Interview with Thorsten "Tosso" Bauer of Atrocity
March 2008 by Steve Green

Going back to the original Werk 80, where did the idea first come from?
I remember very well a concert in Stockholm where Alex and me were special guests at a "Das Ich" show. The 20 hours ride up to Sweden was very long, so we listened to all these eighties pop songs and realized that there we both like a lot of these songs. When the idea came up everybody in the band was very excited about it, and immediately everybody named some favourite eighties songs that he would love to cover. In fact it was quite difficult back then to chose the one that made it on "Werk 80 I", but also a lot of fun.

After such a long time since the first release, why did you decide to do another album of 80s Pop songs?
10 years after the first album the time just seemed right for it. Many people asked us to do a second part already after the first Werk 80 album and there were a lot of interesting offers from a commercial point of view but we wanted to do our own regular albums back then because the music has priority number one for us. Now after the release of Gemini and Atlantis and ten years in between, we had the idea to make a second part of the story incorporating a full orchestra this time to achieve a real widescreen sound. Also in all these ten years there were some songs "undone" and still in our minds as covers that we would like to do like "Relax" or "Fade To Grey". So now after ten years we have followed this impulse.

Which song on the album was the most fun to do? And what are your favourite(s)?
In the end they were all fun to do. But I like especially "Fade To Grey", "People Are People" and "Keine Heimat" very much. But that's the cool thing about this record. Everybody you meet, and that's the same in my band, will have different "favourite songs" from this album, that's a fact I really like about this album.

What were your favourite 80s bands when you were a teenager? What was your first love Pop or Rock/Metal?
Haha..ok..here is my outing. When I was 5 years old I started to record songs from the radio with a tape recorder..and at that time my favourite music was 50ies and 60ies rock'n'roll music from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. By the age of 12, 13 I started listening to bands like Van Halen and Whitesnake and soon switched then to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and then to Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth. So I never had a real time where I was mainly into pop music. It was always a parallel world for me, but a parallel world with really good songs back then. For example I also have old old tapes I recorded as a boy from "Relax" and "Fade to grey" and also I really liked bands like Ultravox at that time.

I love Liv Kristine’s contributions. She does a great Jimmy Sommerville on Smalltown Boy and she adds an extra edge to Don’t Your Forget About Me and The Suns Always Shines On TV. Were you tempted to use her a little more on the album, maybe doing a duet? Best duet I could think of was the Prince/Sheena Easton song, U Got The Look.
That's a good suggestion with the Prince/Sheena Easton song. I love a lot from Prince's music, but not everything. Well on "The Sun Always Shines" and the bonustrack "Feels Like Heaven" on the digipak edition you can hear Liv and Alex doing a kind of duet vocals. For the rest of the songs Liv added some background vocals with her wonderful voice. To involve Liv on a record is always a good thing. I don't see many singers right now that have such a versatile and to the heart-going voice like Liv.

With the amount of time you are spending on the road and recording, do you have much time for producing other bands right now?
Yeah, that's a good point. The last 2 years we didn't have that much time for doing other bands. The last recording we did was the vocal recordings for Liv's sister Carmen for the new Midnattsol record. For 2008 we will have Elis at Mastersound to record their new album.

What is happening next in the Atrocity and Leaves’ Eyes camps?
There is really a lot happening with both bands right now. The Werk 80 II album has just entered the German album charts on number 19 and also the Austrian charts. That means we get a lot of attention right now from the press and fans. Like I said Atrocity will do some European festival shows and a tour in the second half of 2008 plus the work on the first Atrocity DVD also continues. Also a new Atrocity album will be recorded on 2008 together with Alex's sister Yasmin. It will be a record in the style of Calling the Rain, with a lot of acoustic guitars and Yasmin's flutes and her meditative voice. After that we will start to work on a dark album Trilogy in 2009 with Atrocity.

The Leaves Eyes DVD including the Metal Female Viking ship show will be finished in July and besides that we will also finish the next Leaves Eyes studio record this summer. It will be a killer album, I just worked the last few days on that one. After playing a huge show at this years Wacken Open air right before headliner Iron Maiden (yeah) we will do a US-Tour together with Amorphis, Samael and Virgin Black.

Thanks for your time. Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanx for the interview and thanx to all our fans out there.

www.atrocity.de