CR: Why don’t we begin by you giving a short introduction of the band, yourself and your music?
Oliver Tesch: Well, Sacrificium is a Death Metal band from southwest Germany. We've been around since 1993. First as a Thrash Metal band but that changed shortly after most of the original members left the band. So Oliver, that's me, is the only left member of the starting line up.
So far we recorded one 4 track demo CD in 1996 and the demo tape "Mortal Fear" in 1998 which received a lot of good feedback and attention from the press.
Finally, in 2002 we could record our first full length album "Cold Black Piece Of Flesh" which we got also great reviews for.
Now in 2006, we just released "Escaping The Stupor" in November 2005, which was recorded in January 2005 in Sweden at the Panic Room Studios.
So far we shared the stage with bands like Extol, My Darkest Hate, Fleshless, Fleshcrawl, Narnia, Mortification, Rob Rock, Crimson Moonlight just to name a few.

CR: Can we say that Sacrificium is a well establish underground metal band? Do you see yourselves as an underground band? Would you like to change that status?
Oliver Tesch: We definitely see ourselves as an underground band. I'm not quite sure if we're "established" but I would say that we made ourselves quite a name and that we have the ability to be more than just an underground band. So yes, we would like to change that.
But that's not in our hands. We always try to give more than 100% at live shows but we wouldn't change our music just so we could sell more CDs. We do what we like and what we think is the best. If people like it, that's cool and makes us happy.

CR: How many line-up changes have you guys had before the recording of this new album “Escaping The Stupor”?
Oliver Tesch: Oh – just too many. Let me see if I can recall all the changes ....
Sacrificium had 2 vocalists before Claudio, 3 bass players, 2 drummers, 2 keyboard players (well ok, that have been the past vocalists too) and Claudio changed from guitars to vocals a half a year before "Cold Black Piece Of Flesh" and a couple of session bass players.

CR: Are all the members of Sacrificium from Germany, do you all live near by?
Oliver Tesch: We're all from Germany and almost live in the same area. It takes from 10 minutes to 45 min to meet at our rehearsal space. So I guess that's pretty close compared to bands we now who travel like 2 hours to rehearsal.

CR: If I’m not mistaken you guys started as a thrash metal band, why the switch to death metal?
Oliver Tesch: Well, that just happened naturally I guess. But personally after I heard the "From Beyond" album by Massacra I knew that this is what I wanted play and between all the variations of music styles each of us listens to, Death Metal is what we all like.

CR: Let’s talk about your latest album “Escaping The Stupor”; this record was released by Black Lotus Records, how did you guys got in touch with this Greek label?
Oliver Tesch: The old school way. By sending out demos to different labels and Black Lotus made a good offer and most of all, they really liked what they heard. They signed Luna Field, who are from our area, so we knew that we would be in good hands.

CR: How long where you guys in the studio recording this material? Did you recorder it in Germany?
Oliver Tesch: We've been 14 days in the fantastic Panic Room Studios in Sweden. It was a very cool experience but also a pretty tough schedule to get everything done plus we had some Swedish friends coming over and doing some backing vocals.
Off course we recorded some demos of the songs before we went into the studio but that all was done at our rehearsal space.

CR: Three years went by since the release of your first full length album “Cold Black Piece of Flesh” why three years, is that your normal process to write and record and album, or there were some label issues that prevented “Escaping The Stupor” to see the light earlier?
Oliver Tesch: I guess we're not the fastest ones when it comes to songwriting. Hahaha.
Basically the songs for "Escaping The Stupor" were written in 2004. "Relativation Of Justice" is a bit older, but the last song for this album was written in November/December 2004.
The CD would have been released a lot earlier, but we choose to leave our old label after the recording was done and so it took quite a while to negotiate with the different labels and then the Black Lotus needed some time too, to prepare the release and all that.

	Pic courtesy of: Sacrificium "We just try to write songs that we personally would like to hear and we're eager to grow constantly in the ability to make the next song better then the one before. There's also a love for little details when we write songs to keep them interesting"

CR: “Escaping The Stupor” the album begins without any intro, without any previous notice sort of speak, Canvas, the first track just explodes in your ears once you press play; was that kind of intensity something you think could describe the attitude of Sacrificium in this particular album?
Oliver Tesch: Yes. That's what we wanted for the album and it also describes Sacrificium pretty well.
No fancy stuff, just right in your face. No images, just honest and rough like life.

CR: I was reading a couple of reviews about “Escaping The Stupor”, and one person described the album as follows “Even though they are from Germany, Sacrificium sounds like they could be from Sweden” what do you think of this kind of comparisons? Was the general Swedish death metal sound a big influence to the band?
Oliver Tesch: Those statements are quite nice to read and we feel honored in some way when people say stuff like that. But we don't try to sound "Swedish" in purpose. It just happens. Off course I have to admit that we like lots of the stuff that is coming from Sweden or Scandinavia in general. But there's also quite a good amount of the USA Death Metal and old school roots in us.

