SuidAkrA Interview: SXSW 2010

Arkadius Antonik formed SuidAkrA in 1994 because he needed a rehearsal space to practice AC/DC and Metallica guitar solos. Sixteen years later, SuidAkrA are veterans of the European festival circuit with nine albums and one live DVD under their belts. This month they will make their third trip to the United States and their first SXSW appearance. Spinner recently caught up with Antonik to talk about his craziest tour experiences, guilty pleasures and more.

Describe your sound in your own words.

I personally think we are just making metal, some kind of folk melodic death metal. It's very hard to describe because we don't really fit into any genre. We're not really a pagan band or a death metal band because we have all these influences. We have something like a universal metal sound. It's really funny because you can read people's comments on YouTube talking about what kind of metal SuidAkrA is playing right now. Everyone sees something different in our sound.

How did your band form?

It wasn't really planned to start a band. I started playing guitar, and I needed a rehearsal room, and the only chance to get a rehearsal room was if you had a band. I just asked a few guys from school, and we got started playing Metallica covers. Then we started to write new songs, and at that time the guys who started with me had left the band because for them it was just a hobby, but for me it was more professional.


When we started we were 15 or 16, and at that time we had a different taste in music. We listened to more aggressive, brutal stuff like In Flames, but over time we became more open-minded and started listening to music outside the metal scene. We were always listening to hard rock or rock and roll like Backyard Babies or Social Distortion. When you listen to a different type of music, you have much more input as a musician. Before Marcel Schoenen joined the band in 1995, he played in an Irish folk two-man band in Irish pubs. I thought it would be a cool idea to combine this influence with metal, which created a different mood and atmosphere in our sound. After that I also started to listen to traditional Irish music and Celtic stuff. It would be boring for us to play only metal or only folk music.

How did you come up with your band name?

Our drummer at that time, named Stefan [Moller], had a teddy bear whose name was Nafets, which is Stefan backwards – his girlfriend came up with that. I thought "what a stupid idea," so I started making jokes about it. But we drank some beers and started to write our names backwards -- when it was my turn to write mine, it was SuidAkrA, and we thought it sounded like a cool metal band name. People sometimes think it has something to do with suicide or darkness, which is funny because there is no meaning behind it. People are looking for meaning, and they spend a lot of time looking for meaning, but I have to disappoint them.

What's your biggest vice?

Whenever we release a new album, I want to hurry up to do new stuff, which is a bit stressful for the other guys because sometimes it's helpful to relax a bit. I'm very into [work], so if I enjoy things for a bit, I get the feeling like, "You haven't written a song in two months!" And, of course, I smoke cigarettes too much, which is actually good for my voice.

What's in your festival survival kit?

Cigarettes and a lighter -- that's the most important thing. Marcus quit smoking a few months ago, but Lars and I are very big smokers -- we really enjoy it. I could live with one pair of underwear for weeks, but not with one cigarette. So it's very important.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

There are a lot. For example, Lars and I are listening to the Sugarbabes, which is pretty cool. I also like 80s and 70s music, like ABBA. At one time I just listened to Eminem. In 2002, I listed Limp Bizkit as one of my favorite bands on MySpace, and a lot of people wrote me emails like, "Holy s---, how can you listen to this crap band?" At that time the nu metal wave wasn't very popular in the metal scene. But I liked some of their songs, so why not?

Beatles or Stones?

I prefer the Beatles because when I was a child, my parents listened to the Beatles all the time, and Elvis as well.

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

Last year we played for the first time in China. At the first show we played in Shenyang, we went on stage, and at first we were impressed because there were about 3,000 people in front of the stage. We started to play the first song, and people started to mosh and form some circle pits, which is really normal for us Europeans and in America, but not in China. The police went into the crowd and started to beat them up, and I was really shocked, so we just broke up the whole show. We only played one and a half songs. After we broke up the show, the chief of the local police went to the promoter and said, "It was nothing against the band, we like SuidAkrA." Then the police took a lot of pictures with us.

What tourist destination do you want to see in the U.S?

Of course, the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. We've been there twice, but the weather was so bad that we couldn't see it because there were a lot of clouds.

Is it better to burn out or to fade away?

Fade away, but don't ask me why.


Zack Zoeller is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.