Protector: The return of thrash and madness

This interview with the singer Martin Missy of the German thrash/death metal band Protector was done in the very beginning of 2014 soon after the release of "Reanimated Homonculus", Protector's triumphant comeback after decades of absense. Yes, it's a bit outdated but still has some interesting facts about the history of Protector and the making of "... Homunculus". 

Well, my first question is obvious. When you decided to bring the band back, what was your main reason?

The Protectors, 2006

We were playing in this cover band, Martin Missy and the Protectors, for about five years. And after that, we thought it would be cool to write some own material, not only to play the old songs, but also to write something new. And if we did that, we thought, why not do it under the name of Protector again? Because a lot of fans we met on the road, they didn't even refer to us as Martin Missy and the Protectors. Most of them said “You are Protector, why don't you change the name” and everything. But in the beginning, I thought it was too early to do so. But after five years with the same lineup, we are still playing in the same lineup now, now we are together for like seven years. I thought it would be cool to do this, because fans also asked for new material, and we tried that and did so. And I asked Hansi Müller, who formed the band together with Michael Hasse, if it was okay with him, and he said it was okay, and then we did it.

When I heard your first demo, “The Return of Thrash and Madness”, for the first time, it was like, oh, the old Protector is back. I know some people who complain that you forgot about this death metal side of the band. So what would you say to them?

 I think maybe they are right in general. I personally am more a thrash kind of musician than death metal, and also the other guys in the band maybe tend more to thrash than death metal. But I think at least on the LP a little touch of death metal also can be heard, but of course not as much as on “Shedding of Skin” and “The Heritage”. That was a complete other line-up. Oliver Wiebel, who replaced me back in the 90’s and then also took the guitar duties when  Hansi Müller left, he was a total death metal fan. So when he started writing songs for the band, it turned more to the death metal. And I am more into thrash. If Olly would have done the new Protector, probably everything would have been more death metal.

As far as I know, you wrote some tracks for the new album for the first time ever. So how does it feel? And why didn't you write music in those days?

 In the 80s, it was like everybody has his duties. Hansi was writing the riffs, Michael was doing all the drum parts and everything, and I wrote the lyrics. So I don't know, I just felt the songs were so good.I thought the songs were so good, so I never had the need to say, I have to write something or so. But now I just wanted to do it, I wanted to try what it is like to write songs on my own. The problem is, I can't play any instrument, so I had to sing the songs that I had in my head to my band colleagues, and they had to put them into notes afterwards. So it was an interesting work, but it worked out just the way I wanted it, as it was in my head all the time.

 Did you like this experience and will you continue to write new music by yourself?

Yes, I liked it a lot that it worked so good, that I could write songs without being able to play an instrument. So absolutely I will also in the future try to write some songs, but our bass player and guitar player write most of the songs today.

There are some connections on the new album with the old days. The song “Reanimated Homunculus” refers to Golem, and “Sons of Cain” refers to “Cain and Abel”. Was it really important for you to show these connections with old days?

Yes, I wanted to make a connection, as you say, to the old days, and also, of course, do something new, but to build a bridge to what has been, as you say, in the songs titles, also that we have like a short song in the end, like “Space Cake” in the “Golem” album, we wanted to do something like that as well. And on the back cover of the LP is exactly the same “Misanthropy” EP picture. We wanted it to look exactly the same as from 1987, also to build a bridge visually to the brand. And then the song “The End” is a new version of the song that was recorded on the “Resurrected” demo with completely different line-up. We re-recorded the song to also build a bridge to that version of Protector.

Hansi Müller, Ede Belichmeier, Martin Missy

You mentioned some of your ex-band members. Do you still stay in touch with Ede Bellichmeir, for example? What do they think about your music nowadays?

I have contact with everybody who ever played in Protector. Last time I had contact with everybody was because in the booklet of the CD there is information about every member of the band, what they have been doing, and so I took contact with everybody, even though I didn't have so much contact before. But Ede and Hansi are the ones probably I have most contact with. Ede is on Facebook, for example, so we have contact there. When I am in Wolfsburg, I usually visit Hansi and also Ede, he doesn't live so far away from my parents in Wolfsburg, so I used to visit him as well. And when we were playing in Wolfsburg, I think it was in 2012, Hansi, Ede and Olli were there, and it was great that they also gave us the support by showing up and everything. But also the others, like Marco Pape, I also have contact with, but he doesn't have any email, so I always have to call him by phone, so it doesn't happen too often, but sometimes we talk to each other, so it's great. And every ex member also got an LP and CD, so they should know what we are doing under the name of Protect.

