Founded in 1982 the legendary trio Destruction reached the top of the national thrash metal movement, with albums such as ‘Infernal Overkill’ and ‘Eternal Devastation’ nestling in their impressive heavy metal canon. Even later works like ‘All Hell Breaks Loose’ or ‘The Antichrist’ are glorious moments in thrash, highlighting why Destruction are part of the “Big Teutonic 4’’ and still touring the world with great success. The band are set to return to Australia in April for a headline tour across the country so we caught up with bass player and vocalist, Schmier to talk about the upcoming shows plus we go into a little Destruction history and the longevity of the band.
Andrew: So obviously we’re here to talk about the upcoming Australia tour, we are super excited and I’m super excited to have the chance to see you guys live.
Schmier: Yeah it’s great we’re coming over finally again. I just saw that Australia is very busy at the moment, there’s a lot of shows going on at the moment. Hopefully people will have the money to come to all the gigs! But for us it’s super exciting, we don’t come to Oz so often so it’s very special to come over again.
Andrew: Well how long has it been since you were here last? It must have been 5 or 6 years ago I guess?
Schmier: Yeah at least 5 or 6 years, something like that. It’s been a while and it’s our third time so we have a lot of good songs that we didn’t play live last time with us so it’s going to be a great show.
Andrew: Yeah sure obviously you had the “Under Attack” album come out in 2016 so it’s been a couple of years so how has the response been? How are you feeling about the songs and how are they playing out live?
Schmier: We had a really long tour for this album. We’ve been touring in Europe twice, we did the States, we did South America, we’ve been in Russia lately so we’ve been everywhere with this album but now we also have this best of album out called “Thrash Anthems II”. It’s like a recap of the old songs so now the setlist kind of mixes up with all the new so it’s a best of 36 years basically.
Andrew: 36 years is a long time to be doing this, how do you feel about being in the game for so long?
Schmier: You cannot think about it really, it’s kind of crazy! It’s a long fucking time even though I have to say some of the past, the 80’s seems really far away but I have a lot of good memories still though. But the last 18 years since the reunion, they have been going so fast it’s actually crazy so I guess when you’re older time runs fast [laughs].
Andrew: That’s very true! Now there’s some big news within the band, you guys have lost your drummer [Wawrzyniec “Vaaver” Dramowicz]. How has that whole situation been so far and are you guys looking for a new drummer at the moment?
Schmier: Yeah he has family and we kind of knew this would happen at some point. He lives in Russia and Poland and he has 3 young kids and his family needed him so it was a big struggle for him to leave too but family first and we understand. But for us the show must go on, we have Randy Black with us for Australia who played with us before in America and he’s the former drummer of Annihilator and Primal Fear.
Andrew: Yeah I know him, he’s a great drummer!
Schmier: Yeah great drummer and you can only replace a great drummer with a great drummer! So Randy is helping us out now, we don’t know if it will be full time or anything. We just see how this goes and we will do some auditions after the Australian and Asian tour to test out some other drummers but of course Randy is going to do a great job. We’ve known him for many years and he’s also been doing a long American tour for us so he’s going to give the songs a nice kick.
Andrew: Yeah it will be good to see him since as you mentioned he’s been in a band called Annihilator in the past who is another thrash band I love so which I’m familiar with his work. What’s his style like with you guys? How has he been fitting in?
Schmier: We’re having some rehearsals soon and he’s already selected a song so he’s rehearsing at home now preparing for the rehearsals with us. He’s a very steady drummer and he’s played before with us so he knows our style very well and he’s very excited to come to Australia for the very first time, he’s never been to Oz so he’s super thrilled and excited so it’s going to be cool.
Andrew: You’ve mentioned that you’ve been to Australia a couple of times before so this time around is there anything in particular that you would like to do that you maybe didn’t see or do last time?
Schmier: We definitely have some more time this time, we play more shows but we also took some more off days so that’s actually fantastic. Of course everybody wants to see Bon Scott’s grave and stuff like that so we might do those little tourist things. We did the winery stuff the very first time we were there, I would love to go to a winery again. Australian wine’s are special and I love them so would do a winery tour for sure, we will see how much time we have for little things but we definitely are going to do some little tourist things. We also have 2 extra days in Sydney and when you are in town for a show you don’t catch anything basically, you just meet your friends at the show and then you go sleep so looking forward to those off days also.
Andrew: There was a recent comment you made in another interview where you mentioned travelling is some of the best things people can do in their lives and for their education. Obviously with some of the things you must have seen over the years in travelling around the world, what are some of the things that you feel that people could get the most out of if they did more travelling in their lives?
