German thrashers Darkness come back with "Blood on Canvas", one of the best albums in their career! "Oh, yeah, yeah. The press and labels always say that", may think a metalhead. But let's face it — Darkness have delievered raw, straight in your face, aggressive but yet melodic and memorable thrash metal. Somehow they managed to revitalize the genre that is 40 years old but still remain true to their own music legacy! Here we are talking with Arnd Klink, the guitarist and one of the founders of Darkness, about "Blood on Canvas" and some other stuff.
Hello Arnd! Congrats with the new album “Blood on Canvas” entering official German charts. Is it the first time in your history?
Yes, it is. In times before, we never tried this. But now many, many metal bands enter the charts. And so we decided, we would like to do this, too. And you have to do some work for this, like playing many shows, giving signing sessions in record shops and things like these. So you have to work a lot. But it's the first time that we are in the German charts. And we are very proud for that.
And how many shows do you need to play and how many albums do you need to sell to enter the charts?
I'm not really sure because we don't have figures from this company who is doing the German charts in cooperation with MTV. It's called Media Control and they do the charts, but they don't give you insights into their algorithm. And so it could have been 500 CDs. It could have been 5,000 CDs. I don't know. The only thing I know that is to get into the charts in former times was very hard because only the sales were taken and counted. And now everything counts: T-shirts, downloads, streams, CDs, vinyls, everything you sell by a registered seller is taken and you can get into the charts. But I can't tell you how and why.
Okay, I see. I think I can tell that “Blood on Canvas” is one of the best albums in your history. Do you feel the same?
I think it's the most elaborated and the angriest album we have ever recorded. And I think our producer Corny Rambandt has made big steps in the production. “Blood on Canvas” sounds better than any of our albums before. And I think we played it a lot better than any album before. You can hear the energy and the aggression and everything. And if you take this musical stuff, I think it's the best we did so far.
What do you normally do when an album is recorded and released? Do you start writing new songs immediately? Or do you need some time to clean your head, so to say?
Yes, especially this time. We needed some time to clean our heads because we played quite a few shows and did signing sessions and listening sessions. And you always hear this album. And furthermore, we have got a new guitar player. Meke Heitkamp is not with us anymore. Perhaps you've heard about that. I had to train Dominik Roth, the new guy, how to play new songs. And so I had to listen to the album a lot. Of course I'm proud of it, but I can't hear it anymore because it's getting on my nerves. I've heard it so many times that I say, “It's nice. but just leave me alone for a while”.
We started writing in March or April 2021. Then the pandemic hit us, and we weren't able to rehearse and to play together. So we started actually writing songs one and a half years ago. And most songs are written by me. Seven out of nine songs are written by me, both lyrics and music. One song was together written by Lacky and me, and another one by Lee and me. Meik, unfortunately, didn't give so many ideas.
Have you ever experienced something like a writer's block when you try to come up with some riff or idea and you just can't?
I don't want to show off, but not really. Because I'm a nerd, you know. Every time I have an idea, I record it with my mobile phone. So I have got a lot of ideas which grew within two decades. And every time I write a riff or a song and say I need something, I just search for ideas in my recordings. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. A song is like a good wine. It needs time. And I don't think it's not a good idea to write a song and to say, “We need a riff, we need it now, we need to finish the song today”. That's not the way good music works or good songwriting works. So I have a lot of ideas and I just search what I need or what I can take.
That's great to hear that you maybe have some ideas for the next album already?
Yeah, I think so. And the very advantage is this new guy, Dominik, he's writing songs too. And he's a very good guy. He learned our live set and the whole new album, I'm talking about like 25 songs, in three months. And he's playing it very good. So he's writing songs too. I'm looking forward to write songs with him together because he's a young guy. He's got fresh ideas while I'm an old guy and I still have this new wave of British heavy metal ideas. And if you combine that, I'm convinced there will be something very new and very good.
Do you think that Dominik understands your music well? I remember when I interviewed Rage a few years ago, they said that they needed to explain to their young guitarist a bit about what Rage is about.
Yeah, yeah. Dominic likes Darkness. He has got some albums, so he listened to us before. I don't want to say he's a fan or he was a fan, but he listened to Darkness before. And when you play together, you can feel that someone fits to the band or not. I think there won't be a problem. I don't feel that. The other guys don't feel that, too.
