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While they may not hail from Germany, Hanzel und Gretyl are tearing up the industrial metal scene with their effective blend of Blood, Sex, and Fire a la Germanic Militarism. The band is notorious for their sometimes offensive, but always humorous use of Nazi-esque fashion and imagery to complement their brutal attack of pounding rhythms and crunching guitar riffs. Their latest album Scheissmessiah took the band to new heights as they toured with Ministry on the recent Evildoer tour, lighting an inferno on the industrial metal scene and getting audiences to vote in the unfortunate election. Now ReGen speaks with the band on their lyrical themes, Rammstein?s English, and just why the hell they sing in German anyway.

MORE GERMAN THAN GERMAN

Let?s look back at ?ber Alles. Obviously, this was not greeted with open arms by German distributors, to say the least. Are you guys making any effort to try to regain that market with your new album?

Vas Kallas: We do what we do, and if people don?t like it, I?m not going to do it just to satisfy the Germans. I?m going to do it to satisfy ourselves. There were a couple of samples on that that they took the wrong way, and they?re just very sensitive to their history, and? well, that?s their issue.

Loopy: They don?t want their history being quoted I guess.

Vas Kallas: We?re just fascinated by the universe and things that have happened. But the new CD still has a German vibe to it, and I?m sure that they?ll find something in there that offends them somehow, but that?s their issue.

Now, how often do you run into people that actually think that you guys are from Germany?

Vas Kallas: A lot!

Loopy: Always!

Anna: Especially when they talk to me because I?m Swedish and I have an accent. And they go like, ?Oh, you?re not from Germany,? and they?re totally confused because I have this accent and it doesn?t make sense to them at all.

Loopy: Yeah, so she says she?s from Sweden, and they?re like, ?Huh?? And they?re like where we?re from New York, and we say, ?New York,? and they?re like, ?WHAT?!?

Vas Kallas: And then they get really pissed off. And I?m like, ?Why are you pissed off??

Loopy: Like how scary is that?

Vas Kallas: No, they get really bummed out and they walk away.

Loopy: Scheiss!

Vas Kallas: I say, ?What, I can?t sing in German? I have to be from Germany to sing in German??

So do they just think you guys are insincere with what you?re doing?

Vas Kallas: I don?t know. I think it?s? it?s always cool to be someone from another country, who actually is German, it?s more exotic. I guess it?s less exotic if you?re like a stupid New Yorker and you?re singing in German.

Jon: Look at Rammstein, they?re singing in American on this album.

Loopy: I thought they were singing in English?

[laughter]

Vas Kallas: That?s a good one.

You?ve said in the past that obviously your German is not exceptional or fluent or anything. Do you guys ever have someone look over to make sure there are no simple mistakes?

Loopy: Not really.

Vas Kallas: Look over what, oh in the lyrics? I always have Germans check my German lyrics before I do that.

Loopy: We have a team of Germans, with beakers everywhere, [In mock German accent] ?Let?s see vhat ve have today.?

Vas Kallas: I go to vista, and then I correct it and give it to some German friends, and they say, [In mock German accent] ?Oh this is goot.?

Loopy: ?This is SCHEISS!?

Because other bands on Metropolis, like let?s say Icon of Coil, I mean not to single them out or anything. Sometimes, there?ll be like three lines in the whole album, and a lot of people will just toss it out?

Loopy: Three German lines?

No, three English lines. And it?s just so awful that it kind of ruins that song.

Vas Kallas: Yeah, but it?s so awful that it?s funny, and that makes it quirky, and that makes it cool.

That?s the way I see it, but sometimes, you don?t get the vibe from the band because they?re trying to be serious. Obviously you guys are trying to have fun.

Vas Kallas: I don?t care. If it sounds cool, I?m sticking it in there. I don?t care what language it is. Like, Loopy Fikkenblocken Schmikkenblocken [German-ish gibberish].

In a lot of interviews, you guys said that you were fascinated with German culture. I think you were in Germany for awhile?

Vas Kallas: I used to live in Germany back in the day. And it was awesome.

Were you studying abroad or anything?

Vas Kallas: No, I just traveled. I was a punk rocker with a backpack, and just went crazy, and just ended up in Berlin and stayed there.

So you?d hike around and stuff?:

Vas Kallas: Yeah, hitchhiking. You know, the whole scummy thing I did.

Sounds like fun.:

Vas Kallas: It was awesome.

Anna: Back in the day, stuff like that was more dangerous.

Vas Kallas: Yeah, back in the day, in the middle ages when things were intense.

How was your German back then?:

Vas Kallas: I couldn?t speak a word of German, but by the time I left Germany after a year, I could speak pretty well.

JESUS, HELP US FINISH THE ALBUM

I just have to ask this question. Who came up with the song ?Hallelujah??

Loopy: I did. No actually, I?m sorry.

Jon: I think the Christians did.

Loopy: Handel did.

Were you guys just sitting in the studio and then??

Jon: Pow! We gotta? do that one!

Vas Kallas:That one?s all Loopy.

Loopy: We were basically like, this CD?s gotta? be at least 40 minutes long, what do we do now? We only have, like, 30 minutes of music. So we took the ?Hallelujah? riff on guitar, and?

Vas Kallas: You know how like, a lot of bands are like, ?I just wrote 30 songs, and I can pick and choose.? I don?t know what planet they come from.

