Still Angry After All These Years

Longevity and commitment are rare commodities in the music business these days. Record companies are either fighting to survive against their virtual counterparts on the Web, with the likes of Kazaa and Morpheus offering pop acts and their music to their fans for free, or the music conglomerates are being forced to pay astronomical signing on and contractual fees to keep their megastars happy.

It's refreshing then to find bands out there that have been playing together for the best part of 15 years and are committed to their record companies and their fans. None more so than one of Germany's most popular groups, Fury in the Slaughterhouse.

Often dubbed Germany's U2, the band reached its commercial zenith in 1993 with the release of the album "Mono." The singles culled from the album "Radio Orchid" and "Every Generation Got Its Own Disease" even made it into the U.S. Billboard charts with the band embarking on a subsequent U.S. tour supporting Meatloaf. However, the stress and pressure of promoting the album took its toll and at one point the band was close to breaking up.

Almost 10 years on, after countless sold-out tours and platinum record sales, the furies are showing no signs of letting up with a new album out and the release of a DVD.

DW-WORLD talked to the band about their pending new DVD release and future plans.

DW: Tell us about the new DVD "Monochrome"

Fury: The whole thing is about 200 minutes long, including concert footage, our short film project which is made up of five films by a number of well-known directors based on our current album "The Color Fury," and a backstage documentary featuring interviews with the band, the whole package basically.

We've also included an audio CD with the live concert so that our fans don't have to resort to the DVD in their car CD player.

You've just released a new album, the DVD is on its way, are you trying to say goodbye?

Definitely not. We've only just signed a new contract for the next few years. If we manage to last that long, we'll reach our 20th anniversary. That's if we don't kill each other over the next record, which we plan on producing ourselves for the very first time. You know, we've been around for 15 years and it's important for a band to find new challenges, to find new areas of creativity. The worst thing you can do is to fall into a routine.

But how does your multimedia project fit in with your back-to-the-basics approach of touring through Germany with a bus and some acoustic guitars?

Its works perfectly. It started off more or less as a regular promo tour, a few CD signings, a couple of interviews here and there. Which is fine, but if there's one thing we do really well, it's playing live. So we decided to combine the promotion part with some gigs. It's been great so far.

In the mid-'90s, at the height of your commercial success culminating in your U.S. tour, the impression grew that you were going overboard. Do you feel that you've come back down to earth and become more united as a band?

That's the way it looks right now. Although we were on the verge of breaking up again 3 months ago. We just enjoy what we do, it's exciting and at the end of the day we can't really imagine doing anything else. As long as we can maintain that feeling of doing something worthwhile and challenging, we'll keep going.

The album "The Color Fury" and the DVD "Monochrome" sound as if they are heralding a break, from the old Fury to the new Fury. How do you see your future?

We're going to have a five-month break to give ourselves the chance to catch up with life outside of the band. After that we plan to produce the next album ourselves. That's a challenge in itself not to have anyone influencing the decision-making process. I wouldn't call that a break with our past, I think we're actually going back to basics.