So that's a really fair wayand it's really a nice attitude, because sometimes ex band members don't have a contact at all, or some of them use old names and even don't ask about rights or something like this. So this is absolutely great. Well, and speaking about Ede, I heard that he has some roots in Russia.

Yes, that's correct. I'm not 100% sure, but I think Ede was born in Kazakhstan in 1969, so it was still the Soviet Union at that time. But his forefathers were from Germany. In the 17th century, there were a lot of Germans moving to Russia because there was work. But Ede grew up in Germany, and he can speak both Russian and German. Of course, because I knew that he wanted to do a count-in like 1-2-3 on “Apocalyptic Revelations”, and I thought that doing it in English wouldn’t be cool, so we decided to try it in Russian. So I asked Ede, “What is it in Russian”? And I'm not really sure, but I think it is both him and me singing this on the record later, because it was not so easy for me to pronounce it correctly. But it was cool of him to do that thing, and it gives the whole thing a special touch.

I guess, because of this song, Protector gained a lot of popularity in Russia back in the day. And speaking about your success, I believe that nowadays Protector is more successful band than it was back in the 80s. Would you agree with me?

It's very difficult to say, because back in the 80s you could usually measure the popularity by how many records you sold. Today, a lot of people are downloading. They still like your band, but they download the music instead or record it from somebody else. It's much more extreme than back in the 80s. So, it's very difficult to say today how many fans we have. Like on Facebook we have about 5,000 people who like the page. As for pur latest album, I think it was 1,500 CDs and 1,000 LPs for the first press, and then they did a second press about the same. But like in the 80s, I think we sold 10.000 copies of “Golem”. And I think "Shedding of Skin” was the biggest seller. Olli told me they sold like 20,000 copies back then. So, it's very difficult to say how popular we are today compared to the 80s. So, I really can't say, but it's a big interest today and I'm really happy that many old and new fans like that we are back.

Let's speak about lyrical content of the latest album. What inspired you to write such lyrics for “Deranged Nymphomania”?

Actually, that was Matthias, our bass player's idea. It happened out of a fun situation. We were like sitting in a bus, driving through Germany to go to the next gig. And he was sitting and drinking a lot of beers and trying to come up with some ideas for some songs. And suddenly he thought, we should write a song about nymphomania. And then we talked about that back and forth. And then I tried to write this kind of over-the-top lyric to make it kind of a parody about this nymphomania. So it was kind of more like a fun thing. It happened out of a fun situation.

Could you also comment on the lyrics for “Birth of the Nation”?

That was actually a text I had written for another band I was playing in earlier. But the song was never finished, so I used these lyrics and rewrote a little bit. And it's about the birth of the democratic, the new Germany after the Second World War. So I tried to describe the birth of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

You also had some lyrics about Germany in the past, the song called “Germanophobia”.  Have you ever felt a kind of a guilt of being German? Or did some people try to tell you that you are German, so you have to feel a kind of guilt for your grandfathers?

Of course some kind of a nation guilt is still there. Maybe that's why a lot of Germans don't like to talk about what happened back then, even young people. Because it's like depressing them that a country like Germany could have done all these things. So I think it's more like something that is above our heads and always there and reminding us of what had happened back then. And that's kind of depressing for a German, at least for me. I don't know how today's young people think, but in my generation I think it was a lot of that. And that's why it was difficult to talk about it. There are TV-programs about the Second World War and Germany attacking all the countries. And it's really kind of depressing to watch it. But you still watch it all the time because you maybe think that you can get some new information on why this whole madness happened. But still I don't know. It was a totally different time, totally insane time in German history.

Speaking about the song “Anti-Man”, I guess it was inspired by the movie “Doctor Who”. Is it correct?

Yes. This is a British science fiction series and I like it a lot. Especially the 1970s series with Tom Baker as Doctor Who. And there was this one episode that I liked especially and it was called “The Planet of Fear”, I think. I'm not quite sure. And there was this Anti-Man in it and I liked that episode so much and it was easy to write something about it because it was this kind of hidden evil on the planet that took over a person who then killed a lot of other people and stuff like that. And yeah, I'm a lot into science fiction, reading science fiction and also watching on television or in the movies and that's why I also decided to do a science fiction kind of works.

