Q and A: Piotr Wiwczarek (Vader)

By PAUL SOUTHWELL

POLISH death metal pioneers Vader continue to produce seriously ferocious music. Their most recent album, Solitude in Madness is a punishing album of powering death metal.

Australian metal audiences are enjoying the band on tour this week with Polish associates Thy Disease and Hate in tow. Recently, we spoke to founding member, guitarist and front man Piotr ‘Peter’ Wiwczarek about all things Vader.

HOT METAL: Hello sir, You are finally back after a postponed tour.
Piotr Wiwczarek: “Yes, we are, and it will be very soon. We are so happy. We were supposed to be back two years ago but it was not a good time for touring. COVID pretty much grounded everybody and all those restrictions made so many shows impossible to do. So, it is better late than never.”

HM: Indeed, and you’ve got Hate coming with you, as well as Thy Disease. You’ve already toured a lot with these bands.
PW: “This is kind of a Polish invasion, if we can call it that, and it is good. We have been touring with both bands many times together which provides a good combination of friendships and good music. That feeling means that there will be good shows for everybody. A good feeling on tour means good shows, so, that is an additional reason as to why to the tour will be good and why we are all coming along together.”

HM: Solitude in Madness might be three years old now, but you have the 40th anniversary of Vader approaching. Was this something you’d have contemplated when looking back to 1983, when you started out?
PW: “It is really hard to compare but say from ’83 to 2023 is a different world to me. When we started, we started as teenagers or young guys who knew nothing about the world. We were just some guys who wanted to give some colour to our grey world in Poland, back then, and we just wanted to escape from all of the politics which was just overwhelming, like all of life. So metal was the theme, it was our world, man, where we could escape to, to get away from all that was happening around us. We just wanted to have fun, play good music and just to be kids again, and you know, or course, nobody knew back then, which is of course 40 years ago, nobody knew that we would survive more than five years. But we did it first, and more as fans, just to do it for fun but it has turned into something more professional, after years, and so it actually took more than 10 years to decide that we are going to be professional musicians. It was kind of risky, like one of those choices in life, but for me, I did it because I love that, and I knew that it was going to be a hard life, not an easy life, but a good life and, as I said, that was a decision. So today, after all these years, we have the next generation of Vader fans in the world and that is far more than we ever expected. It is really good and I am proud of that; to be among those bands who created the generations, who played not just for the fans from the 80s and 90s, but we still have more and more young people coming up with power for us alone and they can still find something for them in such an old band like Vader. That is really impressive and I think that is a huge, or maybe the biggest success of the band – we can play for the generations with the music that we are doing. Going from say ’93 to 2023, that is too little. The first album [The Ultimate Incantation] we did it as young guys and we knew nothing about ‘the land’ as we were recording the album. That was done in England [at Rhythm Studios] and we could not communicate with English back then, and we had no gear to record, or even any time to record. Everything was like doing it for the first time. Whereas, for the last album, Solitude in Madness, we recorded again in England [Grindstone Studios in Suffolk], but after such a long time of experiences, not just with our own gear but with the guys we know, our communication is different. So, it was the same fun but not that stressed and definitely closer to what we wanted to record, and how we wanted to sound like, at that point.”

HM: When Vader was coming up in the ranks, were you aware of bands like Possessed, Morbid Angel and Benediction – all of these little pockets of extreme metal rising up, generating death metal scenes?
PW: “Well, when we started with the first album, which came out in 1993, it was 10 years after we started to exist as a band. That was late but the reality is that we came from Poland and so we had to wait for the time. When we released the first album that was already a year after when the extreme metal scene started and we did not even call it death metal back then. Death metal was a popular and trendy name and that is why each band that released albums then was called a death metal record. It was the same thing with thrash metal around about five years or so before then, or even 10 years before. But I felt that death metal felt pretty good for what we did, of the style of music and for the style of growling in the singing, and our image, if not everything. So death metal was pretty well named for the style of music that we did, and it seemed to fit. But you know, if people liked to call us thrash metal or even black metal, we didn’t hate it. That was not a problem to me because we still played a style of extreme music, and whatever you call it, if you like it, that is what is most important.”

