The band's second opus since their rebirth is called Bleed and it was just recently issued here in the States.  Guitarist Bernd Aufermann tells us more about the critically acclaimed album and the band behind it…

Are you happy with Bleed and how has the response to it been?
Yes, of course we are.  Here in Europe, we have sold very well.  It took us three weeks to get the selling rates of the previous album.  And right now, we seem to be getting much more popular in the States.  I just surfed the Internet a little and we've got lots of response from progressive metal freaks, and I've got here 457 e-mails from just fans from the States.  It will take me a lot of time and work to answer them all! (laughs)

Well, that's a good thing. (laughs)
Yes, it is, definitely, we really love it.  We didn't expect that because Bleed was released here in I think it was May of this year and it sold very well.  We were a little bit sad about not playing that much this time here in Europe and we thought, okay, let's go onto the next album.  So it was a little surprising for us to get the reaction we did from the States and from the Far East as well.

How would you compare Bleed to Border of Reality?
Oh, I think it has a much darker approach and we've improved as a band in playing and song-writing.  It is much more aggressive, it has a much more powerful sound than the Border of Reality album.  We've got a little lack of that speed approach that maybe we had on the first albums, and we focused much more on the groove.  The lyrics as well I think are much more intense.  We use to think a lot about what we were writing about and I think this is the main difference from the previous album.

Tell me about some of the lyrical themes on the new album.
It's about bad experiences you have in your life, especially here in the music business.  We have so many tours with other bands - we went on tour with Overkill, we went on tour with Jag Panzer in Europe and Nevermore in Greece.  It was pretty fun but not all the time.  We had a little trouble with Overkill at first, but they turned out to be some guys that were really okay.  We've got one red line crossing the lyrics on the Bleed album and that is what can happen to you when you lose your path through your life.  We had a few friends who died because of drug abuse and a few songs deal with that theme.  So, I think Bleed is a very thoughtful, intense and emotional album.

Why the title 'Bleed'? 
We sat down in the rehearsal studio and though, man, what do we want to stress with an album title?  It was like, finally, when all is said and done and everything turns out to be the way it is right now, all that's left is that you have to bleed for something.  We always have the feeling that somebody wants to bother us - the record company tells us things to do, the record company says this, says that, the manager says this, says that, the fans say something different, and we've got another approach.  So what is left in this business is that you have to bleed to be successful. (laughs)

I liked the cover art.  Can you tell me a bit about the artist who did the cover?
(pause)  You liked the cover artwork?

Umm, yeah…
It's a funny story behind that.  We had this idea that we would like to have this kind of angel back again on the cover, but we would like to have a photograph, not a painted picture.  Century Media said, 'No, we can't do this.  It's kind of your image, you've got to appeal to the metal people, you can't use any pictures.'  So what they did was they put the idea we had for the cover into that painting.  They said, 'Oh, we have that painting - you should come have a look.'  We went there and said, 'Oh, fuck!!  What's that??  No!  We don't want that!!'  And they're like, 'Oh, sorry folks, it's already being printed.'  And we were just like, no, it can't be true.  You've probably seen the United States version, which is much better than the European version.  The European cover is much worse, I really hate the cover.  I hate the posters, I hate everything.  I think for the next album, the rights are for us to say, 'No, we don't want to have this anymore.'  Right now, our bass player is having a conference with the record company bosses.  The thing is that we were really unsatisfied with the cover here in Europe and Steve our keyboard player is also very able to do graphic design.  So, he said, 'I'll do it for the States and the Far East version' and he sat down and changed a few things, a few colors, a bit of the layout, so for the United States version we were like, okay, we can accept that, that's not too bad. (laughs)  I've got it here right now, the United States version, and I really like it, it's okay.

What exactly inspired you guys to reform Angel Dust in the 90s?
It's not really a reunion.  The original members are just the bass player and the drummer.  We knew each other for a very long time and when they started in the 80s, they did that very speed metal influenced stuff, which wasn't really my kind of music.  They tried over and over again to build a new line-up, but the original members weren't available because one member had tinitis and another wasn't able to play his guitar, as he didn't practice for ten years, I don't know.  I used to be a studio musician, as a guitarist, and they said, hey how about it?  At that time, I had a solo deal for an instrumental record, but hey, nobody needs a guitar instrumental record. (laughs)  Especially from Germany, so I didn’t give anything about that.  We played a few songs together and it fit well.  Steven Banx was in my band at that time and I'm not the kind of guy who likes to play with another guitarist, so I said, hey, let's check out keyboards.  So we did that, we found Dirk who was a good singer, and that was it - Angel Dust was back in 1997.