Schmier: You understand cultures better, you understand cultures better when you go into another country. You also get to see the politics and how they put their news in their own way, so what you see on TV and what you read is always a reflection of your government and what they think of their foreign politics. So it was a very nice time lately, we just went to Miami and played 70,000 Tons of Metal so we stayed in America for a couple of days and then we went home and went to Russia and played 2 shows in Russia. So those 2 enemies, the cold war! We had one week with Trump so I watched some American news and some Trump supporting stuff and then we went to Russia and saw Putin and of course both are very good promoters of their regimes and it’s very interesting. Of course I talk to people and give my own opinion and you understand how the world works when you travel, you go to Russia and the Russians are not worse than the Americans. The Russian people also want to have a good time and drink and party and rock n roll and meanwhile Russia has a lot of American influence which is actually crazy. And then on the other side you see them bashing each other all over the politics, it’s ridiculous. The great thing about touring is you go to countries and discover that you see there’s a lot of things you will like about other countries even if you think you might not like it. Of course we’ve also been to some very extreme countries where there was a lot of poor people like India which was definitely pretty shocking, to see how poor people are there and to see how difficult it is to be a heavy metal fan in those countries.
Andrew: Yeah and I guess that’s something that no matter where you go in the world, music and in particular heavy metal unites everyone together. It’s a very communitive thing.
Schmier: Oh it does, I think the heavy metal community is the most sworn one. People don’t care about religion and borders and politics, once they are at a heavy metal show they are all brothers and sisters and I think no other music has this feeling like rock music and heavy metal especially.
Andrew: When you first started out in music many years ago, what was it that inspired you to be in a band? How did you make that decision to play music for the rest of your life?
Schmier: I mean it all happened, it was an accident [laughs]. Basically I was a huge heavy metal fan and at the beginning there was nothing, we in Destruction were the first heavy metal friends that existed in our region so when we met at parties and waiting for the rock songs at parties, we thought it was a bunch of people. Mike [Sifringer] our guitar player already had a band and was playing in a heavy metal band and they were looking for a bass player and they kind of asked me by saying, ‘Dude you have long hair, you have a denim jacket with patches. You’re the only cool man we have around here, you have to be our bass player’. ‘What the fuck, OK I’ll do it!’ The next day we went to the city and bought a bass and since then I’ve been the bass player for Destruction or basically the band before Destruction and then later on we had to fire our singer when we were already Destruction and then I became the singer. So I became bass player by accident and singer by accident and we never thought of course that our career would last so long, we were playing music because we loved heavy metal. We wanted to break out of the routine, this normal boring life, we wanted to have excitement and music was excitement for us. It all became such a big dream and it’s unreal now to look back, it’s kind of crazy that all this happened.
Andrew: And the world was much bigger back then because we didn’t have the internet so when you did your first big world tour, what was that like? What did it feel like to be out in the world playing the music you loved?
Schmier: We were surprised! We were kids from the countryside and when we had the first shows, a couple of hundred people showed up and we were like, ‘What the fuck!’ We never played in our area because heavy metal was very slow in developing so we always played far away from our area and we were really surprised how many people came. We were also in a lucky position that our first tours were with big bands so we toured with Motorhead several times back in the 80’s and our very first tour was the Hell Awaits tour with Slayer so we learned from the best in the beginning. We got thrown out from the little hillbillys from the countryside on stage and then we learned from the best and of course I think that was an important lesson.
Andrew: Speaking of Slayer and I guess this is a big topic in the thrash metal world but their retirement is a big shock among the fans. What’s your thoughts on that?
Schmier: Yeah I’m not really surprised because we all know that Tom Araya is not there with his heart anymore. He’s a new born Christian now and I guess he doesn’t like what he did in the past anymore and of course at this point it’s maybe better to stop. I totally understand what they are doing but I love what I do, I would not stop, metal is my life. I don’t know what Araya is going to do when he retires but I know Kerry King won’t stop playing music, he’s too much of a maniac also. But we will see how this all develops because there’s a lot of money involved in Slayer, maybe there will be a reunion in some years. All those reunion and stuff, there’s a couple of musicians that have stepped back and come back like Scorpions did their farewell tour 8 years ago and are still on tour and also Ministry came back 3 times already. So we will see, a heavy metal world without Slayer definitely is not the same anymore.
Andrew: Yeah exactly. Well with Destruction it’s good to see you coming back to Australia so is there any last words you have for the Aussie fans before you get here?
Schmier: Yeah I want to say we are really excited, we’re touring a lot and playing a hundred shows a year. Playing in Australia is always something special for us, the first time we came over we had such a warm welcome by everybody. By the metalheads, the people, at the airport even where the customs were fucking us over doing drug tests and everything, they were friendly as fuck like, ‘Wow Australians are friendly as fuck’. So we had the best tour ever and since then it’s always been very special for us. We’re really excited and we’re going to bring some great songs with us that we’ve never played in Australia before so hopefully people will come to the show and enjoy and party with us.
TOUR DATES
Friday 20th April – Perth, Amplifier Bar
Saturday 21st April – Adelaide, Fowlers
Tuesday 24th April – Melbourne, Max Watts
Wednesday 25th April – Canberra, The Basement
Friday 27th April – Brisbane, Crowbar
Saturday 28th April – Sydney, Manning Bar
Tickets through Hardline Media.
Limited VIP meet and greet tickets available
VIP Meet And Greet: Entry To Show, A Meet And Greet With The Band, 3 Personal Items Signed, Photos, Tour Poster, Beer Cooler and VIP Laminate.
