Korova

Korovakill

Interview with Christof Niederwieser by Bill Zebub for issue #30 of THE GRIMOIRE OF EXALTED DEEDS MAGAZINE

 

I was very traurig when I discovered that Korova was no longer a band. I googled the word “Korova” and Redstream Records had
a band called Korovakill. The song titles had compound nouns that Deutsch-speaking leute are fond of, so I wondered if Korovakill was a new incarnation of Korova. I Emailed Redstream to find out, and when I received the antwort, I could not believe my augen! Thou art not dead. Was the change of name a strategy to get out of a gay contract?
Guten Tag! We changed into KorovaKill to make it more a rhyme on Bill. We thought that would be a nice thrill .

The music was just as delicious as I remembered, and I loved the album so much that I almost was sent to das krankenhaus.
Is such strange music the work of a band, or a project?
Thank you very much for the Roses! I think it’s not so important if you call KorovaKill a band or a Project. Until the end of 1999 we have been what is called a band. We had rehearsals twice a week, we had fixed line-ups with fixed members, but in the end, all the songwriting and the whole organizational work was just done by
myself. Since 2000 we are what many people would call a project. We don’t have rehearsals at all. We just meet before recordings. The
members are also involved in many other bands. Moritz has played on albums of a dozen different bands within the last tears – Atrocity,
Graveworm, Abigor, Dornenreich, Darkwell, Siegfried – just to name a few, and Renaud puts his major focus on Elend. But when we record an album together the interaction between us is much stronger and intense than in our early days. Although I am still doing the whole songwriting, Renaud and Moritz contribute very much to the arrangements and to the final shape of the songs. Concerning this point, we are much more a band now than six Years ago. So if you like you can call us a “banject”. 

 

Thy lyrics are a close to the poems of schizophrenics. I know, because I published a newsletter that was written by
schizophrenics. Inside the words that seem like broken concepts are true meanings. If I may, I would like to decipher the meaning
of “Into the Underwhirls.” Was that song  about the brutal practice of fisherman who use huge nets? Each year, they catch dozens of mermaids, and while the ugly ones are thrown overboard after a few blowjobs, the pretty ones are kept on the ship, away from their natural environment. Dost thou think that thy message could
reach more sympathetic ears if the lyrics were more straightforward?
I like your interpretation, but one question remains unanswered: “Where do Mermaids have their Vulva? Our Lyrics always have been
symbolic, for they shall take a glance into the hidden, into the realms of Untime, into the world behind the world, the eternal shining beneath the shallow surface of the visible. It’s a realm where the ordinary logic of language has no value anymore. You just can try to catch a little shadow of this world by painting pictures with words and sounds. Schizophrenics and drug people mostly get a distorted picture of this world. Artists and visionaries try to get a clear picture of this shining empire. But in the end, each of them must fail,  because as soon as you try to make the invisible visible, you destroy it. Whatever you see loses its unseenness. Who knows will  understand! And we just bear our children for those who understand. It’s not our aim to reach a high quantity of ears, but a high quality. We don’t make music for the masses. We make music for individuals! 

 

Thou art now in Berlin, which I think is dangerous for an Austrian. Germans hate the Austrian accent, but Berliners hate the soft accents of the surrounding Deutschbags. A Berliner would say “Ik bin attraktiv” but the softer people say “Ish bin Berlina.” How  dost thou find refuge among people who are so kalt?
This question reminds me of the last Bephegor concert here in Berlin, when Hellmuth shocked the audience by doing his a announcements in Austrian accent. After the show he enjoyed teasing girls by telling them in dialect, that they had a nice ass. It was a very funny evening. Yes, there are some strong stereotypes between the crude megalomania-maschine-Prussian and the naive farmer-operetta-Austrian. Germans don’t take Austrians serious, intellectually and Austrians don’t take Germans
serious concerning creativity and humaneness. They are streamline-pseudocreative half-robots for us. But fortunately these are just stereotypes and there are enough nice German people, who don’t fit into it – about the rest, I don’t care. And actually most Berlin people aren’t kalt anyway – they are “warm”…it’s the European capital of gays. Concerning the accent, it’s a bit more complex, because there are over hundred very different accents just in Tyrol, the little part
of Austria where I come from. And my accent is very hard – people often think I am from Russia or Poland. My accent is a crushing Kruppstahl- Fist compared to the soft Piefke-Slang. 