CR: Escaping The Stupor is a very brutal and melodic album, how do you guys manage to balance brutality versus melodies?
Oliver Tesch: Difficult question actually. We just try to write songs that we personally would like to hear and we're eager to grow constantly in the ability to make the next song better then the one before. There's also a love for little details when we write songs to keep them interesting. But we are still learning on these issues and hopefully with the next record we can show some great progress.

CR: Extinction Of Mankind, this song reminded me of Bolt Thrower so much, kick ass track by the way, are you guys big fans of that British band? Was that song written intentionally to sound like Bolt Thrower? (At least the drums and some guitar riffs)
Oliver Tesch: We looooove Bolt Thrower. At least Claudio and I. We're major Bolt Thrower fans and so it can happen that some riffs end up sounding like Bolt Thrower. But we're not doing that purpose. It just happens. From time to time it can happen that we work on riffs and kick them because they sound too Bolt Throwerish.

CR: What does the album cover art mean?
Oliver Tesch: The cover artwork is Henriks, the cover artist, interpretation of the album title and we think it fits the mood and title of the album perfect.
"Escaping The Stupor" means to break out of our frozen lives and boundaries that hold us back to evolve as human beings.

CR: The song Tremendum, this is a beautiful instrumental song, why this song? Where you guys looking for something like a calm moment after all the rage and speed the album was bringing to our ears until that moment? Who played the guitar in that track?
Oliver Tesch: We weren’t planning on recording anything like that when we wrote songs for the album, but there was this wrecked acoustic guitar laying around in the studio, which was a pain in the ass to tune by the way, and Mario (drums) was playing around with it. Then he started playing this melody and I started to improvise a little solo over it. Bang, there it was. So we recorded it at the very end of the recordings and it sounded so cool that we had to put it on the album. What you hear is actually Mario playing the acoustic guitar and me doing the electric guitar. If I remember correctly everything was done in like 2 takes for each guitar.

CR: How many shows have you guys played to promote this new album? Any plans of later shows this year?
Oliver Tesch: Unfortunately not very much. But we want to be on the road this year. Our booking agency is working hard on making this possible. So we hope that it will possible for Sacrificium to be on tour later this year. Unfortunately getting on a tour with a known band is quite expensive. That's why we to turn down the opportunity to go on tour with the mighty Vader. We just couldn't afford it.

CR: Sadly I haven’t listened to your previous album Cold Black Piece of Flesh, what can you tell us of this record? What was the difference between that album and Escaping The Stupor?
Oliver Tesch: First the songs on "Cold Black Piece Of Flesh" were written during a long period of time and were quite old. But we had to record them and make room for new stuff. But still the songs are a bit more technical than on "Escaping The Stupor" and that is also the weak point of "Cold Black Piece Of Flesh". Too much fancy technical stuff. More riff focused than song focused. A lot of people like it because of this, but regarding the songwriting "Escaping The Stupor" is far ahead.
The production is more underground style and also Claudio's voice is now way more aggressive and versatile than on "Cold Black Piece Of Flesh". It is a technical old school death metal album.

	Pic courtesy of: Sacrificium "If they think Metal is evil then they should watch some of those hip hop videos. I don't know, but smoking weed in videos and turning women into pieces of meat is more "evil" than Metal music"

CR: What’s the bands biggest influence, in music and in general?
Oliver Tesch: Musically I could now list like 4 pages of bands or music that we like our listen to, since we not only listen to death metal. Each one of us has a really great range of music that he or she listens to. But a lot of influences come from our very day live. What we experience or the stuff that we care about. Everyone in Sacrificium is a Christian and this is also a very basic and important influence for us.

CR: What’s more important to you, the art of creating music, or the message inside the art of creating music?
Oliver Tesch: I guess it's a bit of both. It goes somewhat hand in hand. For me art always has a message. Even if it is meant to have no message at all, then the message is that it has no message and it's just there to enjoy it.

CR: What would you consider the single most important factor of been a metalhead is?
Oliver Tesch: Been you and giving a damn shit about trends. Sounds like two things but if you think about it is actually one thing ;-)

CR: Metal music has sort of speak this stereotype of been this evil music that kids shouldn’t listen to; what’s your point of view on this stereotype? (At least over here in Latin America, many “conventional” thinkers still see metal as the devil’s music)
Oliver Tesch: If they think Metal is evil then they should watch some of those hip hop videos. I don't know, but smoking weed in videos and turning women into pieces of meat is more "evil" than Metal music.
We've been dealing with this issue since we started making music. We take it like this:
Music itself is either good or bad. It's just a physically phenomenon that produces hearable frequencies. So it depends on what we make out of it.
So there might be "evil" thoughts or message transported with music but that counts for every music genre not only metal.
But mostly people just don't understand what's going on in the metal scene and if people don't understand things they mark it as "evil" because it is easier than asking questions and having an open mind. I call those people superficial.

CR: What does “sell out” mean to you?
Oliver Tesch: Generally I would say it is when you deny your personality in order to make money or profit. Same goes for music.

CR: Well, than you for your time, please if you have something to add, go ahead!
Oliver Tesch: Thank you very much for this great interview!
Don't follow trends and keep your mind open all the time. Go and buy lots of Sacrificium CDs so that we can tour Latin America!!
We would love to see you all on tour sometime. Until then, keep it heavy!