For more than 20 years, Falk Maria Schlegel – also known as plain Christian Jost when he’s out of the corpsepaint – has been providing Powerwolf with their booming organ and ethereal keyboard embellishments. He formed the band with guitarist Matthew Greywolf and singer Attila Dorn, and, as chief organiser, he’s helped guide them to their current position as one of Europe’s biggest, flounciest metal exports.
New album Wake Up The Wicked is business as usual for the werewolf/vampire/Catholicism-obsessed Germans, with recent single 1589 telling the story of a man called Peter Stumpp, an alleged serial killer from Cologne who was known as ‘The werewolf of Bedburg’. But what have two decades of power metal theatre taught Falk Maria about life? That’s what we’re here to find out…
FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS
“When I started listening to bands like Iron Maiden and the whole New Wave Of British Heavy Metal stuff, I tried to imitate Bruce Dickinson at home. In my dreams, I knew I would like to form a heavy metal band, but then I learned a completely different instrument – not the guitar, or bass or drums, but the organ! And then I found two guys – Matthew Greywolf and Attila Dorn – and they said to me, ‘Come join us.’
At first it was more like a rock organ, like Deep Purple stuff, and then we figured out how to use more of this church organ thing. And then it was like, ‘Oh, Jesus, that was what I dreamt of!’ It really was destiny for me to join these guys.”
FRIENDSHIP IS EVERYTHING
“We have kept such a stable line-up because we are not only musicians together in a band, we are friends. That means I can tell Attila, ‘This idea is shit’, and he can do the same to me – ‘Your keyboard line is no good’ – without our egos getting hurt. When we did have the line-up change with Stefan [Gemballa, drums, who left in 2010, and was replaced by Roel van Helden the following year] it was like, ‘Do we still exist as a band?’
It was quite difficult for us to handle the situation, but he’s still one of my best friends. We also had a drummer in between, Tom Diener, who replaced Stefan for a short while. He died recently and that is really, really sad for us as a band."
STAY STARSTRUCK
“When we played in San Francisco, Robb Flynn turned up for the whole show. I saw him behind my keyboard, standing there, screaming, ‘Demons are a girl’s best friend…’ and that was really nice, because we are all Machine Head fans. But for me, it was a real dream come true when we got to play with Iron Maiden here in Germany. For many, many musicians, Iron Maiden are the reason they’re musicians in the first place. It’s a great honour to share the same stage with these heroes.”
PUT YOUR OWN SPIN ON THINGS
“We also got to meet Alice Cooper, and we did a cover of Poison to mark his 75th birthday. I love Alice’s whole stage appearance. He’s the character he is onstage, and really nice off it. And then he came to us and said, ‘Congratulations on your version of Poison, it’s even better than mine.’ I’m not sure if he meant that really, because no version is better than the original, but it fits perfectly in the Powerwolf universe; the kind of music, with the organ and Attila’s voice. And I love that song. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime song.”
THERE’S A CERTAIN FREEDOM IN PLAYING A ROLE
“When I put on my own make-up, it’s like playing a character. The Falk Maria Schlegel onstage is also a part of my own private character, but it’s different in this mode. It’s the same for every video or photoshoot, but when you go onstage in your make-up and stage clothes, it gives you this sense of freedom. When we played a show with Kiss in Romania, I met their manager, Doc McGhee, and he said, ‘Now you’ve started with the make-up, you will never stop that.’ Sometimes at a summer festival when it’s 40˚C you get very hot, but I love it and we’ll never go onstage without the make-up.”
BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN VISION
“We had this vision about a special kind of power metal with the organ, the choirs, the orchestrations and everything. The music comes first, but then the second step was the image and entertainment aspect. In the early days, it was, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Only black metal bands look like that.’ There were times when we had doubts, but we didn’t change our behaviour. Nowadays it’s quite successful, but we didn’t change what we were doing to be successful.”
YOU DON’T HAVE WEAR YOUR BELIEFS ON YOUR SLEEVE
“We don’t want to hurt any religious feelings at all. You’re playing with some elements of the Catholic Church, with the liturgy and visuals, but with the credo that heavy metal is for everyone. It’s religion, it’s a lifestyle, and our own beliefs end up in the focus, but they’re private and we keep them there. We do get asked many questions about the situation, such as ‘Are you a Christian band?’ And we’re saying, ‘No, we are writing about religious aspects, about historical aspects.’ And we love clichés! So we use songtitles like Bless ’Em With The Blade or Amen & Attack. But we like to keep our own beliefs quite private.”
BEWARE THE MOON LADS, AND STICK TO THE ROADS
“We like this combination of mythology, folklore and facts. And sometimes we want to believe in mythology. For example, I was in Bedburg, the city where [alleged serial killer and werewolf] Peter Stumpp lived. There’s a hiking area, the Werewolf Path of Bedburg. I did that, and it was a little scary for me, because it was like, ‘Is there a werewolf behind my back?’ That’s a little bit superstitious, but there’s a power in stories like that.”
SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO GET REAL
“Normally we don’t address contemporary issues, but in the case of Glaubenskraft [which addressed abuse in the Catholic Church] it was really important, because it was so, so bad what happened there. We had this case in mind in Germany, and the victims were suffering for years again and again, and even in the trial, with some of the priests denying what they had done. And that was like, ‘The artist has to speak here’, and so it was time to write a song like Glaubenskraft.”
THE GEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
“There was a very detailed Powerwolf boardgame by Paolo Vallerga in Italy. We knew his games already, and when he came to us with the idea, we loved it. We also had a collaboration with Iron Maiden with their videogame [Legacy Of The Beast]. We love all these things, and then we have cosplay – people come to our shows with the make-up or as priests, nuns or whatever. I think it fits perfectly with the Powerwolf world.”
MATCH THE LANGUAGE TO THE SONG
“I learned Latin at school. I was always angry about it, because I told my parents all the time, ‘No one needs it, it’s not necessary.’ It’s a dead language of course, but I mentioned the destiny of becoming a member of this band, and 20 years later I get to use my Latin! Mostly we write in English, but sometimes the song is improved by using German or French or Latin. Like with Glaubenskraft, it needed this really strong and tough expression and pronunciation that the German language has.”
KEEP ON TRUCKIN’
“When I was a kid, I dreamed about going on tour and I also dreamt that I would drive the truck by myself. I like to sit near the bus driver after the show and watch the streets in the dark. And then I talk to the driver like, ‘Oh, it’s a Setra A 431 DT’. Some people would be quite irritated at the keyboard player being interested in the vehicles, but I’m just fascinated by them. I don’t like to drive fast cars or anything, but I love these big nightliners with the black windows. On our last tour, the driver gave me the opportunity to drive, like, 200 metres, and that was a dream come true for me.”
BE MINDFUL OF THE DETAILS
“I wouldn’t say I’m a control freak, but I do a lot of the organisational stuff. I’ll book the tour buses and develop new stage props with the crew. So it is still a little bit do-it-yourself, but it’s also that we want to be creative and we want to be involved in the whole process. I like to discuss elements of the production with the light department or the sound department.
I’m also checking my weather app every minute for festival shows. I’m always screaming to my crew, ‘Rain is not a problem, it’s the wind that’s the problem!’ I hate it, because I can’t change the weather. I can’t control that part, and that’s scary for me.”
Wake Up The Wicked is out now via Napalm.