 

I have a beautiful Deutsch frau who writes for me now. Her name is Katja and I would love to inhale her auspuff. She is a fan of Angizia and I was wondering if thou couldst arrange an interview.  Apparently that is another band that is no longer on Napalm
Records. What has happened to that record label?
Oh, I also would like to inhale Deutschfrau-Auspuff! Does Katja have a beautiful sister here in Berlin? Maybe “Panzerdivision Brundhilde” or “Schlachtross Irmgard”? They are cordially invited. I am sure Michael will answer her questions about Angizia They have just released their new album some weeks ago – a great work once again! Napalm Records have supported the Austrian underground very much for many Years. Maybe bands like Angizia, Korova, or even Abigor would never have gotten a chance to release albums without them. I think this is what counts. We had some legal arguments
in the past with them, but everything has been clarified in the meantime. There’s no bad blood between us.  (UPDATE: I arranged an interview betwwen Katja and Christof – and the now have a child because of me.  I am cupid.)

 

I would have thought that thy band would be on Holy Records because of the experimental nature of the music. Have they
offered a contract, or is the old hatred of the French preventing such union?
Well, we have been in contact with Holy Records in 1997, when no record company dared to release our second, yet unreleased, the album “Echowelt”. Phil told me on the phone: “Sorry, you Guys are too much! You are much too much!” I haven’t heard many Holy-releases
since that, but as far as I know they are doing a good, reliable Work. At the moment there’s no use to think about that anyway, for we are very satisfied with our current Label Red Stream. 

 

Is it nutzlich to have mind-altering substances while composing thy music? There is an argument in science about such things. One side is saying that enhanced creativity is just an illusion.
I don’t think that substances can make a philosopher out of a monkey. But I know that the Monkey may think different about that… 

Is it silly to call a police siren a siren? It may be true that the police siren calls men to their doom, but the police siren has no lure. I would think that it is better to call it a banshee. What dost thou think? Is this matter serious enough to write a symbolic
song?
I think there are more serious problems in the world. Why do so little people have to laugh when they read the name “Dick Cheney?” Do his friends call him “Penis”? And why is “Dick” the German Word for “Fat”?

Let us just say that In Germany, it is not an a compliment if a girl tells thee that thy dick is not gross. American women think that my dick is gross, but Geman women would not say that es ist gross. In any case, I have only recently realized that thou hast a member of Elend in thy midst. I have been trying, for months, to arrange for some Elend songs to be used in my first avant-garde movie, but the Lecons album is a source of shame, not pride, to the composer. It baffles me completely. Newer Elend still has the heavenly soprano, but gone are the tortured screams. It has made me verruckt. Canst thou relay the message that it is grausam to make such a legendary album as Lecons and then to shut away the secrets forever. A legion of fans await the wieder-kommen!
Elend just had rather limited resources for the production of their first two albums. It’s the sound quality that is not satisfying for them anymore, not the music or the concept. I like their scream-albums very much, but also the new works are great, I think. It’s more than ten years ago now that they’ve started screams and violins, and I totally understand that they don’t want to repeat themselves for ages. 

In America, women have been cultivated to prefer large sizes of things on men. In Germany, do women judge thee on the size
of thy schnurbart?
Yes, also in Germany you can increase your shooting quota by wearing a beautiful Osamabeard. 

In America, people sometimes fart when they drive. What does thou do when thou does fahrt?
I fart.

I am very curious about that unreleased album. I want to hear it! Is there a chance that Redstream will release it? Will they also pay for your nebenkosten?
The Echowelt-songs always have been our killers at concerts. It’s total mania! It’s total outbreak and destructurement – a post nuclear
deconstruction of all that once was called music about a place that once was called world! Unfortunately just an ugly-produced demo with four songs has been recorded back in 1997. Some songs are nearly ten years old now, but they sound fresher and weirder than ever! We definitely would like to go to the studio somewhen and record this album with good production, since it is our core-work. But it’s not realistic that this will happen in the nearer future. There is just too little interest in KorovaKill. If more people would buy our albums it would be much easier for us to do productions.