NU METAL MANIA

Hanzel und Gretyl is extremely hard to pigeonhole, I know you guys do that on purpose. Do you think this takes away from creating a centralized fan base for your guys?

Loopy: Well, the last guy who interviewed us was like, ?You?re kinda? like Rammstein and Ministry.? So I don?t know.

You guys are kinda? like a crossover band, you?re not metal, and you?re not really industrial, and you guys just happened to land on Metropolis.

Loopy: Yeah, it?s weird that we?re on Metropolis and we?re getting more metal. And I think you?re right, I think it is kinda hard to peg down an audience for us, we?ll just take anybody we can get.

Vas Kallas: But this tour that we?re doing is definitely the audience that we like to play for, because there?s a lot of Cradle of Filth shirts out there, Nine Inch Nails, it?s more of a metal crowd.

Loopy: It?s more of a drunk crowd.

Vas Kallas: A drunken metal crowd with a couple of interesting monsters, but not as much as if you played to an industrial crowd.

Who did you guys play with last time on the Fukken ?ber tour?

Loopy: Genitorturers.

Vas Kallas: No, we did the headliner with Voodou, and then we went out with the Genitorturers, and now with Ministry. But this is perfect, perfect crossover to the metal crowd.

Anna: I think actually the metal crowd really likes this because people are getting tired of this n?-metal thing, that it?s kinda dying out. Already maybe, it did die out. Bands with synchronized jumps and that whole thing. Guys in shorts and?

Loopy: Hey, hey, hey!

Anna: No, but you know what I mean. That whole thing. So they come to see us, like there are four cartoon characters on stage. I think they love it.

Vas Kallas: Yeah, we?re different, creative. And really people are just? they love it. They have no idea who we are when they see us and they just go, ?Wow.? So it?s really cool.

DISAPPOINTING SKINHEADS ACROSS THE USA

So does anybody take it the wrong way sometimes seeing you guys for the first time?

Vas Kallas: No, not recently. Not one person has come up to me, I don?t know about you?

Loopy: No.

Vas Kallas: Nobody?s come up like, ?You Nazi!?

Jon: There?s always that weird crowd that?s like, ?Are they Nazis or not Nazis?? And if you look for more than a second at the band, or listen to the music, or look at Loopy, you realize? you know, ?Heil Loopy? will never go too far, it just doesn?t have that vibe.

Loopy: I got the protective headgear in case anything does happen.

Jon: Unfortunately though, some people that do come to the show are drunk and hear this stuff and think they need to show me some swastika they got tattooed under their arm, and it?s hard not to get into fights or to get into trouble. It?s just bad that you get these skinheads who come up who are just idiots.

Anna: But it doesn?t happen though.

Vas Kallas: That hasn?t happened at all.

Jon: Not on this tour.

Vas Kallas: That happened more on the Genitorturers tour than on this one.

Jon: Well yeah, but on this one, there?s been a couple of guys who?ve come to me.

Anna: Ministry got that too a little bit, because if you look at their backdrop video thing that they have, there?s a lot of German armies marching and swastikas and stuff going on like that too. But you have to look into it a little more to see the imagery instead of saying, ?Oh, they?re Nazis.? But listen to the lyrics and know what the band is about, it?s not the case with Ministry and the same thing with us.

When we came here earlier, we weren?t on the list, so I hung out at my friend?s house. So, I say, ?I?m going to the Hanzel und Gretyl show,? and he says, ?What?s that? I?ve never heard of it.? And I was trying to tell him about it, and he?s like, ?So you?re going to a Nazi march?? And I?m like, ?nooo.? I tried to explain, ?Oh, it?s kind of goofy,? and he?s like?

Jon: ?I don?t see the humor.?

Yeah, ?I don?t see the humor.?

So what do you think, the next tour should be called the Disappointing Skinheads Everywhere Tour?

Vas Kallas: Disappointing Skinheads Across the USA Tour.

Loopy: Is that your roommate Hans Mueller? [In mock German accent] ?I don?t like it! This is nicht gut! I vill not go.? Yeah, I mean everybody?s going to have their preconceptions, but usually when people come out to see us, they?re all dispelled. We?re just disappointing skinheads all over the country.

HISTORY CHANNEL WAR CRIMES

The last record had a lot of samples. Where did you get those for the marches?

Loopy: Definitely The History Channel. I mean, basically I had a microphone in front of the TV the whole time, then you just roll it, tape it, whatever. So a lot of marching?

So you have just a sample bank of all those now?

Loopy: I?m too lazy to make a bank.

Jon: It?s off the VCR.

Anna: I think somebody should look into if maybe the Program Director of The History Channel might be a Nazi instead of us.

Vas Kallas: Yeah, why don?t they ask him, ?Why did you put this on the TV?? It?s just, we?re just taking bits and pieces of the universe that are thrown in front of us.

Anna: But the whole thing is they?re rolling around in it.

Jon: The thing is it?s prevalent, it?s everywhere, we just took a little bit and made it more prevalent.

Anna: But Al Jourgensen has come up with this concept for this band, he knows exactly what we are, and he understands this band. We?re action figures according to Al, it?s like one of the few bands left in the world that are for action figures.

Vas Kallas: He also calls us Ministry Vagina. He goes, (imitating Al Jourgensen) ?I?m Ministry Penis, you?re Ministry Vagina,? and I?m like, ?okay.?

Loopy: ?Thanks. Oh my god!? We?re Ministry Hermaphrodite.

Jon: Yes!