HM: Agreed. How would you say that music production has changed in the metal scene? There seems to be a very gated and quantised type of sound lately.
PW: “I am happy that the bands today are trying to come back to this original, organic sound. I think that it is not good for metal music to make it too surgical, if you know what I mean? Production depends on and is connected to its sub-genre where metal music now is just too general a name, you know. Bands playing metal today play such a different kind of music such that they wouldn’t have even been called metal in the 80s, you know. It has gone that far but then again, it is not for me to judge, since I am old school and for me, metal means something more rebel or just extreme in any kind, and you know, the leather jackets, spikes, long hair, denim and patches – that was metal not just because of a trend but it was like a uniform for us in the 80s and the 90s. Then came the 21st century and so much changed in the meantime, we had so many metal styles like math metal, or gothic metal, and whatever, which is just a little bit too alien to me. Of course, I respect it, I am just not…I usually listen to and play the music that I like, and that makes everybody from myself and our musicians and everybody who likes Vader, happy, and that is the point. We are not trying to make that philosophical way, to think about whether it is good or not, people should do what they like and if they like to play like this or that or be influenced by this or that, why not? But I stayed with the metal I like and Vader is Vader, some people in their way have said that is not good and we should be more open minded. But why, why should we follow the trends? I think that we should do what we like, do what makes us happy and then we can create our form of music, and the music which will influence the fans, those who listen to us. That is the very thing and that is what I do with the band. I don’t think that is good or bad, that is just the way that I follow, for years.”

HM: It must be satisfying for you that a band like Decapitated have had big success and knowing that the band name is a reference to one of your song titles [‘Decapitated Saints’]?
PW: “Yeah, we were influenced by Black Sabbath, Priest, Slayer, and more bands. We just continued the way of music. I am happy if there are bands that are influenced by bands like Vader, in any way – music, personalities, images, whatever, as that means that the musician, with all of this expression inside, can find their followers, and that is the best that can happen for each band, I think. We can just continue the good thing in the music, you know.”

HM: You’ve got new drummer Michał Andrzejczyk in the band. Is it had to break in a new drummer to this style of music?
PW: “Ah, it is not really hard to find a drummer who is able to play but it is harder to find a drummer who will be a part of the band, or the team, who will not just be able to play but will be able to be accepted by everybody and will accept the life on tour, you know, the very specific life of a professional metal band. So from this perspective it is not that easy but, Michał, our new drummer was led to us by James [Stewart] our previous drummer, and he actually prepared him. Michał is actually almost like James was in the time he joined Vader 10 years before. So this moment that we switched drummers was very smooth and easy for us, and we had not had any damage in the band in the touring after that so when Michał joined the band he was prepared for everything, he was already ready, both mentally and physically, as a drummer.”

HM: The rhythm section is probably the most integral part of an extreme metal band, which is sometimes overlooked.
PW: “It is, it is, in a band like Vader a weak drummer means it is not possible to play because a drummer is like the heart and spine – it is everything. The drummer needs to be good enough just lead the band onstage because that is just how it is – but this is the hard part, or the hardest part in this band, the drummer works the hardest on stage and is definitely one of those elements, in the person, who needs to be perfect.”

HM: In that light, looking at the vast discography of Vader, is there a particular album that stands out for you?
PW: “It is not for me to decide about that, you know, and I think that the fans, they do. It is one of those more common questions as to what is your favourite album but I cannot say that, I like all of them because each one of them was a part of my life, especially for me because I remember the beginning so each album brings me that particular part of my history, whether that is bad or good, but still, I am happy that the Vader fans like different albums. Of course there is like, some favourites, like let’s say De Profundis, the first one, or The Litany, or the last one, but still, we are not the band who recorded one or two albums among maybe a dozen. I am happy that there are still albums that might not be that popular in the discography that are still waiting for something to be played on stage. That is why we are pretty open for our set list and are still mixing in the songs, still trying to make our next set list different. We try to add some songs that we have never played before to satisfy everybody, including those who have been waiting years to listen to one of those songs that they really liked but never listened to them live before. The same thing is going to happen in Australia, we pretty much are ready with a new set list and it is not easy to mix a new set list for let’s say 90 minutes since we’ve recorded so many albums and the fans are still asking for more and more. But we try.”

HM: Finally, what got you into Ran guitars [Ran Invader custom guitar – now out of business] as opposed to choosing say, Gibson flying Vs?
PW: “First off, Darek [Kuczynski], who was the mentor and the leader in the Ran guitars office or factory, let’s say, he was my friend and he was working with Waldek who actually invented the custom guitars in Olsztyn, in the city that we came from as a band, and he just made the guitars for musicians. He was not making furniture like many people did in Poland before, they made good looking guitars but for guitars to play, no. It is good to make a guitar that looks good but first of all, it has to be easy to play. He invented for metal musicians, and that is why I like Rans, they made it for me, a custom guitar, done how I like, so we co-operated for many years until the Ran guitars ceased to exist, due to some problems with people. It is funny because the best workers, they escaped to work in England, they found good work, and a good job so there were no people good enough just to continue. They will probably, in a while, but for the moment, the Ran guitar factory is not existing.”

HM: Things could turn back around though. I gather that there are still vintage amplifier hounds looking for quality tubes for their amps, which are only available in Poland.
PW: “Speaking of tubes, sadly I think the Russian ones are the best but I think that in Poland you can still find huge stocks of them. These are for the people that loved the tubes in old amps so they buy it up and they sell it. It really hard to connect with Russia at the moment so it is good to know that there are people who have good professional tubes that are ready to ship.”