Has a man ever given thee a hummer, or dost thou only allow women to do so?
I just allow blue-haired girls to give me a Hummer Simpson.

Is it not ironic that Freud came up with the pleasure principle? (Freude)
No, that’s just what Jung called “the Synchronicity between Name and Named”.

With friends like Freud, who needs animas? Some extreme bands like to schimpfen on their albums, but thou hast stayed away. is it because thou dost not need to do such things to create curiosity?
We don’t have to nag on our albums – lots of other people are doing that work for us. 

I hate when bands advertise heavenly operatic vocals on their albums when their vocalists are not trained. When Elend had
the contrast of the genuine operatic vocals with the tormented male vocals, it was very powerful. But I can only listen to a few songs on the newer albums because I do not like the Barry-Manilow-style of singing. It is gegenuber of the first example – the untrained make vocals are only interesting when they are tormented. what thinkst thou?
Oh, Barry Manilow – that’s a big compliment! I am sure Renaud will be happy to hear it! He is singing in that way, because untrained  listeners are only interesting when they are tormented.  Personally I like his voice on the new albums very much. There was no intention  to sound operatic at all, so there’s also no use for comparisons with
Pavarotti or Caruso.

Korova
Korova

As unusual as thy melodies become, they have never been very dunkel. Will that change on thy next album. Wilst thou venture
into this territory and stay away from hell?
In the black of the void waits the gold of the All. So our melodies are a step further to the dark. They show you what comes out when you
were sitting in the darkest place of the world for twenty years, without any sound, without any movement, without any sentiment. And then, after twenty years, suddenly the Darkness dissolves and the hidden Light comes out.

Some heroic themes live in thy songs. It is sort of an archetypal hero who has great strength but also great weakness. Elric is a sort of diabetic, is he not, in Moorcock’s Elric saga? Let us stay away from asking why a man would not change his last name if it is “more cock” – let us dwell on this serious topic only. In thy hero themes, art thou really trying to make people think seriously about unterhund? He needed to take a pill from his ring in order to derive great power.
Hmmm, that’s really interesting. So far I haven’t been aware of the hero, Underdog theme in our lyrics. But you’re right, it’s in there
pretty often. Maybe it’s because we have been beaten like a dog by the metal scene since fourteen years now. I think it’s time to beat back! Our next concept will be about terrorists flying with  aeroplanes into the Milwaukee-Festival.

Hast thou ever cancelled a gig  because someone gave thee a
shnoopfen?
What is a “schnoopfen”? This Word does not
exist.

It is a kalt, sort of like a flu. It flew over thy head. Thy lyrics make me denken a lot. Why is the swastika forbidden in thy land? After all, the KKK costume is permitted here, as well as the swastika. Is it more a
symbol of defeat to thy country? I have also noticed that the Hitler mustache is no longer in style. Oliver Hardy from Laurel and Hardy, as well as Chaplin, were fond of that mustache style. I am sad to see it go.
Please understand that I don’t want to answer 

In America, the Nazi movement is very popular. We even have a candy here that alters brainwaves. It is called Racist Peanut Butter Cups, but a more obvious candy product is Rece’s Pieces. They are
the color of the German flag, and I have to admit that the peanutty goodness gives me a spell of good old-fashioned jew-hating, unless I eat the candy as part of a balanced nutritious frushtuk. Is that the secret plan of Hitler, a final dying stroke of genius to overturn the minds of Americanss with the simple use of candy?
I don’t want to answer the Nazi questions. It may be misunderstood by too many Europeans if I would take part in such kinds of jokes.

Thou art reluctant to make humorous comments about Nazi antics, but Ko n n i g e n Katja, my Deutsche schwester, sees no reason to
be afraid. As a musicican, thou art an artist because thou art not afraid to offend traditional composers with thy explorations, but
why is there so much concern about what a humorless person will think about thy reply? Surely thou art practiced in the experimentation – researchers tend to compensate for participants who have have the response-style of giving socially-pleasing answers.
No, it’s just too billig for me to take part in Nazi-jokes. You don’t need any brain cells to gain attention with that kind of stuff. So I prefer to leave that to others. The second reason is, that talking about Nazis, no matter if in a positive ora negative way, gives them power, makes them important. But I don’t think that they deserve
such an attention.

