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An Interview with Vas Kallas and Kaizer von Loopy of Hanzel und Gretyl
Posted: Sunday, November 12, 2006
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

Whether it's love or hate, few people are on the fence about Hanzel und Gretyl. While fans go crazy for the band's over-the-top parodies of German culture, industrial music, and science fiction, not everyone gets the joke; their albums are even banned in Germany.

Sick of trying to explain themselves, band founders Vas Kallas and Kaizer von Loopy went straight to hell with 2004's Wagnerian metal opus Scheissmessiah and followed it up with a successful tour supporting Ministry, but now they're back with a new EP, a new tour, and a new message. As they tell ReGen, Kallas and Loopy aren't setting out to offend anyone; they just want everyone to come to their fukken über death party with lots of schnapps and beer!

Tell us about your new Oktotenfest EP. For people that haven't heard the new songs yet, what do they sound like?

Kallas: There are just two new songs, and they're just really awesome. They're really great.

Loopy: There's two songs. One song is called 'Fukken Über Death Party,' and the other song is called 'Stern Krieg,' which loosely translated means 'Star Wars,' but not really. They're heavy, and they're catchy, and they're German.

Kallas: We just made a little two-song package to come out and do this Oktotenfest, which means 'OK Death Fest,' which also means 'Day of the Dead Fest,' which is Halloween and Oktoberfest. It's a nice little package.

Loopy: We wanted to do a death metal Oktoberfest.

Kallas: With a lot of schnapps and beer.

Loopy: It's in its fetal stage right now, but this is the first annual Oktotenfest, and hopefully there will be a second annual Oktotenfest next year.

You've also announced that there's going to be a new full-length album coming out next year.

Kallas: Yes; these two songs are just the beginning of it.

Have you started writing the new album yet? How far along is it?

Kallas: I have several songs.

Loopy: She has a lot of ideas and objects. I wait until the last minute.

Kallas: Then he steals all my ideas, turns them into his ideas, and takes credit for them.

Does the new album have a title yet?

Kallas: No. Do we have a title for it?

Loopy: No, I don't think so, but it's kind of congealing into this Star Wars and World War I melange of Germanic noise.

Where do you come up with the themes for your albums? The last album was sort of Wagner meets Dante's Inferno, and before that it was space Nazis.

Kallas: It depends on what's going on with our lives. With the last one, people were accusing us of being evil you-know-what, Nazis, so we said, 'You know what? We're going to hell, so let's just go to hell and sing about how life is in hell.'

Loopy: Basically, in the context of Hanzel und Gretyl, we try to juxtapose it with some weird literary reference or stick ourselves in a weird time frame and just make it surreal.

What are your big literary influences, besides science fiction and Wagner?

Loopy: Now you're going to get blank stares. We don't read a lot.

Kallas: I read a lot about astrology, numerology, mysticism, metaphysical stuff.

Loopy: That to me is unbearable. I have read a lot of philosophy and a lot of the classics, but that was a long time ago. I don't read anymore. I like to read manuals, and that's about it. Manuals are a good read.

Kallas: I just write in my journal every day, and stuff comes out and leads to ideas. It's all about the universe.

You mentioned that Scheissmessiah was dealing in part with controversies that you've had. How actively do you court controversy?

Loopy: I court it. She hates when I court it.

Kallas: I don't think we seek it out. I think it just seeks us. I don't go look for it.

Loopy: I look for it, and then she goes, 'You're destroying our career!'

Kallas: He tries to do things, and I'm like, 'You can't put this sample on this, because they're going to accuse us of being this!' I fight him about it.

Loopy: I'm very provocative.

What is the craziest thing you've ever been accused of?

Loopy: Today?

Kallas: Being a man.

Loopy: Same here.

Kallas: Saying that I'm a Neo-Nazi or something, which is ridiculous.

Loopy: That's a really hard question.

Kallas: He's been accused of being gay.

Loopy: That's absolutely true, but is that accusatory? I get accused of that on a daily basis, and I'm not, but if I was, that would be OK. It could be the kaiser helmet. It could be a number of things. It could be the lederhosen. I don't even want to go down this path, I don't think. This is not going to go to a good place. I'm not gay. But if I was that'd be OK. But I'm not. Next question.

Has the current political climate affected either your songwriting process or how you've been perceived by the public?

