Very melodic, but agressive

Hello Mona, and thank you for taking the time to get interviewed for Metal On Loud Magazine. How are you today?

Hey, am doing great, thanks! Survived a Christmas that I successfully did not celebrate this year. Instead we played a gig in our hometown Hamburg at Sankt Hell Festival, alonsgide Greenleaf and more cool bands. Hope you had a good one, too! 😉

Please present us the whole idea of High Fighter – How you came up with that?

It’s not really an idea. It’s just a band. Off five people who dig heavy music, and who also like to hang out together in and outside of the rehearsal room, being on tour, having good times, and over this last year we became a family, what I find most important and which also reflects the band and music we play. Our guitarist Christian and I have played in a band before, after it split up in early 2013 we’ve later came together again which should become High Fighter. When we both started to think about a new band, Ingwer joined us on our lead guitar and in the summer of 2014 he basically brought the rest of his band to that date, Buffalo Hump, into our new band fusion.

Let’s discuss the EP “The Goat Ritual” – What will we find inside of it?

After we jammed and heavily wrote first songs for our debut over the summer months of 2014, we’ve decided to record and present them on our first record live. So we did, and recorded ‘The Goat Ritual’ on one weekend live in our rehearsal room. No editing, no highclass studio production, but mixed and mastered by our good friend Benjamin Kapidzic (Skythen). People started digging it, although it’s just a demo and we self-released it on our Bandcamp, as well as on CD and a limited Vinyl edition. We got a bunch of really cool press, and were just lucky over this past but our first band year to have played many gigs and festival shows. On the ‘The Goat Ritual’ you will find a very various mix of Blues, Stoner, Sludge, Heavy Rock, a hint of Core and Doom Metal. Some people enjoy the several and sometimes different styles combined, some may not. What you won’t find in High Fighter is a highly polished band, our debut is very rough, dark, authentic, mean and energetic. Like our live shows. But it’s indeed a ritual listening to it, a very melodic but agressive record to the same time. You need to get the entire sound picture, the ‘ritual’, while listening from the start until the very end, as each track somehow belongs to each other..

Where are you planning to head with your music? What are your future plans?

When we started and unveiled the band by end of October 2014, we did not expect to have played almost 50 shows in our first band year and with one demo only. We just love some heavy tunes and are open minded while we write our songs, we all came from various influences in music. And when we write, no matter if it’s catchy, melodic, slow and heavy on the other side, we let it happen and create the sound we dig, a creative fusion that happens. Enjoy the moments we can get to play it live then, being on the road together. That’s the best times we have. We have played 3 tours over this last year throughout Europe and the UK, had a blast at several festival shows and played with some fantastic bands! Between we are currently writing on our first full length album, which we like to set for release by the very early summer of 2016…followed by hopefully many more cool shows next year! We  are still super grateful for this last first band year of High Fighter, and we look forward to everyone we’re further going to meet and rock with on this trip. We’re a live band, we wanna tour, surrounded by good vibes and having a killer time, release good albums. High Fighter came here to stay heavy and high.

You’ve disbanded the band A Million Miles along with Christian Pappas to create a year later the band High Fighter. What can you tell us about that journey?

Not much actually. We’ve played in A Million Miles together for about 5 years, toured a lot, Christian and I became best mates during our time in this band. But then A Million Miles parted ways in early 2013, after heavily touring for years and then releasing a first, highly acclaimed, album. The typical dumb story. 🙂  It may have happened due to personal reasons, the change of maybe a past common vision we once had, or the love and trust for each other. Like in a relationship. And that’s what life is mostly all about. To that time A Million Miles split up, it has been one of the worst times in my life. It felt like you lose your ground right, I’ve been super depressive that time. Today I see things different, and I am actually more than glad it all happened, and important chapters in life can and will change into the better. Otherwise I would have never became a part of High Fighter, and our time in this band is just too good and special to miss it. 🙂

You recently got back from a tour with AHAB and Mammoth Storm, named “The Tour Of The Glen Carrig 2015 – Part 1”. What can you tell us about it?

It has actually been the best tour I have ever been on. Mammoth Storm as well as Ahab are the most greatest guys, the vibes between all bands were fantastic and very special, it’s been a real blast for us. Or how I like to call that run, the tour of the gentlemen. On a music side, and this is still what we appreciate a lot in our friends of Ahab taking us with them, we were more some kind of a non-pure-doom exotic, which also brought some kind of a mix to the line up and we’re very grateful we got the opportunity introducing our tunes to a new audience for us. The entire tour felt like one and we’re extremely stoked for every moment we had in these two weeks on the road together. We have a tour documentary online, make sure to check it out for some cool live and behind the scene footage!

Please Recommend some music for the listeners.

Ahab, Mammoth Storm, Greenleaf, Conan, Brant Bjork, Radio Moscow, My Sleeping Karma, The Atomic Bitchwax. Oh there’s so much more I could and would love to recommend here and that I am currently listening a lot to, but time is too short here I guess. 😉

Any last words you might add for the fans?

Thanks for having us here at Metal On Loud, cheers for the support guys. Heavy happy new year, stay high & see you hopefully in 2016!