Dost thou denken that when a subject, like Nazi history, is avoided, it is actually preventing the “realization of the Shadow?” Jung, thy deutcshe bruder, warned that to deny the Shadow in thyself is to be doomed, for the shadow will manifest in other, dangerous ways. Is it not besser to be in control?
You have to confront with the Shadow, throw his masks away and look deeply into the jerking smallness behind. But there’s no use to
drag it on your shoulders just for fun after it has been de-shadowed.
Because then the Lightbringer would turn into the Coprophagous.

Dost thou believe that aus-of-Korper experiences are real phenomena, or are they purely mental?
Since it’s your mental energy, astral body, soul, or however you’d like to call it, that is leaving your body, of course it is purely mental, spiritual, immaterial, or whatever term you’d like to use. But anyway, it’s still a “real” phenomena. But what is reality? 

If thou wert to fly in a dream, is there really a difference between that and if thou were to fly in waking reality?  After the flight, all that we have is the memory of the experience.
There isn’t any difference. Life or dream, it’s all the same. There’s no possibility to differ one from the other.

Dost thou glauben that ethics really exists in science, or is that just an Amerikanization of science which transforms research into a business – a business that must be protected? Universities that conduct research have much to lose if a participant were to sue. Few people realize this, but even if a participant signs a consent form to participate in research, a lawsuit can still be filed. Experiments in which participants are deceived are considered “unethical” by the review board which has the power to deny the research, but I think a better word is “liability” – the university fears lawsuits that the “traumatized” participants may file. Now it is thy turn to sprechen.
Just unethic people need ethics. Ethic people don’t need to talk or even think about ethics. It’s like intolerant people always have to use
the word “tolerance”. The have to preach tolerance to fight the intolerance within themselves in the outside. Of course you need some basic standards about what can be allowed in science, e.g. when you think about genetics or testing out new medicines on people. But if there are so many standards that even deceiving
people in psychological experiments is forbidden, it leads to a very boring science, where nothing new is going to happen anymore.  Anyway, I think, that there is nothing like an evolving collective of scientists. The big steps in science are done by a few big Individuals.
And the whole huge mass of university-scientists are just the cattle that gathers around. These are the business pseudo-scientists. And
this cattle needs rules. But everybody candecide himself to which side he wants to belong, to the side of money and reputation or
to the side of wisdom.

Dost thou wish for the world to return to the glorious days of World War Zwei, when there were no restrictions imposed on human experiments?
Well, actually there have been more restrictions on science and art than ever during Teutsches Reich. Physicians who believed in relativity theory, “depraved” artists, astrologers, everybody who was experimenting beyond the norm had to flee or was sent to concentration camp. And the medical results of the human
experiments were pretty poor. Those days have been as glorious as the Bush-era in USA – if you really want to believe in cheap propaganda.

Thy homeland is a modern Atlantis, is it not? Thou art from Austria.” Aus” means “out of” so thy people must be out of a land called “Tria.” What was “Tria” like before thy people were exiled?
In the ancient days of Atlantis, Tria has been the legendary continent in the hollow core of the Earth. Nobody knew if it really ever existed. But some old Atlantean writers have named this mystic continent in their books, so many Atlanteans believed in it. It was told, that the
Tria-people have been technically advanced very much, but then they incensed the gods and hence received big punishment. The whole core of the Earth was filled with glowing lava. Their whole cities have been destroyed. But the most intelligent Triaseans escaped from this Inferno and settled down in the Alps. There they live in immense wisdom, beauty and matureness until today! But also a group of mentally deranged Triaseans managed to escape. They copulated with apes and formed a new race called Humans. Soon they spread like parasites all over the globe. But the Austrians
were very wise. They camouflaged as harmless idiots and hid all their richness. So the humans don’t bother them.

