In just a short amount of time, horror rockstars Bloodsucking Zombies From Outer Space, will have been a band for a solid 15 years! That said, stand up drummer/vocalist Dead Gein or "Richy" discusses with us, the band's past, present, and future activity, to include new music, more shows, that will be even bigger and better than ever!
1. Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Bloodsucking Zombies From Outer Space, and how long the band has been together?
Richy: My name is Dead Richy Gein and I´m the drummer and singer of the BZFOS. We started in 2002 so soon we have been together for 15 years – always in the same line-up!
2. Can I get a backstory on the band/ band biography?
Richy: No comment.
3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
Richy: We are based in Vienna Austria. The scene here is not really big, especially when it comes to the Psychobilly/Horrorpunkscene. Kitty in a Casket is another well known band from here. But we do have a lot of Punkrock and Metal Bands - some of them are very well known, like Pungent Stench for example.
4. How did you guys come up with your band name?
Richy: The whole band is basically created around horror movies and our love for that genre. For the band name we just put the 2 so called, worst horror films ever made together for one title. "Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies" by Jess Franco and "Plan 9 From Outer Space" by Ed Wood Jr.
5. Out of all of the creatures in existence why go with Zombies?
Richy: Zombies has always been very fascinating and scary to me. It started when I saw, "Night of the Living Dead“. I was about 8 or 9 years old and Zombies have been my favorite Horror Characters ever since.
6. How are your zombies from outer space? What planet are they from? What do they eat, how do they survive?
Richy: The story tells, that we originally came from Planet Transylvania, or actually just our Guitarist Mr. Evilze did – he is an extraterrestrial space-pirate who reanimated Ed Gein's Corpse with the help of mad scientist, Dr. Hermann Schreck“ (our bass player). Together with satanic Priest Reverend Bloodbath we formed the group to terrify the human race with our bloodsoaked Rock'n'Roll. We basically feed on Blood, Beer and Jägermeister.
7. Have you ever considered doing a EP or album dedicated to telling that story of the Bloodsucking Zombies From Outer Space?
Richy: It has always been in the back of our heads, that one day we will make a movie out of the story. It would be one hell of a blood feast, hahaha!
8. Do you see your band and it's music to develop into any other mediums like film or graphic novels?
Richy: As I said – I am such a film nerd – and I would love to do that someday with my band.
9. What bands have influenced your band and its sound?
Richy: Psychobilly, Punkrock, Metal, Hardrock and a bit of Goth kinda describes it the best. Bands like Alice Cooper, Mad Sin, Misfits, Motörhead, Nekromantix, Demented are Go, Rob Zombie - just to name a few.
10. What lyrical theme do you guys use in your music? What message do you want to send?
Richy: Most of my lyrics are basically about horror films, the rest is about serial killers, haha!
11. How did you come up with the genre label "horrorbilly"? Why go with creating your own genre instead of just going with a typical genre?
Richy: The term, horrorbilly“ was very fitting, cause that's exactly what our music is – a mixture of horrorpunk and psychobilly. But we are also influenced from lots of other music genres. We do not like boarders in our musical process – we love so many different kinds of bands/musicians and we just wanna be creative - and on top of everything lies our love of horror movies.
12. How have the gigs you guys been doing been?
Richy: It has been a steady progress I would say. Over the 15 years we have not only gotten better in our musical live performance, we have also put more and more theatrical elements in our show. As I mentioned before, Alice Cooper was and is always one of our biggest influences and one of our goals would be to set up our show kind of the same way as Alice did in the late 80's early 90's.
13. Do you remember your first show and what was it like?Richy: Oh man yes I do. We played at a local youth club, 4 month after we started the band. We had about 8 songs so we ended up playing the whole set twice, haha. By this time I did not even have real lyrics to all the songs so partly I just sang "improvised fake English," hahaha.
14. How do you promote your band and shows?
Richy: It depends. Sometimes we work together with promotion companies and our fan club is also helping us a lot with spreading news. We're not so much into social media stuff, but it needs to be done nowadays. I still prefer the classic old school way – Posters, Flyers, buzz marketing etc.
15. Can you tell us about your next shows and why we should be there?
Richy: We're playing at a couple of festivals this summer and around halloween we're going on a short tour again. If you like horror movies and rock'n'roll our gigs is a must see and I'm pretty sure you will at least be entertained.
16. Has Bloodsucking Zombies From Outer Space ever played in the U.S.A. or plan to do so in the future?
Richy: Unfortunately we never played in the U.S. but we would very much love to. We are still waiting for a professional booker who can make a U.S. tour happen for us.