Okay. And before you approached Dominik, did you ask some ex-members like Pierre Danielczyk, Joter (Jörg Hagenkötter) or Hobie Perera to rejoin?
Pierre is not interested in playing in a band like this anymore. He told me that a few years ago, and we don't have contact to Joter or Hobie anymore. So that was no option.
In one of interviews you mentioned that the band and Meik had different visions of things and stuff like that. So could you provide some details? It should be something really bad, that you decided to part ways during the recording process.
Yeah, it was in the beginning of the recording process that we felt there were differences before between Meik and the rest of the band. We had different ideas of how the band should work, how much effort you put in the band, how much time you spend on the band, which goals the band should attain. And so we argued about this two years before. It was a long process until this cut. And when we started recording… And recording is hard work. Most people think, “Oh, yeah, you go to a studio, you play something, have some beer and that's it”. I mean, recording and producing is hard work. And you have to be very disciplined to do that. And that was the point where we felt we didn't match together anymore. And then we said, “If this doesn't work now, it won't work in the future if we play shows, concerts, tours or whatever”. We all push the band forward, but Meik didn’t anymore. So we split up. Don't get me wrong, Mike is a nice guy. And I don't want to talk bad about him. Sometimes it's like a relationship with a woman or in a couples, you know, you come to a point where you have to that it has come to an end and everybody has to walk his own ways.
Is the song “Night in Turmoil” about your decision to fire Mike?
No, no, definitely not. I can tell you a story about this song. I saw a movie called “Athena”of a French director Romain Gavras. It's about the youth in France, in Paris in particular, that is going to a rebellion because of the social life they have to live. No jobs, no school, no money, no whatever, because they are colored people from these former French colonies. And then they start some kind of a revolution. That's what the film is about. And it is unbelievable. Sometimes they have scenes, about 10 or 15 minutes, taken in one shot, with driving cars and motorcycles and fighting and everything. And I was so impressed about this movie that I had to write a song about it.
OK. Let's close this chapter with your ex-guitarists. I remember a guy named Chris played in your band for a while. Why did he quit after a short time?
He had very personal problems and wasn't able to play in the band. He didn't have this fire. I have to say this. We played a few weeks or a few months together and we played two shows. No, only one show. And after that he said, “Well, I've got personal problems, I can't do this anymore”. So he came, he played and he left. So if you ask me who he was, I'm not sure. I can't tell you because the time we worked together was so short that I can't tell you who he was. I sometimes meet him when we go downtown to have some beer. But overall it was just a little chapter in our history.
Now let's talk about the album in details. I know that the idea of the title “Blood on Canvas” came to you when you were in a museum. So what kind of museum was that?
In Essen, the town where I live, there's a museum for any kind of art, which is very known in the world. It's called Folkwang. And there are many pictures of great painters like Gauguin, Paul Klee and Van Gogh. And sometimes they have exhibitions for just two or three weeks. But there is an exhibition that is every time there. And you can go there for free. It is sponsored by a big, big, big company. And we've been there. So when you see pictures, there's a name of a picture, a name of a painter and an information like oil on canvas, or made of iron, or whatever. So when I saw this sign “oil on canvas”, I said, “It sounds good, but what about blood on canvas”? And then the name of the song was clear, but the things behind the songs were not that clear, they developed.
There are a lot of references to your old albums on the cover of “Blood on Canvas”. The city in the window is the same as it was on “Death Squad”. And there are paintings with the covers of “Death Squad” and “Defenders of Justice” in the corner. Were they all your ideas or were they ideas from your painter?
It was actually Lacky's idea. Lacky was talking to the painter a lot and he kept the contact very, very tight. He had the idea to link the cover to the other albums and to the history of Darkness. It's nice that you recognize all this. There are many, many small details that even I don't recognize. But Lacky is the guy who had the idea for this. And he told the painter to do this and that.
Don't you think that your mascot Rudy looks a bit like you?
Like me? No, not really. It was the idea of the painter. And I don't know about the inspiration he had. Perhaps it was because I am in the middle of the “Death Squad” cover. I don't know. That's just a coincidence.
Don't you want to bring Rudy on stage someday to do some show like Iron Maiden?
