Interview with AST
Rezine: What's coming up with AST?
Bene: We are a black metal band from Germany consisting of two members and a drum computer giving us hell on stage.
Rezine: Who plays what in AST?
Nico: I play bass and sing
Bene: I play guitar and also occasionally sing
Drum Computer: Badum czish!
Rezine: How did AST start?
Bene: The band was formed back in 2011 but we knew each other prior to the band from working together at a concert location. Since we both shared a big interest in Post-Rock we met in the rehearsal room to record some ideas for a post-rock release. While joking around between the takes with a friend of us we kind of created the first AST tracks which were basically joke songs made up of stereotypical screamo riffs and noise. As far as I remember one of those riffs came out to be a black metal riff that we really liked and somehow we decided to write and release an EP with black metal material which then became our first EP.
Rezine: What's the meaning of the band's name?
Nico: Again a bad joke. We tried to create a so called "tree collective" were we wanted to have a lot of bands named after the different parts of a tree. Of course this failed immensely and so AST (the German word for branch) and Blätter (German for leaves) were the only two bands ever put out inside of the "tree collective"
Rezine: Tell us about the new album, was it a long process to get to the final result?
Nico: There are actually songs on Fraktale, which are older than the songs on the Ancst split. I wrote a few songs in 2014 and realized I want them on an album, but then we got the opportunity to do the Split so we wrote new Songs for that. I think I finished writing songs in summer 2015 and then started on Mix and Master, the lyrics and artwork. It was all done step by step to always have a reference on what this album should sound, feel and look like.
Rezine: What influenced the music or what was the mindset while composing the songs?
Nico: I am always influenced by everything I listen to no matter the genre. Having the EP and Split as a point to move on, I tried to have more atmospheric black metal and less post metal and weird rhythm stuff on it. I also wanted the "not black metal" parts of our music to fit in more and not stand out next to the BM side.
Rezine: What inspired the lyrics for the songs?
Nico: The Lyrics are almost completely personal and have a lot to do with fears. But as I had this topic for three releases now, I kind of switched it up a bit and also dealt with a few stories and events of my past.
Rezine: What's your favourite song on the album and why?
Bene: I think i do not really have one favorite song but i really like the last song "Sollbruch" for closing the album so well and also containing the "Tooth Decay" feature.
Rezine: Any plans for a tour with this new release?
Bene: In fact we are on tour from the 11th to 18th of June. There will be more information about it when we completely finished planning everything but we can already say that there will be shows in Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, Nürnberg and some other cities all over Germany.