UDO DIRKSCHNEIDER Discusses New U.D.O. Album 'Mastercutor'

Mark Carras of RockMyMonkey.com recently conducted an interview with former ACCEPT vocalist Udo Dirkschneider. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Rock My Monkey: You have a video for the song "Wrong Side of Midnight". Who thought of the concept for that?

Udo Dirkschneider: There was a young woman here in Germany. She's very new in the business, and she's doing crazy filming. It's called stop motion. It's very new, what's she's doing. So and the concept was you see the birth of the Mastercutor, how he become the Mastercutor. In the beginning he's a normal person, and they do a lot of experimental things on his brain. His face is changing. He's looking for a stage where he can perform. He met, and he found, yeah, TV, TV to present all these stupid game, talk, and reality shows.

Rock My Monkey: (chuckles) Cool. Now, I also hear you were attacked by bats during the video shoot. How bad was the attack, and did you have to go to the hospital?

Udo Dirkschneider: That was not a real bat attack. We were finished with this one scene, and then we went looking for another location. There's a tunnel system under Stuttgart that was built during the Second World War. Then we had some hand lamps, and I think we woke some bats up, you know? It was maybe thirty, forty bats that came, yeah, I think they woke up and fly away. So it was like in a horror movie. But yeah, in a way it looked like an attack.

Rock My Monkey: So you didn't have to go the hospital, they didn't hurt you at all?

Udo Dirkschneider: No, no, no.

Rock My Monkey: A lot of people in the music industry are extremely paranoid about a lot of the technology that has come up recently. Do you think technology has helped or hurt the metal scene overall?

Udo Dirkschneider: Mostly it helps. You can post everything much quicker all over the world, news, and a lot of stuff. On the other hand, I mean, I don't want to blame record companies too much, but especially in here in Europe they were sleeping for a long time, you know, about the modern technology, like download stuff. But now slowly they use all the things. I think if you use this in the right away I think it's, yeah, that's the way it is in 2007. You have to live with it, and if you use it in the right way, there's nothing bad.

Rock My Monkey: "Tears Of A Clown" is a pretty unique song compared to what people expect from you. What made you think of using the cello and the piano that way?

Udo Dirkschneider: It's a very sad song. The story behind "Tears Of A Clown" is a clown in the circus tent, he always has to make people laugh, especially kids. But sometimes he doesn't feel to make people laugh. Maybe he has some problems, personal problems, on and on. And also you can say it's the same thing with us. I mean, sometimes I have also problems, and maybe some problems at all. I don't know. Many problems can happen. And sometimes you're not really in the mood to go onstage and perform in front of people. But you cannot go onstage and say, "Hey, guys, sorry, but I don't feel like playing tonight. Maybe the show is not so good," blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's very simple. The show must go on. Yeah, to give it the right atmosphere we used a piano and a cello. I mean, it's not the first time we used this stuff.

Rock My Monkey: How did the whole game show concept come together?

Udo Dirkschneider: We had first the lyrics for "The Mastercutor". So "The Mastercutor" is coming from the words "master executer." And so then, yeah, I mean, it developed step by step during the recording session. So you know, then we came up with the cover artwork, and then we said, "Okay, maybe we need an opening for his album." Then we said, "Okay, the Mastercutor is a show master," and so the intro came, you know, "Hello, everybody, it's good to have you back." It's like opening a TV show, and in a way a little concept is that the Mastercutor is a show master, is directing the whole album.

Check out the entire interview in text and MP3 format at RockMyMonkey.com.