I don't know if this is good for a thrash metal band or a thrash show. It's too close to Iron Maiden because they have Eddie and we've got Rudy. Perhaps people would say that we copy Maiden or whatever. I don't think that we will do it.
I noticed that there are some elements of traditional heavy or power metal on the new album. So how did you get these ideas? And how did others react on that? Didn't they say you can’t play this on a thrash metal album?
No. They never said bad things about it. We did the songs and everyone was satisfied with them. And I think in former times we were a little bit afraid of melodies and we are not anymore. I was talking to a guy in another interview one week ago who said it's the melodies that make songs good. And perhaps he is right. The melodies just flew to me. I grabbed them out of the air and it was just inspiration. I didn't plan to do a melodic song. It just happened. I don't know what it depends on. We just did it. The second lines of the guitars were written when I recorded the album. I had to play all the parts of Meik. I sat in my home studio and recorded everything. And sometimes I thought there should be a different melody from the second guitar. And that's how it happened. I think that if Meik would have recorded the songs, perhaps it would be less melodic because of his way of writing and playing.
Some of your albums start with an intro. And this time you decided to get straight to the business and deliver in-your-face thrash metal with “Wake Up In Rage”.
One of the first songs we wrote was “Human Flesh Wasted”. And there you have this guitar intro. And we thought we could use this as an opener. “Wake Up In Rage” was written short after that. And it is the way better opener, I think, because it wakes you up if you listen to the album. What is better for waking up than an alarm that wakes you up in the morning?
Do you associate yourself with a guy who wakes up in rage every morning?
Definitely. Because I usually hate mornings except Saturdays and Sundays. We all have to work. We can't do a living from the music. And we have to do things we don't want to do just for money, to pay rent and get food and play guitars and whatever. And when I get up in the morning I'm not a very nice guy. On Saturdays and Sundays I'm not tired and I know I can do what I want all the day. But in working days I'm not a nice guy. In Germany we say Morgenmuffel, a guy who's angry in the morning. I fight no one and I don't offend no one but I don't want to talk. I don't want to do anything. I do my duty and after having one liter of coffee everything is fine. But before that it's no good.
I love the lyrics of “Truth is a Whore” where you compare truth to a lady who cheats you. So how did you get this idea? Was there some certain eye-opener moment for you?
That's a good question. The lyrics are a little bit old. I think if you look at the media you have a lot of sources where you get information. And usually one thing is seen from different perspectives. In every perspective you have a different kind of truth: what happened, who's to blame, who has to pay, whatever. And I think this is very difficult and dangerous because people who have money can pay for the truth. They can pay media, they can pay YouTube for instance, they can pay newspapers. So truth can be created. It's a little bit like when Donald Trump became president. He had his alternative truth, which was in most cases bullshit actually. And that was the idea behind it. And I just saw it like a prostitute. You pay and she or it does what you want. That's the idea behind it. But I don't know where the inspiration exactly came from.
Another favorite of mine is the title track. It has really meaningful lyrics. But isn't it too dark? I mean, there have been a lot of positive moments in history, not only wars, blood and stuff like that. There were space flights, inventions of different medicines and so on.
Yeah, of course you are right. Mankind has made very, very good inventions in many spheres. And there are many good things like people helping each other, and stand for the friends and whatever. But I think thrash metal is the music which is to me still rebellion, and you have to put every bad thing on display. And you can't write about good things in thrash metal. I just don't know what I would write. Otherwise the song would be too happy.
Tankard does it.
Tankard, okay, but that's the image, like having party, drinking beer, get drunk, and I think that's the image, right? They can do it, but I think Darkness has always been aggressive music with offensive lyrics.
So you want to focus on the dark side of humanity.
Yeah, I'm more inspired by bad and dark things than I am inspired by good things.
That's right, as I said before, this is one of the songs that took a little time. And I always wanted to write something epic. I'm interested in breaking boundaries with Darkness. If you remember this EP we did, “Over and Out”, we played acoustic version of “Faded Pictures”, which is a very fast and angry song. And firstly Lacky said, “I know I'm not able to do it, and I don't want to do it”, and I really had to convince him to do this. And so Darkness never had an epic song with a ballad-esque intro, and that's what I wanted to do. I collected a few ideas, and the intro riff, which is played by bass, was inspired by Ben, who played something on bass in the rehearsal room, and I said, “Stop! Play this again, I have to record it”. So he played the bass line, and at once I had the idea for the guitar, and then we put everything together like one brick on another. But that took a little time, that's right.