As far as I understand you also concern a lot about ecology and nature. At least you show your position in such songs like “Terra Mother” and “Nothing Has Changed”. Are you a member of any kind of organization like Greenpeace or whatever? Or do you just care about nature?

I would say mainly care about nature and I try in my little possibilities that I have to make people aware of what is happening. But I'm personally not so organized. I was in the WWF for a while but I have now been unemployed for a couple of years so I'm not in any kind of organization anymore where I have to pay money. So maybe when I get a job again then I can join all these organizations again.

Protector is a kind of your hobby nowadays and you are not really interested in doing as many shows as possible. But do you have any intention to make another record with Protector?

Yes, the plans definitely exist because as long as we are having fun, as we see that people are interested in Protector and our fans like what we do we will try to continue. Of course, it is also important that the band stays together and everything, because I really don't want to restart again with totally new band members. I want to do this with these guys. Actually, we have already started to write one new song, so we are on the go for that. But we don't want to rush anything, so we will see when we will be finished with, let's say, ten songs. And then we definitely would like to go and record again,

You also have another band called Zombie Lake. As far as I understand, you started this band maybe ten years ago. Why did you decide to put “Plague of the Undead” only now?

I wouldn't call it a proper album, it's more like a collection of different tracks. I had a contact with Derek, a guy from America, who was a Protector fan, and he said it would be cool to do something. And it was about ten years agowhen we recorded three songs as a demo and wanted to do something. But then he continued with another band, and some years later we had a little bit more contact again, and then he said, “Let's try to write songs so we can make an album”. Actually, I wasn't that involved in everything. I wrote the lyrics, I recorded the vocals, but all the other stuff like mixing and mastering, and all the booklets and everything, I had nothing to say about that. That's all Derek did in the States. I haven't actually heard it, I got a package today with some CDs and LPs, so I can listen to the product on my own stereo.

It sounds more like, as you said, a compilation of demo songs maybe.

I don't know, I would maybe have done it a little bit different, using it a little bit more time to mix it. But in some way, I'm not so much of a sound fetishist. So for me, it's important that the songs are good. So as long as it's not totally horrible, distorted or something that you can't hear anything, it's okay if it's kind of underground for me.

Yes, this is still good to my ears, but you know, it was a little bit strange that in the same year you put out two releases, because Zombie Lake with your voice sounds like Protector for me. It was like another album by Protector. And when we have real, proper Protector, who cares about Zombie Lake?

Yeah, maybe. I haven't thought about that before you said it, but maybe it's true a little bit, because of my voice, that it sounds a lot like Protector as well. It was a little bit unfortunate, because usually this record should have been released over a year, maybe even one and a half year ago. It was problems with the recording, it took me some time to write the lyrics, then I had to record the vocals also, and then there was this storm in the USA, where parts of the recording were destroyed in the studio, where the studio was flooded and destroyed, so they had to re-record some parts of the stuff again. So maybe it would have been better if it would have been released when it actually was supposed to be released, like 2012 or something, then it wouldn't have been so close. So yeah, you are probably right, that maybe it stands a little bit in the shadow of the Protector.

Protector, 1989

Yes, that's what I meant. I'm not saying that Zombie Lake is a bad music, but it's in the shadow of Protector. Well, if you don't mind, I have a few more questions about old times. I noticed that in the old albums you had a lot of lyrics about some mental sickness, like “Delirium Tremens”, “Megalomania” or “Omnipresent Aggression”. Why were you so interested in this stuff?

I would say, often I wrote lyrics after I had found a cool word that I thought was good as a song title, like misanthropy. It's the same thing as hate for people or against people. I found this word and I thought, I would build something around that. And a lot of these words were like state of mind, agoraphobia and stuff like that. And I thought it was cool. And it was just like a coincidence that a lot of these were about a state of mind, but because they were cool names for songs, I took them and then I wrote the lyrics around them.

Before you quit Protector, you recorded two albums and one EP, but you did only a few shows with the band. So why was that? Was it really hard to get live shows for Protector?

Back then we also had to do all the bookings by ourselves. At that time, when I was in the band, the record company almost never booked anything for us. And at that time there was no internet. It was kind of hard to get gigs that way, only by telephone or by writing letters and something like that. It was tough to get in contact with organizers and so on. That's probably why we didn't do so many gigs back then.