17. You guys had won an award at this year's Amadeus Austrian Music Awards in the category "Hard & Heavy". How did you get picked to be included in this award show and category?
Richy: Yeah – it was the Austrian music award, kinda like the Grammy's or so – and we won in the category "best hard & heavy" act. We got nominated and the winner was chosen by a public voting and a main jury. It was a big thing for us, cause we were the only DIY band who ever got this far. We didn't have a management, no record label, no agent or anything at this point of our career – it was pretty impressive and I still would like to thank all the fans who voted for us!
18. How did it make you feel once you had found out that you did win this award? What did you do in celebration?
Richy: We had a very long night and partied hard, hahaha! Now the award is in our rehearsal room, but unfortunately I dropped it a while ago (there is a video when that happened on our Facebook page) so now it is in two pieces.
19. Where are you in the recording process of the new album?
Richy: We just started with the recording session for a special release that we will release later this year. It's not going to be our "real" next album, and so far I can't give you any more details – but will be a fun thing for sure.
20. The title is "Murder Blues 2 - The Return of Pompfüneberer" so was there a Murder Blues Part 1? Will there be a part 3 in this series?
Richy: Yes indeed. In 2010 we released the mini album called "Mörder Blues". There will probably be a part 3 somewhere in the future, but so far nothing is planned. The next thing is writing material for our next full length album which will not be release before 2017/2018.
21. How would you say the new album compares to your previous records?
Richy: If your are still talking about the „Mörder Blues 2“ Album, the big difference is that all the songs are in german or better said, austrian slang language. It's mainly about serial killers (both true crime and fiction) that happend in our home country.
22. Who produced "Murder Blues 2 - The Return of Pompfüneberer" and what was it like working with them?
Richy: Until now we have always produced our albums by ourselves – or to be more specific the reverend bloodbath and I are the producers. But I'm getting more and more interested in the idea of how it would turn out to work with a another producer and get some more influences from outside as well.
23. Who did the cover art for "Murder Blues 2 - The Return of Pompfüneberer" and how much input did you have on it?
Richy: Most of our designs and artworks are done by me and I also made the Mörder Blues 2 Artwork. The drawings I got from very very old newspapers and I mainly just overworked them a little bit.
24. Is there any story or concept behind the "Murder Blues 2 - The Return of Pompfüneberer" title?
Richy: Almost every songs tells a little story. For example "der Kopf deiner Mutter" - which is about a young man who chopped of the head of his mother and placed it in the window of his parents shop - took place in Vienna in the early 90's.
25. Are you using any new instrumentation you've never used in the recording process before?
Richy: Hmmm let me think... We tried to never hold back in using various instruments on our albums from the beginning on (violins, trumpets, harps etc.) I think the only instrument we have on "Mörder Blues 2" that we haven't used before are some orchestra kettel drums in "der einarminge henker".
Richy: No not really, the only difference is - and what we also had with the Mörder Blues 1 Album - is that it is more about the lyrics and story. We open our minds even more to various musical styles then we would normally do. Some of the songs are very much pop songs or so, with just very twisted lyrics, haha!
27. When can we expect the new album to be released?
Richy: As I said, we have a little special surprise release this winter. The next real studio album is not even written yet.
28. You guys have released unplugged acoustic material before, how does your music work in this format?
Richy: Take a listen and you tell me. We felt quite comfortable with the material as soon as we started rehearsing it. It turned out surprisingly well I would say. But it was a lot of work as well.
29. Do you want to continue releasing material in this format as years progress?
Richy: I'm not sure about that to be honest. We probably will do another unplugged live performance sometime in the future, but for an album I'm more looking forward to write hard and rocking songs again.
30. You have also released an assortment of live material in the forms of some albums and DVDs. When will we be seeing a release of a combination of the two, a live album/DVD of you guys in your prime set-up not unplugged?
Richy: Next year we will celebrate 15 years of BZFOS and we going to do a big show in our hometown for sure. We have already planned on recording that event for a future DVD/album release.
31. On your 2010 EP split with Thee Flanders there were 4 unreleased songs released. How many more unreleased songs, do you guys have tucked away that you think we may get the chance of hearing?
Richy: Yes we do have/had a couple of unreleased stuff – all these songs you can get if you join our fan club "Army of Zombies". We release so called download-singles for them from time to time, and it always includes special unreleased material.
32. What can the fans expect to see from you in the future?
Richy: We are working hard to get our live shows bigger, better, and bloodier – and we haven't written our best material yet – for sure!
33. Any final words for our readers?
Richy: Thanx for supporting us – it means the world to me! Stay wild, sick and become undead! And I'll quote my buddies Blitzkid with "long live the horror"!
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