so it’s quite a common topic at the moment, I think. Originally, we planned to record everything at one studio in Germany and then as you know, the band is is based in Switzerland. It’s just a few miles up, the studio in Germany. It’s just a few miles across the border but still, there is a border there. We were forced to do one part of the recordings at the studio in Germany and then we had to switch to another studio in Switzerland in order to finish the recordings, because at the time we were in such an enthusiastic and motivational drive. We thought ourselves it would be a pity to just squander that energy we had at that time.

We were forced to change studios to finish the recordings. Well, at the end of the day, everything went well. But we weren’t sure where to go and how to do things. Well, at the end of the day, we pulled it off. It was quite an experience to say the least. Talking about the unrest which is-  I think it’s a natural reaction of certain groups of people that are not content and in fear of personal financial loss and maybe they lost relatives to the disease as well, and so on, and so on. I think it’s just something that always was going on on the planet if you look a little bit.

I’m very much a history nerd. If you look back on the past, hundreds of years of human history, things like that always were going on. There was never a stable or quiet time when it comes to mankind on this planet if you know what I mean. This is no exception to what we’re experiencing now. I think all of us, our generation at least, we’ve never had to deal with something like we are seeing now. So, this is the first time and the experience is, or can be quite scary. Yeah, that was our experience at least. We are very adaptive and we’re very pragmatic with our approach as a band and so we didn’t have any disadvantages to say to or to speak of. Personally, obviously, I think probably yourself as well, it wasn’t always easy.

The last time I interviewed you it was via email and it was for an album called ‘Infiltrate… Obliterate… Dominate’, which came out on a label, I believe called Twilight Vertrieb.  When you look back on that particular album and that particular era of the band, what do you think of it now in retrospect?
No one has asked me that so far, so it’s very interesting. I still like the album very much. In hindsight, it is the album that we wrote and recorded as a four-piece because we had two guitar players before that album was written and recorded. It was the first time as a four-piece. Each of us had to find our role. You know, when one band member leaves, you have to go back and look at how you would like to proceed and where are the individual strength and skills of everyone. So we did that. The album in comparison to other albums and songs we had, it’s quite intricate. The songs are a little bit longer. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s a progressive death metal album, but there’s for sure some very detailed rhythmical work on there. And besides the fact that we still to this day play, I think at least three songs from that particular album, it still has a big space in my personal heart, for sure.

Requiem is about to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a band.  What goes through your mind knowing that you’ve been in a band much less doing anything for twenty-five years and counting?
Yeah, also a good question. First of all, I think, if you would ask most musicians that are in a band for several decades, I think it’s not something that you consciously think about. It’s just you get older. You write new music. You release albums. You play tours and festivals shows, and so on. And as we all know, when we’re growing older, time flies. Obviously, there are these reality check moments when you realize, “Oh, really? So it’s already twenty-five years. Who would have thought?” To be completely honest, there’s one part of ourselves that we’re really proud that we’re still going and that we are still enjoying what we do. We grew together as a band and I almost say that we become that kind of family. That is due to all the gigs and all the tours that we had together as individual persons. All of us developed as individuals. Some of us started families, had children, and so on, and so on. Just in general, I’d say to cut the long story short is that we’re absolutely happy where we are now. We are still an underground death metal band with a kind of a grindcore and punk background. We’re still talking about realistic and reality-related topics in our songs and we play the stuff we like to listen to ourselves. So what more can you ask for?

Has Requiem ever played here in the States yet? Or would you like to try and get over here in the future?
Oh, absolutely. We’d never played in the US before, but it would be, for sure, something we would be absolutely interested in. I went with a few international touring European bands to places like the Maryland Death Fest, for example, and Canada as well, and so on, and so on. I’ve seen those festivals and I very much would like to play them myself, obviously. If it will happen, who knows? Obviously, yeah, we hope it will in the future – that there would be some promoters interested in the band, but it’s not something you can force, either it happens or it won’t. Obviously, we hope that it will happen.

