U.D.O Bassist Talks Steelhammer.

U.D.O Bassist Talks Steelhammer - "Us Who Are Old, We Have This
Sound In Our Blood And We Cannot Change It And We Don’t Want To Change
It"




By Martin Popoff


German power metal machinists U.D.O. returned recently with a shiny
new studio album called Steelhammer. BraveWords usually talks to Herr
Dirkschneider on such matters, but this time, we sat down with bassist,
co-writer and long-time U.D.O. member Fitty Wienhold for a few quick
impressions.


“First of all, it’s different songwriters, different producer,”
begins Fitty, who hails from ‘80s German legends BULLET (check ‘em
out!). “So it is all me and Udo, and yeah, in the past it was Stefan
(Kaufmann - guitars) and Udo who wrote all the songs, or most of the
songs, and I write different. For me, the album is more human—it lives. I
really must say that the first time in all my 18 years, I’m listening
to an album from ourselves, from the first to the last song, because
we’ve got a really huge variety, as well as really going back to the
roots of the first three U.D.O. albums with some heavier stuff inside.
We did most of the recording in my studio, where we were living, and
then we just recorded the drums in a studio in Italy. Of course you
always say your last album is the best album, but really, I really like
the way this one came out.”





“We are in the songwriting 50-50,” confirms Fitty, asked about the
working modus operandi. “Most of the time, because Udo doesn’t play
guitar, I come up with an idea for a riff, and he says, ‘Do like this,
do like this, do like this,’ and then he already has something in mind,
and we look for a hook line, together with the lyrics. Lyrically, we get
our rough ideas and just write them down in a way like we are talking
now, very, very roughly, and then we have somebody from England who is
working with us put it in the right words, and so they fix it up. We’re
always looking for—in the past, not so much—but now we really are
convinced we need to get critical lyrics that say something, because the
world has changed so much.”


“I don’t know if you know, we have a Spanish song on this album,”
continues Fitty, “because the crisis in Europe is really big. And it’s
not only the money, it’s the whole thing together. The people are really
messed up, particularly in Spain. So we have a song called ‘Basta Ya’,
and ‘Basta Ya’, the meaning in Spain, or in Spanish-spoken countries, is
really huge, because I don’t know if you remember, in the ‘80s in Spain
they had the problem with the terrorist group called ETA, and millions
of people went on the street with just this sign, ‘Basta Ya’, and the
meaning is ‘Finished, stop, we’ve had enough.’ And now after this
crisis, they did it again, going in the street, millions of people, and
so we made lyrics for that in Spanish.”





World-beating band that they are, U.D.O.’s main geo-political affinity however has always been with Russia...


“Yes, Russia for us, we don’t know why, but we are quite famous
there—the Russian people say that we have a Russian soul, for whatever
reason. We made two songs in Russian, and they are quite popular there.
In the earliest days, on the first tour, it was really an adventure. The
venues... the soldiers came with trucks and they just pulled out
cartons, pulled out brand-new equipment. It was all new! It was all new.
And the venues are huge. We’re playing there between two and 10,000
hall, and so for us it is still an adventure, because in the last years,
we always traveled by train, so we really could see the whole country.
It is all different from what we were told in school from our parents.
People are really nice and really open, and you have also the poor and
rich like everywhere. But it’s really, really, really nice. There are so
many stories. It’s just amazing.”


“I think we tried to keep the old metal style,” summarizes Fitty,
back to Steelhammer. “Particularly us who are old, we have this sound in
our blood, and we cannot change it, and we don’t want to change it. So I
know you will find 50,000 names for this sound, but we always say okay,
we are making heavy metal, and we like it like it is and it should be
as honest as possible. So with the new album, we really went a little
bit back to the roots, made it a bit more rough. There was a time, over
the last ten years, everybody really went in for all this perfect
production and triggers and computers, and so it lost a little bit of
spirit and little bit of soul—and this album for me sounds a little bit
more human, let’s put it this way.”