Daniel ''Gumo'' Reiß:  vocals/guitar
Robert Hofmann:  bass
Michael Hofmann:  drums
Michael Pusch:  guitar

Formed: 2007
Regensburg, Bavaria, GERMANY
Label: Blower Records
Genre: Black / Thrash

CURRENT LINE-UP:

Chris: Hey guys, thanks for doing the interview for Metal Psalter. First, I love you guys because your music seems to just scream “80s satanic thrash,” a personal affinity of mine. It may be a silly question to start out, but what bands influenced your sound? I’m guessing a Sodom-meets-Slayer-mixed-with-Venom might be there, but what other bands help form that great sound?

Daniel ''Gumo'' Reiß: You are right! The ones you mentioned are always a big influence for us. But what helps the most I guess is that we have some guys in the band that come from different kinds of music. We have a punk influenced jazz bassist meeting a metal loving pop-drummer, a professional guitar teacher and me (Gumo) being totally into metal and rock since I started listening to music back then. I’m writing the songs and the boys help me to make them sound like Gumo Maniacs.

The bands we ALL love in the band are Slayer, 80’s Metallica and Iron Maiden. No underground bands really, but that’s what we listen to the most.

Chris: Germany has always been a breeding ground of amazingly-talented metal bands, from Running Wild to Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, and so on. Why do you think the European metal movement that has been consistent for over two decades still manages to create some of the best metal out there?

Gumo: That’s a good question really...hard to say. Well, I think metal fans are always very fanatic. The most fanatic ones ever in history maybe. They are even so fanatic that they wanna learn to play guitar or any other instrument themselves. So there are always many youngsters who start a band themselves because they believe in their idols. There was, is, and always will be a breeding ground beneath the surface all the time which helps to keep good metal alive I guess.

Chris: I think if some of the metal masses in America heard the “Priest of Lucifer” CD they’d really get into your music. Do you have any plans to try and jump on a tour of other countries other than Mexico? Any gigs planned for the coming year?  Would touring the United States be of interest?

Gumo: We’ve been talking about going to the States for over one year now, but we did not get the network over there done properly up to now. We have only a few connections there. So anybody who could help us with this is welcome to contact us!!! Touring the states would be awesome of course. Bringing German thrash metal to the country where this music was invented would make us really proud of course.

We are working on touring Italy and hopefully Mexico again in 2010. Spain is on the list as well, but it’s not that easy. Maybe later...Italy and we hope the States come first.

Chris: I see that you guys just played Mexico. I can tell you that here in Chicago some of the most insane, dedicated fans are the Hispanic fans. How was playing in Mexico? Were the fans as crazy as they are reported to be? I read it got sort of freaky in spots for you guys down there…

Gumo: Two of the three shows were totally insane...there were bodies flying around from the beginning of the first riff until the end. The fans over there are definitely as crazy as it is told. They almost stalk you when you make them believe in and like you! At the last show it seemed the situation got out of control, but as we were told later it appears to happen sometimes in places like Guadalajara that there is true violence in the mosh pit. It was only some stupid fuckers of course and they were taken out by the security and everything was fine then. What a hell of a time! The people are very nice and thankful over there as well. We definitely love this country.

Chris: I noticed on your MySpace page that you cite the NWOBHM as an influence, which I think is great! For my ears, your music combines that era with some of the thrash sensibilities of both the 80’s and modern influences. Here in the U.S.A. there are very few bands aside from Slayer, Exodus and Testament that are doing it with any sort of regularity. It seems either it’s “extreme” death metal or the current gothic/chick-singer trend. Did it ever concern you that thrash metal might be dying out? What made you stick to that classic formula? It must be alive and well in Germany yet.

Gumo: I did not think that much about what music would die out or what is "trend" back in the 90s when I started playing guitars and writing thrash songs with my former band Thargos. I always just wrote the songs I would love listening to. I have to stick to it. It became part of my life, my character. It is part of my person really and it is running through my veins. I feel some kind of magic relationship to it. Yeah...sounds stupid, but I feel like I don’t play thrash, but more like I am thrash. After 14-years of thrash metal it kind of assimilated to me. Yeah, and Germany is cool! If Tankard or Sodom, for example, play shows here there’s always lots of people showing up. No end in sight really, which feels good indeed!

Chris: I read that you (Daniel) started Gumo Maniacs as a solo project, but is the band something you’d like to continue on with for the foreseeable future?

Gumo: It is NO project. It is A REAL band and I hope from the bottom of my heart that it will last VERY long. I never write music just to have a job done or something like that. This band is a VERY big part of my life, and when I founded it I was aware that I wanna do "the real thing" and not have it as just any band I play in.

Chris: For as long as I can recall, heavy metal has had the satanic imagery attached to it, deserved or not, by everyone from the media to the fans. I personally love the bands that write lyrics about this subject as long as it’s done with intelligence and style. Is the satanic imagery something you employ just for the band’s subject matter (a la Venom) or is the anti-Christian stance something you also believe in for personal philosophy?

Gumo: For me it is just lyrics. Sorry if I upset some people out there who are deeply into satanic stuff. But for me it is more like looking behind the mask and trying to find out about the dark side of the human mind and soul. And I use Satan or words like that often as metaphors for being evil or having a dark soul. I am not into religion…I am just a metal musician writing dark lyrics.

Chris: Do you see another full-length release for Gumo Maniacs, or is this just a one-shot deal being a solo-project and all? I’d personally love to hear more!

Gumo: We are at present recording the second full length album PsychoMania, but we have lots of technical problems and I don’t know when it will be released. Hopefully in the first quarter of 2010, but we will see…it will have more guitar solos and more NWOBHM influences than the first one and it will also have a more brutal production. But it’s up to our fans and listeners to decide which is the better album; I like both, because they both sound like us, but are at the same time different somehow. We did not record the same album twice but we also did not lose our roots either, and that feels really good.

Chris: To conclude, with the sincere hope that this isn’t a silly question, but I’ve always found the motivation behind a band’s existence fascinating. What attracted you and the band to heavy metal music? Was it something instilled in you at a young age, and when did you realize you wanted to go from just fans to musicians?

Gumo: I was listening to the Kai Hansen solo in “I Want Out” back when I was young. I was 14 or something like that. There were shivers down my spine, and I knew from that moment that I wanted to play guitar. Later I got more into heavy stuff like Sodom or Slayer…and pretty soon, after one year of playing I wanted to form a band. I was attracted to heavy metal right from the beginning, but I can hardly say why. There never was anything else for me for many, many years. It was the most normal thing to be into metal, you know? Sorry, but I really can’t say why. It is just the way it is and it feels 100 % natural. It has become a way of living for me. My job, my clothes, my character, it is all about music and most of it is heavy metal of course. Just like a fish needs his water to live in. The most driving force behind it is maybe the stage and the life around it. The friendship and the meet-and-greets, different places and experiences you only experience on the road. For me, being on stage feels more free than anything else because I can be myself up there without any compromise. Like coming home…

Chris: Thanks for the interview! The CD is great and I’m trying to put the word out to anyone that will listen! Good luck and hope the U.S. sees you soon!

Gumo: Thanks for support! We have been working on U.S. dates for quite a time…so fingers crossed it will work one day! Rock On!

Gumo Maniacs' Daniel ''Gumo'' Reiß

January 27, 2010

Interviewer: Chris

DISCOGRAPHY:

Metal Mafia (Demo - 2007)
Metal Mafia Reloaded (Demo - 2007)
Promo 2 (Demo - 2008)
Priest of Lucifer (2009)

Check out Chris' review of Priest of Lucifer here

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