"The year is 2004 A.D. ... Girls Under Glass, founded in 1986, are still alive." That's how the biography starts of one of the longest living acts on the international goth scene. And indeed, after almost 20 years and 9 European studio-releases (1988-2001) Volker Zacharias, Hauke Harms and Axel Ermes form together one of the few bands that has survived aging and a century switch. Girls Under Glass have just finished their new album entitled "Zyklus" to be released on Dependent that for the occasion created a subdivision, named Cellar Door. We spoke to Volker Zacharias also known as Zaphor. (By Bernard Van Isacker)

SL. For the "Ohne Dich" single you invited Peter Spilles, singer of that other cult-band Project Pitchfork, why exactly?

Z. In the middle of the production we recognized that “Ohne Dich” contains some influences and aspects from older Pitchfork songs. When we all decided this would be the single and it would be a good idea to do a collaboration single, the logical point was to invite Peter Spilles to do it. Luckily he liked the song as well, so he did it. And..obviously he did it well!!

SL. But you have a very close working relation with Mr. Spilles anyhow, haven’t you?

Z. Apart from the fact that Peter and I have known each other for many years, even before Pitchfork was founded, we were on tour together in 1990, when Pitchfork did their first concerts as our support band. Later on in 1994 with Trauma, the side-project of Hauke and me, we were the support act for Pitchfork. Because Peter liked Trauma a lot he produced our second album “Construct”. Later on we had another collaboration with the allstar-project REC we released an album with. But since then many years passed by. With “Ohne Dich” we renewed our collaboration with Peter for the first time in 10 years.

SL. Is "Zyklus" also a new cycle for the band? It is the first in 4 years...

Z. “Zyklus” in this sense means that a cycle ends with this record. In some aspects we are where we started and we started as an electro-goth-band combining electronics with guitars.
Of course after 18 years you can expect a better and more professional sound. On the other hand “Zyklus” for us is something we always wanted to reach, it’s the perfect record for us. It’s definitely the Girls Under Glass masterpiece! Beside the development of the songs and final mixes it was also the organisation around the album, the label-contract side and the preparation of the single and marketing that took us so long. Before we started the new recording we needed a break of one year just to get our heads clear for new ideas and creative impulses. I think the result shows that we were right.

SL. Was the material recently recorded or is it a combination of older and newer songs?

Z. The songs are all new songs. There is no old material on it. Some bits and pieces were however used from another dark-electro side project. But it was easy to re-produce the ideas, take the bits we needed and make a strong Girls Under Glass song out of it. The only song with obvious influences of Trauma is “Wonderworld”. The rest is pure Girls Under Glass and even after we thought the record was ready to being released we had new ideas and went back to the studio to make sure that the newest ideas were also on that album.

SL. Did you stop Aragon, your own label, as the release goes through Cellar Door, a subdivision from Dependent?

Z. Aragon is still existing, but we were sure that for this album we needed somebody very experienced with good international contacts and luckily we found Stefan Herwig from Dependent who loves the album.

SL. Over the years you have done a real rodeo of labels, do you never get tired of changing all the time?

Z.  Oh man... (sighs).This is just a pain in the ass. I don't want to explain in detail, but 2 labels just dropped their whole catalogue and stopped working for their bands. Before that happened we have been on Strange Ways for many, many years. But we weren't very satisfied with the results, especially not with what they were doing internationally. So we had to react somehow! Our aim was to find a label that worked more internationally and had a very good network of contacts all over the world. Then, after another couple of label changes we started our own label because we were tired of shopping around for every new record. For "Zyklus"; well I just told you.

SL. Please explain why you took metal producer JP Genkel who worked with bands such as Lacrimosa, Cradle Of Filth and Love Like Blood.

Z. Usually for a band like us the main problem is getting a really good guitar and vocal sound. JP was so much into the new material and had many good ideas before we started the recordings that we knew straight away that he was the right one to work with. He also added some guitar and bass-bits. Also, he is much more involved than just producing and mixing the album. Of course it was no coincidence that we contacted JP. I know him for more than 20 years now since we went to school together and shared an apartment for about 8 years. In the end this collaboration was also sort of respect to each other's work and way and success.

SL. For the first time in 18 years an album will be released on US soil, but you did release material on Van Richter as well, no?

Z. We agreed on a compilation called "Nightmare" Van Richter was allowed to release in the USA only. It was some old material. Everything else he released apart from the "Frozen" maxi was without our permission. So it's definitely not the company I would call a 'partner'. "Zyklus" therefore is the first 'new album' that is licensed to an US company, Metropolis.

SL. Within 2 years you will celebrate your 20th birthday as a band, anything planned so far?

Z. I think we will do a special release and we hope to get a good bunch of guests together for it. But at this moment we totally focus and concentrate on the "Zyklus" album so that we hardly have time to make up our mind about what comes next. We will do some special concerts for "Zyklus" as well, no real tour, but we play some festivals and some international gigs. Luckily there are lots of interest and requests at the moment!

© Bernard Van Isacker, Side-Line #50, 13.04.2005
© Russian Version by Vallensi

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