Was it the first time when you wrote a song like this, or have you already done something in the past?
If you remember “Predetermined Destiny”, that's a long and epic song, too, which is a little progressive. That was the first time, but after it, we didn't write songs like this.
Another interesting track, musically and lyrically, is “A Couple of Kills”, which at first glance is about hunting, but to my understanding, it may be considered as a political statement that we need to rid off of some people, maybe some politicians in our society, to make it better.
That's your interpretation, that's the way you see this song.
So what is the meaning that you put in this song?
I think many greedy people and rich people and mighty people are responsible for the bad things in the world. If you see at all the wars that have happened all over the world, that's not the responsibility of the people who are forced to fight against each other. It's always the politicians and mighty people who own banks or whatever, and they have the power to decide. And perhaps it would be a better world if the leaders of the pack would be not that mighty and be not there, actually. So, you know, I'm not an aggressive guy, and I don't want to ask people to fight and to kill each other. But if you don't shout loud enough and if you don't use hard words, people won't listen to you. That's why I decided to write “A couple of kills”.
Yes, I got you. When I read the lyrics of “Human Flesh Wasted” I was a bit shocked how brutal they are. Where do you find so much aggression towards inhabitants?
Okay. I'm a Libra, you know? And I've got two sides, the good side and the bad side. And sometimes the bad side is stronger than the good side. And as I said, the music we make is loud and heavy, so I feel the duty to put the bad things on display, to wake people up, to shout at them, to open their eyes. Of course, it's ridiculous because I won't ever be able to do this. But nevertheless, I have to do this. And so I have to focus on the dark side of life. It's like comedians, you know? Comedians are so funny on stage and they're laughing and making jokes. And if you talk to them in their private life, they are very profound. They don't laugh a lot. And perhaps that's what drives me. My dark side drives me more and inspires me more than my good side. Do you remember this Eure Erben CD “Terror 2.0”? There's a song which is called “Das Dunkle Ich” and we translated it as “My Alter Mind”, which is a very personal song about me, that about my alter ego. I think that making music and writing song is some kind of a valve to let all the shit out, you know, and then it's off your body and you don't have to think about it anymore. If you write a song and someone is thinking about that, and if you meet the people you want to meet or if you hit the people you want to hit with a song, to spit in their faces like politicians and mighty people and everything, that's my kind of valve to get rid of all the shit.
So that's a kind of therapy for you.
Yes.
Okay. Now let’s talk about the sound production of “Blood on Canvas”. This is your second album, which you recorded with Corny Rambadt. Usually musicians say about producers, “Oh, this guy understands us like no one else!” So what makes your bond with Corny special? 
Darkness with Corny Rambadt
First of all, he's a nice guy. He's a friend of us. And we're living in the same area, in the same town. And he's a guy from the local scene, a heavy metal guy, and he's a drummer who does stagehand jobs for very big bands as drum roadie. When it comes to the studio job, he's very disciplined and he puts a lot of effort in production. He was talking to me about a delay and a reverb that he put on Lee's voice at the same time, which is very unusual when you're mixing. And he was talking like 20 minutes about that to me, what happens when delay and reverb are put together and how it sounds and it really sounds good. I like guys who burn for something and who put a lot of work into something. And he's such a guy. And he, of course, listens to heavy metal. He knows all the other guys like Bonded, Sodom and whatever, or whoever. So I think he's the right guy. The chemistry between us is very, very good. He knows when he has to push you and when he has to caress you. That's very important, especially for Lacky, because I can record my guitars at home and send the WAV files to Corny, that's no problem. But Lacky has to record in the studio and then the chemistry has to work between people. And Corny is a really nice guy who knows a lot about his technique, about the music, how it has to sound. So it's the best choice for us.
It's a bit strange to me that even after all these years, you still need someone who tells you, “Do it better, do it another way”, something like that.
Yeah, but I compare it to football players. They have a trainer and he says what to do and how to do. My wife, for example, plays violin and she's classically trained. She plays very, very good. And due to that, we know people who play in orchestras and do classic music. And even big, big musicians take lessons and have a teacher who tells them how to sing, how to create a song or to perform a song. So Corny is like the sixth member of the band. He can hear things we don't hear or we are not able to hear. And he gives us this little push to get over the cliff, you know? This little thing, what is necessary to make a song a good song and a production a good production. You can't do everything on your own.