Kallas: I'm not into politics. I'm into other things besides politics.

Loopy: Even if you say you're not into politics, there's always a pervasive vibe that influences you whether you realize it or not. Of course I think it influences us. Right now, with all this calamity and the Bush administration and everything, I don't see how you could write something happy.

It seems that one possible interpretation of Scheissmessiah is a big insult to the Bush administration and the religious right.

Kallas: You can interpret it as anything you want to that's shitty, like a shitty master. It could be your next door neighbor, it could be Loopy, or it could be Bush.

Loopy: We don't go right out there and say this is an anti-Bush thing, or anti-Republican, but there's always a pervasive vibe taking place, and I think we're even poking fun at making fun of the current administration, if that makes any sense.

Kallas: It's just all art, and you perceive it as you will. It's all different to everybody.

Loopy: We're too stupid to be activists. We'd like to say we are, but we just can't. We don't have a really good grasp. We just have sort of a grasp.

Kallas: The only thing I do have to say, is that in my world—he disagrees—I like everyone to know about the universe and the planets and what's really happening out there, and what is going to happen. But that's not political, that's spiritual, and that's me. He's going tell you right now that I'm full of shit and he hates my guts, but that's my cause. That's my reason. I'm the galactic bringer. My job on this planet is to tell people what's about to happen. I'm one of the messengers.

And what do you think is about to happen?

Kallas: I think aliens are going to come back. I think there's going to be a major shift in 2012. There's going to be a lot of shifting in the polar regions. There's going to be a lot of bad stuff. It's going to be a brand new world.

Loopy: I think medication is going to happen.

Are we looking at a Mad Max kind of future?

Kallas: Certainly. I think that's going to happen. There's a major shift in humanity that's going to happen.

If aliens show up, do you think they're going to be friendly?

Kallas: I think some will be friendly, and some will be really horrible. They're here already. It's something to take note of, and that's my political agenda, but I'm just one of many.

We talked a little about you getting in trouble, especially in some parts of Europe, for some of the samples you've used. Apart from literally-minded government bureaucrats, what has the reaction in Europe been to your music?

Loopy: We don't have as much distribution over there, but the reaction is the same. Some people are offended, some people are not offended, and some people hate us.

Kallas: We are not the only band on the planet that uses those kinds of samples. We're not the first, we're not going to be the last, so I don't know why everyone's pointing fingers at us.

Loopy: I think when you deal with this kind of sound material and imagery, people are very careful to do it in a certain way, where you almost have a license to 'get away with it.' I think we blatantly smushed it into the music, didn't over-think it, and didn't try and be cute about it. I think it's very deliberate the way we did it. We just took it off the History Channel and stuck it over this music for emphasis, and it sounded cool. Everybody's going to interpret it different ways, but we didn't make any concerted effort to be coy.

Kallas: People are going to accuse you if they want of being whatever they want you to be, if that makes sense. We could do a picture of us being all serene, and they'd still call us Nazis.

Loopy: Anyone who flirts with that imagery, certainly in Germany, is going to be accused on some level of right wing Nazi-ism.

Do you have distribution in Japan? It seems like the Japanese metal scene would really take to your level of theatrics.

Kallas: I've been trying for years. Any Japanese person I know, I send CDs, trying my best to find anybody in Japan, and no one will give us the time of day. Nobody. I went to record labels, people who knew people at record labels, managers of bands...no luck.

Loopy: We've had a lot of trouble getting getting distribution abroad. It's expensive to go there, it's hard to go there, and usually people want to bring you over, and that's how you go there.

Kallas: I think you just have to know the right person, and we just haven't met the right person yet.

Loopy: We'd love to get over there. We've tried.

Kallas: It's all about the money, too. We don't have any money.

What are your plans for after the current tour is over?

Kallas: We're going to finish the new CD, and then I would love to be able to go to Europe, if that works. If not, we'll do another tour in the USA, or maybe hook up with another band and open for them.

Loopy: I would say less than five or 10 percent of our lyrics are in English, and yet we've never been to Europe.

Speaking of languages, you've sung in German, Greek and Romanian. Are there any other languages that you'll be adding on the next album?

Loopy: No, we're stuck on German right now. We've gotten to the point where we want to go right for the jugular and make things as heavy as possible.