Was there a point when you were considering using a new name rather than Angel Dust?
To be honest, there was this point when the original members said, okay, we've got the right to use the names.  They thought it would open many doors and they were right.  As soon as we released a demo tape, we had the press right here going, 'Yeah, all right!  Good to see you together again!' and my fax was almost blown away by record companies offering us deals.

Are the first two albums available on CD?
No, not yet.  We are really into re-releasing them, but the old record company has no interest to do that.  Century Media offered them lots of money to get the rights back, but they didn't react in any way.  It was like, 'we don't care, no, I don't want to talk about it.'  But we heard that the laws say that after ten years, we are allowed to re-release the stuff on our own.  Hopefully we will re-release the material, although… I don't like the old stuff so much. (laughs)  It's pretty funny to play the stuff on stage, but it's not my kind of music.

How did you decide on going with Century Media?
When we released that demo tape, I got I think 56 record companies with offers in my e-mail and fax and we just compared them to each other.  The Century Media boss was an old friend of our bass player, he was the first in line.  He said, here's a contract, here are the conditions, do you accept, what do you think?  And we were like, ah, let us wait, we've got so many offers, so we'll see.  It turned out that Century Media definitely did have the best offer.  Century Media is only 5 minutes away by car from me right now, so it's easy for me to go in the office and say hello, what's wrong, what's right, and that's okay.

Do you still do any of the old material live? 
Yes, we do.  When we do headlining shows, we're going to play maybe 4 or 5 of the old songs and the other stuff is new material.  When we do support shows where we only have 45 minutes or even less, we only play one song or even none.

Do you find that most of the audience is only familiar with the new music?
Yes, of course.

Do you have any tour plans coming up?
We have a few plans but I can't guarantee them.  We might play a few Christmas shows maybe with Motorhead here in Europe - Paris, maybe Madrid or even Rome - we don't know yet.  We got an offer from Crimson Glory, asking us if we'd like to play the States or even Europe with them.  It would be great, but I don't know if we can get it scheduled because in January, we will be back in the studio to record the next album.

My next question was going to be if there is any chance of playing the States…
Yes, we would love to do that.  I can tell every promoter we don't want to earn much money! (laughs)  Give us a hotel room, give us something to drink, and we would love to play, really.  We don't know how the selling rates will be in the States right now.  We can ask Century Media if they would like to have us there, but the United States is so big it would take maybe six months to tour the whole country.  We don't know if it is possible, but we'd love to do it.  Depends a lot on the selling rates.  When you've got just 2000 copies out there, it's, I don't know…to be in clubs with just 50 people all the time…

Any plans for the next album yet?
I think I'm allowed to tell you that this album could be a concept album.  We're not quite sure yet, but we have a good story.  We have six or seven songs right now and we're going to write about six more.  It sounds a little bit harder than Bleed, definitely, but it has also a strong amount of melody.  It's 100% Angel Dust.  Better melodies and a harder approach then Bleed, maybe.  We don't know how it will turn out, but we hope so.

What are your plans in terms of a studio and producer?
The producer will be once again Siggi Bemm, he's famous for doing Tiamat and a lot of other things, and we'll choose the same studio as for Bleed (Woodhouse) because he knows exactly what he's doing there.  He's got good outboard gear and we like each other a lot.  He really helped us get a good sound and this is the first time that he will be involved in the song writing.  We tape everything we have in our rehearsal room for him and he will pick out some ideas and tell us, 'this is good, this is bad, change this, change that.'  It's interesting because we didn't work like this before.  We just got the songs, went into the studio and said, come on, give us a good sound, the arrangement is ours.  Now we've got another band member (laughs).  I don't know how it will turn out, but I think it will be positive because Siggi is absolutely a sound guru.

What do you think of the current metal scene?
I don't know how it is in America, I just know the opinion of the Nevermore guys, for example, or the Iced Earth or Jag Panzer guys.  They all say, 'Oh, metal is dead in the States, forget about it!'  They used to say that, but when I look on the Internet, it doesn't seem that way.  But, how many Americans do you have?  250 million?  When you have sales of 20,000 with that many inhabitants, it means nothing.  Here in Europe, it's a weird thing.  We've got this true metal wave and it bores me to death.  I mean, we've got bands that are very popular who would have seemed shitty in the 80s.  From Scandinavia, everybody comes up with those true metal riffs like Saxon and Iron Maiden.  HammerFall, do you know them?  Oh my god….  They're a mixture of, I don't know, a little bit of Maiden, a little bit of Saxon, and they're selling millions of copies here in Europe - it's unbelievable.  I don't know… everyone seems to have to think in those [categories]:  this is true metal, this is power metal, this is poser metal, I don't know.  I think it's just music and everyone should view it as such.