Now when a lot of things have happened to Darkness, when you achieved a well-deserved success in charts and all like this, do you remember the moment, when you didn't want to perform as Darkness? So what do you think about this now? Don't you feel some regret that you didn't ressurect Darkness earlier?
Indeed, absolutely. I can tell you the exact date when both things happened. It was Darkness split in 1989 when musicians went their own ways. Lacky and me were always in contact. And in the early 2000s, we decided to play together. And at that time, there was this big wave of reunions. Everyone who was able to hold a guitar in a proper way said, “I will do a reunion of my band”. Everybody. There were bands with one original member and the rest were any random dudes, but it was counted as an old band of the 80s. And I said, “I don't want to ride this wave”. There were just two original guys, Lacky and me, and we wanted to do something new. So we created Eure Erben. And the first time I regretted that we didn’t continue as Darkness was at the Keep It True festival in 2006. We played this show and when I went on stage to do the sound check, just to adjust my amplifier, to plug the guitars, there were people shouting, “Darkness! Darkness!” The show didn't even start. And after the show I was talking to people from all over Europe, from the United States, from everywhere, who said, “I'm here, of course, for the other bands, but also for Darkness”. That was the point where I said, “I didn't realize that Darkness had such a good name, such an impact on the scene for all these years”. And in 2006, I doubted the first time if it was the right decision to quit with Darkness. And then it took another six years until we said, “Okay, we reanimate Darkness”. In hindsight it would have been better never ever to quit. After the split in 1989, Lacky and me should have said, “Let's just get some new guys and continue”. Because if you take a look at all the real successful bands, like our friends Sodom, Kreator, Distruction, they made it because they continued to play after line-up changes. And that is what gives you success in Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal is a live scene and you have to play, you have to be there, you have to constantly working. So I regret that, of course, yes.
On the other hand, it's good that you changed your mind in 2012 and decided to resurrect the band! I have some assorted questions and the first one is about the song “Zeutan” from “First Class Violence” which is about your ex-singer Olli. There is a small quote from “Faded Pictures”, just when you start playing this riff and jump into solo. So how did you get this idea to incorporate this element of “Faded Pictures”?
At that time Dirk was playing bass with Darkness and it was his idea because he was a very, very good, very close friend of Olli. And he was very sad when Olly died. Dirk was talking very often about Olli, and so he said, “We have to write a song for him”. And that was “Zeutan”, and I'm not really sure if that ever was a nickname of Olli, but perhaps Dirk knows it better, but that was his idea of the song and the lyrics were his idea.
Another question related to Olli. In the very, very beginning of your career, you played in a band called Crypt with him. So any memories about that band? Was the song “Soldiers” from “Conclusion & Revival” a reworked version of “Metal Soldiers”, which you played with Crypt?
Man, you know, I'm always surprised how good you are informed. It's like you live in my basement and always haunt me or something. I found this (shows a cassette tape) in a box a few months ago, which was in my basement. This is the tape from 1986. It was produced by Axel Julius from Scanner. He did the recordings. But no, “Soldiers” is not a re-recorded version of “Metal Soldiers” or something.
As far as I'm aware, you recorded two demos with this band.
Yes. I really would pay a lot of money for the second demo because I don't have it anymore. And once I found this one from 1986, I immediately digitalized it to keep it, because this tape is like 40 years old. It will be damaged very soon. So Crypt was my first real heavy metal band, when I started playing and didn't have a clue of anything. But when I heard Saxon for the first time, I became a heavy metal maniac and listened to many bands. With Crypt we played little shows in like little clubs and things. And it was a crazy time. And the bass player, HP, was a schoolmate and I met him two years ago and sometimes we meet and have a beer here. And I always think about it as a very good time.
How was it to record this demo with Axel Julius? Was he already THAT Axel Julius from Scanner who released “Hypertrace” or was he just a beginner like you were?