Scientific method demands that something must be observable.
This may be useful in determining how much water must I drink in order for all gelb to disappear from my urine, but that means that
many interesting things fall outside of this approach. I consider
psychologists who are behaviorists to be too dull and stupid to
understand something as abstract as psychoanalysis. Thou art more of a reader of Jung, but thou must surely hate behaviorists more  than I, for they regard Jung as a mystic.
I don’t hate behaviorists, because this would mean that they had kind of power over me. I think they are very funny, especially when
they take themselves so serious.  And they may think a b o u t me, Jung, Satanas, sexy boy Shawn Michaels, or anybody else whatever they like. 

If a person who is blind since birth dreams of colors and objects that were never seen, what dost thou infer?
You don’t need to be blind to see or dream colors and objects, that never have been seen by other eyes. It happens every day and every second, because you never can see something twice in exactly the same way. You never can put your feet twice into the same river, like
Heraklit said.

Doest thou love that geld is gelb?
Well, but geld isn’t gelb at all as long as everybody has washed his fingers before paying. 

In thy land, are Amerikans famous for being Stumfsinning?
Yes, many stumpfsinnig people in my land think so.

Foreigners learn English from Oxford style, which is the gay style from England. They are also taught the British gay pronunciation.
I have often wondered if the accents of foreigners would change if they were taught the pronunciation of the region they would inhabit. The English do not pronounce the “r” very much if it is in the middle of the word, but Americans pronounce it, and in the hard way, not the soft British way. I think this would improve race relations in America. But the real question I have is, if I visited thee, would I get beaten up because I sound like a a fag? I know high German, the Berliner style of proper German, but no one there speaks that way, right? is the verb always in the second place? Does anyone say words like Arbanduhr? Wie spat ist es?
Language in northern Germany is like a machine-code. Of course there are also regional dialects, but everybody can understand and
talk the machine-code if it is necessary. Southern Germans and Austrians also have their own regional accents, but mostly they cannot talk the machine-code, because they don’t want to be machines. But I guess a guy like you would be beaten up anyway if you’d come to Germany or anywhere else. I like the sound of
Oxford English, at least it sounds more noble to me than the American chewing-gum slang. But personally I prefer to talk English with Italian accent. I started that when I lived one year in Italy and I am still doing so. 

Did thou hate learning English? French is even more annoying to  learn. It feels like I am learning slang because of all the apostrophe
action. Of course the language is so shitty that the French would
want to shorten it as much as t h e y could. A F r e n c h sentence
could have t w o b i l lion letters i n it but to read it would only sound like “blaaaaaah!” The world should learn the beauty of the Czech language. Each letter is so precious to the word that everything is always pronounced. Not a single drop is ever wasted. To speak Czech is to be drunk on words. Or dost thou not agree because of the hatred passed down from thy forefathers? Dost thou hate Slavs?
Well sorry, Bill, but the Czechs are our brothers! They’ve been an important part of the Austrian World-Reich Monarchy for hundreds of Years! It’s a cool country with cool people and I am sure, that within the next twenty years Czechs will be first world and Germany will be second world. Then Czech men will come across the border and fuck German women cheaply and make cheap holidays in Germany. That will be justice. I liked to learn English, but I love
French, though I cannot talk it, and I love French women! They have the right mixture between grace and emotion, between dignity and warm, rich feelings.

I demand that history should be taught to students from as many versions as there are available. Read the words of the winners as well as the losers. In America, there is much propaganda about the atrocities of the Axis, but there is no mention of the atrocities that the Americans committed. Canst thou reveal at least one thing?
Surely the intentional starving of Germans after the surrender was not an action that was lovingly remembered. I do not ask this to stir hate, but rather, to lift it. I want people to stop thinking in black
and white. Hating a German because he was a soldier is like hating a black person because he is a nigger.
After the second World War Americans have been very popular
in Germany. They were friendly and brought food and freedom. So I don’t know exactly about what you are talking. Concerning atrocities, I would rather talk about the present,
about the indirect genocide that Americans will be guilty of in some years, because they deny to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, or about
the “structural Violence” of Market-Fascism, that they are forcing upon the whole world. Anyway I don’t want to raise anti-american stereotypes, since I know so many cool people in US who definitely
won’t deserve to be insulted just because they have some stupid
Landmates. 

When China finally starts attacking, which country gets destroyed first?
I guess China.

 

Chryst
Chryst

UPDATE: Christof released a new album under the name CHRYST.

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