You also wrote lyrics for the song “Capitascism”. I guess it shows your positive attitude towards socialism. Is it correct that you were into socialism at that time?

Yes, that is correct. Back in the 80s I  wanted to be a little bit of a rebel against society. And I definitely never wanted to be a national socialist. So I chose the other side instead, extreme left. Actually, I have to admit that I never really was so political that I understood what I was standing for. It was maybe more a protest, a rebellion as far as I see it back now.

And when you decided to move to Sweden from Germany, was it only because of your family roots? Or did you decide to go there because of Sweden wasa kind of socialistic country?

The main reason why I moved, it was, like you said, because of my family roots. I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try how it is to live in Sweden. And then I stayed there. When I had lived there for a year, I went to a school and then I decided I wanted to stay. Since then I'm living here and I'm very happy here.

I know that you quit Protector twice. First time you quit for a while and then you returned to the band. And it was because you suffered from panic attack. What caused this condition?

I was stupid enough to do drugs back then. No heavy stuff, but it was enough to... One evening when we were smoking, I started to get these panic attacks. And it was the worst experience in my life. And it was like for weeks and months it had a grip on me. And I knew I couldn't play live or do anything. So that's why I quit the band. But then I felt a little bit better again in the summer and recorded “Urm the Mad”. But I realized then that during this time when I was away from the band the motivation, the energy was gone. And then I left the band for good in the end of 1989.

But before you quit the band, you wrote lyrics for the next EP, “Leviathan's Desire.”

Actually I did that after I had left the band. Oliver Wiebel asked me if I could help him with the lyrics and I did that. It was no problem, but it was a little bit sad that it was never mentioned on the record officially. So that I think was a little bit sad, but okay. And I wrote also four lyrics for “Shedding of Skin” as well.

For the whole album?

No, only four songs.

Don't you want to re-record some of those tracks with your voice?

Actually I did one song, “Retribution in Darkness”. It is on a split LP with Angad. I did it just to try what it would sound like.

Michael Hasse & Martin Missy

And one of my last questions is about Martin Hasse. There is still no certain information about his death. Some people say that he died because of drug overdose and some people say it was because of some other reason. Can you comment on this tragic event?

The problem is that I had almost no contact with Michael at that time. But what I heard afterwards, it was two things. One was that he had gotten a stroke and died from that, like blood in the brain. And the other was drug overdose. But I think even if it was a stroke, I think it maybe was because of he used drugs. There was something like going wrong in the body and stuff like that. So in the end I think it was whatever happened, I don't know exactly. But I think in the end it was the drugs because he was doing, as far as I know, quite heavy stuff. And it was that that killed him.

It's so sad, you know, because he was so talented and he was so young.

Absolutely, and a very, very nice person as well. At the time when I was in Protector, he was my best friend. I was there, visited him every second day I was at home. We listened to records and stuff like that. Yeah, it was really, really, really sad what happened. And it always shows what shit drugs are. I have never touched anything after my experience back in 1989. Not any drugs, I drink alcohol, but I have never touched drugs again since then. And even more after what I heard, what happened to Michael.

And it's kind of sad, especially having in mind that you wrote the song "The Monster Repugnant Antagonist of Life”.

It's exactly about drugs and what they do with people. And that was even before Michael started using harder drugs. Actually, I didn't have him in mind. It was a little bit about my own experience with drugs. But now, afterwards, when I'm looking at the lyrics again, I can see that it's almost something like I could have written for Michael.

Yeah, it's sad. To round up the interview, I want to ask you about the future plans. Would you like to play more shows and do a kind of a tour over Europe?

Actually, I don't know what will happen in the future. The only problem is that I still have some problems. I don't know if it is because of what happened back then, but I still have problems with panic attacks. I can't fly, sit on a plane. I feel like claustrophobic, when they close the doors, because I can't get off the plane. So, I always have to go by train. So, when we played in Italy, I was going from Stockholm to Italy for 36 hours on a train.

I can totally understand you, because, you know, I hate flights, but that's the easiest way to travel.

Correct, it is absolutely. You can get everywhere so fast. Like now we will play in France in April. And the guitarist was so kind, he said, “I’ll go with you on the train”. But the drummer and bass player will fly. And for them it will take like, I think, one hour, 20 minutes. And for us it will take like 24 hours or something to go by train to France. So, yeah, it is sad. It would be so much easier and I could play so much more gigs in countries that are even more far away.