He's a little bit older than me and he was playing guitar much better than me at that time. And he was playing in a band which was called Lion's Breed. They did straight heavy metal, very, very good. I saw two or three shows of them and I liked them very much. So we knew each other. At that time we lived in Gelsenkirchen and we didn't have a clue how to record and he had everything, this mixing unit and equalizers and noise gates and everything. And he knew how to cope with that and we didn't. So we asked him to record it for us.
And to continue with that topic of “Conclusion & Revival”, after 2005 this album has never been reissued again. You have reissued “Death Squad” and “Defender of Justice” several times, but never “Conclusion & Revival”. So it seems that you don't consider this album as a part of Darkness history anymore.
Actually, I personally do. Perhaps Lacky does it too, but the other guys don't. Because honestly, we have to say that that lineup wasn't Darkness anymore. I think there are some good songs and without doubt, Ray (real name — Rolf Druschel) was a very, very good singer, but for a heavy metal band or for a hard rock band and not for thrash metal. And we didn't have a clue what to do, where to go at that time. That's why this album sounds a little bit weird. Many people don't like it, but I consider this as Darkness album without doubt. It is a part of our history, not the best part, but it's part of our history. And I'm not ashamed for that. It's just the mirror of the times.
Production-wise, that probably was your best one in the 80s.
Yeah, perhaps, but some guys say it's not the best because drums and bass are too loud. When I first heard the mix, I was on holiday. We went to the studio for three weeks and after that I went to Spain on holiday, so I wasn't involved in the mixing. And when Lacky sent the tape to the place where I lived at that time, and I listened to the tape, I was so disappointed. Guitars were thin and bass and drums were much too loud. But if you see it from another point of view, you can hear everything. You can hear the guitars, the bass, you can hear everything very good. While “Defenders of Justice” is more muddy and you can't hear differences.
Yes, of course. I've had problems with the lineup. The album “The Discreet Charm of Evil” was recorded in 2019. And shortly after that, the pandemic started. So I wasn't able to play shows, to find guys, to do rehearsals. So I lost two years. And then I played with Emma (Oliver Emanowski, bass player of Eure Erben), but it didn't work very well. So we split up about one year ago. And I wasn't able to find musicians for Sankt Velten. I don't know why. But I always believed in that project and I always wanted to continue with it. And now I have found a bass player. It is Thomas Becker who played on “Defenders of Justice” and after that joined Holy Moses. Soon I will be at his place and we're going to record the first song together and that will be released through digital platforms. I met Thomas a little bit more than one year ago when we played some shows with Sodom and he came to a show in Bavaria, in Aschaffenburg. So we were in contact again and a few months later we were talking and he said, “I'm so disappointed with the music and what I do. I want to play again this old stuff”. And I said, “Man, I'm looking for a good bass player”. So we came together again.
Did you recognize him when he showed up to your gig?
No, not really. We have changed during the years. I mean, last time I saw him was like 20 years ago and I was not sure if it was him. And then he said, “Hey, this is me, Thomas!”
And to round up this interview, do you think that Darkness finally have achieved the level of success that you really deserve? Or do you think you can do better?
I think deserve is not the right word because I'm a musician, I have an ego and of course, I think we deserve a lot more success. But we have to be honest to ourselves because we did a lot of mistakes. And if we don't have the success and the fame we would like to have or we think we deserve, then it depends on us because we made mistakes and we should have known better. I think Darkness really could achieve more if we put a lot more effort into this, which is difficult because it's not that easy to cut all the life we lived between the split of Darkness and now. I can't quit my job and my flat and get divorced and go back on tour again. There's a life behind all of us. And so if we would put more effort in it, I'm sure we could achieve a lot more fame. As I said, I'm convinced Heavy Metal is a live scene and every band that has big success has played a lot and we didn't. I mean, we're talking about a few hundred of concerts that Darkness have played in our career compared to a few thousand concerts Kreator have played in their career. There's a big gap. And that's the reason why we are less successful. And what we would need is, in my opinion, is a very good management because many things are depending on a management or a good booking agency. And that's not that easy to get.
At one point you had Boggi Kopec as your manager, but I guess that he invested more efforts in Kreator at that time.
Yes. And he made them famous. I mean, Boggi was a very, very nice guy. He worked very hard and he knew a lot of people. He was the founder and the owner of Gun Records and sold it to a major label for a shitload of money, I guess. Now Boggi is retired but such a guy would be very great for us.
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