Palace

GMP: First of all hope you’re and healthy safe from Covid pandemic.

Harald Piller: Thank you, we are in the best of health and hope you too.

 

GMP:  It’s your first album without Jason Mathias on guitar. What happened that Jason left the band after so many years and albums?

Harald Piller: After he got the offer from Crematory to start as a bass player at the end of 2015, it was clear that he would not be able to manage all of this. It was a gradual departure from Jason.  There was his private life, jobs as an FOH technician, Crematory and Palace. He had set his priorities on Crematory, but had no balls in his pants to leave PALACE at his own discretion. That would have been fair to us. Since Jason was an important service provider, it was not an easy decision for us to make head over heels. We were already in the songwriting process for the “Reject The System” album, completed two European tours, but Jason was increasingly withdrawing from Palace activities. At the beginning of March 2019, we made the decision to part with Jason. We made an appointment with Jason and he was also visibly relieved that we had made the decision because he (according to him) "would not have been able to meet the goals of Palace at the time". We separated well. No dirty laundry was washed.

 

GMP: Was it hard to choose his successors on live shows and in studio?

Harald Reiter: To find someone for the recording sessions wasn’t that hard. To find someone for live shows took a long time, because no one wanted to do this job. Hell knows why not.

 

GMP: Which track off this album is your favourite?

Harald Reiter: My favourite track is “Force of Steel”, because HP wrote this song for me.

Tom Mayer: My favorite Track is Final Call of Destruction.

Harald Piller: I love the whole album. But “Force of Steel, Final Call of Destruction and Bloodstained World“ are my favourite songs.

 

GMP: Do you think that you’ve predicted a pandemic with your first single?

Tom Mayer: Of course not, the development of a song takes months, there was no talk of a virus.

Harald Piller: The songs were finished in October 2019 and we had no crystal ball to see what would come to us in 2020.

 

GMP: Speaking of your newest album, let’s come back to the older times and albums for a little while. Most of them are not available to buy apart from Toy of Rage and newest ones. Can we count on rereleasing those albums? Sometimes I find them on auctions on eBay, but they are extremely expensive.

Harald Reiter: There are no plans to re-release the older albums, but you can get them at Massacre Records as download.

 

GMP: What about Saints’ Anger? Will you return to some songs from those years?

Harald Reiter: There is no need to play the old songs. We have plenty of Palace songs.

 

GMP: The same thing with your demo “Hardbodies” from 1993. Is it available anywhere for your fans? I would love to hear it!

Harald Reiter: Perhaps, when we‘re in the mood we will upload the old songs on our youtube channel.

 

GMP: There are also not many video/audio live footage from your first years as Saints’ Anger or Palace. Is there any footage in your archives and will it be possible to see it someday?

Harald Piller: We have very little old footage, but the quality is poor, unfortunately it's been so long.

 

GMP: Do you have plans to include whole discography on streaming platforms like Spotify? There are only 2 newest albums there.

Harald Piller:Maybe we will do it.

 

GMP: You played a show in Poland in 2015 as Lordi support. How do you remember your stay in our country and do you have plans to come back to us?

Harald Reiter: When you are on tour, you don’t see a lot of the country you’re in. You see the highways, the hotels and the venues. The polish people seemed to love us and we’d like to come back to Poland as soon as possible.

 

GMP: With which band you would like to play a tour, but you’ve still never been able to?

Tom Mayer: My biggest wish? On tour with Judas Priest.

 

GMP: Do you plan any shows after Coronavirus pandemic apart from those announced?

Tom Mayer: Plans are there, but no one can say how long the current situation will last, this year is a disaster for all musicians and organizers, etc.

 

GMP: Thanks for this interview and I hope to see you when all this Covid stuff ends!

Harald Piller: Thank you, too. Hope we can rock the polish metal maniacs again. It would be a pleasure to us.