We’re gonna switch to a few questions regarding your other band Poltergeist. How did you end up in Poltergeist? And what made you decide to take on a second band?
Well, I’ll answer the second part of the question first. I’ve play bass for thirty-five years now and I’ve always played in several bands and projects at the same time. So it’s not a concept I’m unfamiliar with, and I’d like to have diversity for myself. Playing in different styles and genres cause I’m just that kind of guy that likes variety maybe. With the case of Poltergeist, it was that the singer and the guitar player, Paul and Andre, the founding members, I know them for maybe twenty-five years or something. So we were acquainted and we became friends a long time ago. When my predecessor left the band, they just asked me because we were in the same kind of social environment, as I said, we knew each other. To me, I thought to myself, “Yeah, give it a chance.” The music sounds interesting — especially, the older stuff is quite tricky to play and I’m always looking for a bit of a challenge. So, yeah, that’s basically it. And then I said, “Yeah, okay. I’m in!” And then, five years later, I’m still in the band. We released an album actually on Massacre Records last year in July – on the same label as Requiem.

And that Poltergeist album is called ‘Feather of Truth.’  What does that album title mean to you, ‘Feather of Truth’?
It is a story about an Egyptian goddess. The ancient Egyptians, they thought that when you die, you would come before the gods and your heart would be weighed against a feather, and then obviously, you can presume how the story goes. If your heart is heavier than the feather, that would mean that you led a bad life and you would go to hell. And if your heart would have the same weight as the feather or would be lighter as the feather, that would mean that you’re a good person and you would go to heaven. So, it’s quite a mythical kind of album title and the story behind the lyrics as well. And besides the fact that the story is a very good concept for the cover artwork, which came out almost like homage to Powerslave from Iron Maiden if you’ve seen the album artwork. It works quite well, I think personally for that kind of music.

This will probably never happen but would Requiem and Poltergeist ever want to do a tour or do shows together, or maybe has that already happened.
Ralf: It already happened once.  Both bands played at the same festival.  I think, we started with Poltergeist and then we played with Requiem after that. And I remember that our drummer in Requiem, Reto. He joined Poltergeist as well about nearly two years ago, I think. I remember him saying, “Well, it’s fine. I’d rather play through both sets at a time without a break.” So, otherwise, if he would play one set and then his muscles would get cold again, and then he would have to start all over again. So I remember him saying that “Don’t bother to get another time on the schedule.” And so off we went and it went quite well I must say. It’s not so common or we’re not so familiar with playing almost like a hundred minutes of metal because usually as a support band, which both bands are most of the time, you usually play for forty minutes maybe or forty-five minutes, fifty at most, you know? But it was good. I don’t think I would like to play a whole tour with both bands – that would might be a bit too much.

What do you hope the rest of 2021 brings for you, for Requiem, and for the music world in general?
First things first, at the moment, we’re absolutely looking forward to the release of ‘Collapse Into Chaos‘, the new Requiem album. As we speak now, we’re already in the middle of the promotional work for the album. I suppose that will go on for another probably two to three months. Then, we have a few gigs booked for the end of this year and I really hope that will happen, because obviously when you release a new album, you would very much like to play the new songs for people that would be interested in listening to you as a band. That is one thing.

For the music world, in general, the whole aspect of cultural events, I hope it will come back very soon because apart from myself, I know so many people in merchandise, crews, truck drivers, all the people that work behind the curtains to make events, festivals, and shows, and all of that happened, they need to make a living. So I very much hope that’ll happen soon, that we’re going back to what we’re doing usually being on the road most of the year. There’s that hope that it will go back to some kind of “normal.” I don’t like that word very much and especially, I don’t know if you have it in the US as well, there’s a dreaded term here in Europe. It’s called “the new reality.” I can’t hear it anymore. If you’re bombarded with stuff like that as I mentioned before, it gets old after a while. There’s still that hope that it will go back soon to something that looks like the situation we are used to as music fans or as fans of art in general. I’m not speaking about music. There’s just so much more art out in the world and we all need that. I think that the world would be a very poor place without culture and arts, and all of that.

Requiem is:
Michi Kuster – Vocals
Phil Klauser – Guitars
Matze Schiemann – Guitars
Ralf Winzer García – Bass
Reto Crola – Drums

Poltergeist is:
André Grieder – Vocals
V.O. Pulver – Guitars
Chasper Wanner – Guitars
Ralf Winzer Garcia – Bass
Reto Crola – Drums

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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