Germany-based band The Bloodstrings have been known for their horror aesthetics and Psychobilly traits over time, but with the release of their third album, Heartache Radio, they have expanded their sound to incorporate their Punk roots, as well as taking specific aim at social issues for the first time. This stemmed partly from a growing sense of responsibility to reach out to their fanbase about the issues which might be affecting them, but also from a personal need on the part of the band members to be a little more real about their own struggles with sexism, depression, grief, and more. As the album title might suggest, Bloodstrings have stepped forward to bare their souls a little more with audiences, and the response has already been overwhelmingly positive.
Releasing several of the songs as singles with videos leading up to the album, the band had a chance to see the online conversations that these topical songs provoked. Since they’ve been playing many of these songs live, they’ve also been surprised and reassured to receive direct fan responses to their songs paving the way for meaningful discussions about these issues. I spoke with singer Celina, her husband and bassist Nick, and guitarist Manni about tuning in to “Heartache Radio.”
Hannah Means-Shannon: I understand that in your earlier music, you leaned more towards horror elements and things from popular culture, but I can see that you may be going through some changes where you’re deciding to be more direct about the things that concern you in the world?
Celina: Exactly. Yes, we did a lot of fictional stuff originally. We were kind of influenced by bands like Nekromantix and HorrorPops in our early years. Nick really wanted to have a double bass and he loved what those bands were doing with that. We did things in that direction. As we got older, we felt that there were more important things to say. When you grow a little bigger as a band, and have a voice, you should use it for important stuff. You should speak up about political things, feminist stuff, everything like that.
HMS: I think that’s really cool that you felt a kind of responsibility. Did playing live shows make you feel that way, too, seeing how people were engaging with the music at gigs and festivals?
Celina: Definitely. Especially concerning the topic of feminism, as a female artist, going back stage at a lot of concerts, you just begin to realize that something still isn’t right. There aren’t enough female artists on stages. You notice it, so you begin to realize it’s an important thing to talk about.
Nick: I also feel like since we now have more meaningfulness in our songs, I feel more connected to who we actually play for. One thing that had never happened before, but is happening now, was that people don’t just tell us, “That was a great tune.”, but also “These words really touched me.” This is a really cool experience, to be honest!
HMS: I think something that great music has in common is that it causes conversation in peoples’ lives. They started having conversations after hearing the music.
Nick: Exactly. I think that’s something that you have a lot in Punk Rock and political music, but not necessarily in some of the genres that we come from, the Rock ‘n Roll and Psychobilly side of things. They are almost never nurturing ground for political discourse.
Celina: They can be deep, but they use a lot of fiction and metaphors.
HMS: Your sound has been developing, too, but you also have a sound identity. Were you concerned not to change your sound too much as you introduced these new ideas?
Celina: I think it’s more like a continuous development. Punk Rock has always been in us and is part of our roots. We met when we were kids, like 14 years old, and we all listened to Punk Rock, like Rancid and stuff. Manni was a bit more into Metal. We have been influenced by the horror genre bands, too, but we still love Punk Rock, so we thought, “Why not include that a bit more?” It just grew on us, I guess. It was more like going with the flow than a decision.
HMS: I also think the sound that you have works well with focused messages. You have a distinctive way of delivering lyrics with goes with the music easily.
Celina: That’s very nice feedback, thank you!
HMS: You’ve been playing a lot lately. Have you been playing these songs?
Manni: We couldn’t help ourselves. Most bands would actually wait until the album is out, but we were so eager to play them that we’ve played our whole album, except two or three songs, as part of our live set. That’s been true since the beginning of this year.
Celina: We are keeping a couple of songs back for our tour in late September. That’s when we will play the full album! [Laughs] But we just couldn’t wait.
HMS: I know that some of the songs were released with videos over time, and each one had discussion surrounding it, so that has also paved the way for the album. They brought attention to certain ideas, like the song you released for Women’s Day, along with a cool video, “No Means No/ I’ll Say It Again”. When did you decide to release that one in a special way?
Manni: We decided that pretty early-on. It was based on an experience that my wife had with some guy and I came up with the beginning of the lyrics. Then we worked on them together. We had this idea and it needed to be in the German language because are addressing a German guy in the song.
Nick: Also, I think the idea to have it as a single was something we decided right away.
Celina: Yes, we decided that right from the start of writing it. The message is so important that we wanted it to be a single. As Manni said, his wife had a bad experience with this guy, and almost at the same time, I had the same experience with another person. I thought, “Oh fuck!” We wanted it to be in German, but we were concerned that maybe not enough people would understand the lyrics, so we also made the decision to put it out in other languages. There’s a Hungarian, French, Dutch, and Swedish version.
Manni: Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a band to sing it in English in time.
HMS: That’s such a wonderful idea to have multiple languages, though.
Celina: We had female singers perform from bands who we’d been in touch with by touring or playing shows with them.
HMS: Are they the women featured in the video?
Celina: Those are a few of my best friends who were into it! We went to a friend’s studio where he has a green screen. My profession is that I’m an animator, so I knew it would be easy to make something cool out of it.
HMS: I’m also curious about the song “Heartache Radio”, which has a live-play video, and this was also chosen as the name of the album. The phrase and the idea has a poetic feel to it. Does the idea apply to the album in some way?
Celina: I think we chose that as a single and as the album title because we had the feeling that “Heartache Radio” sounds a bit like a summary of the album. The album is about heartache, it’s about toxic relationships, it’s about frustration, it’s about friends that you had as a kid who are now racist. The term “heartache”, for me, is something that includes all the frustration I have inside of me. When I sing, “Heartache Radio”, I think of screaming out all of my frustrations. That’s kind of why we chose it as the single and the title.
HMS: That makes a lot of sense. This movement towards being open and direct with people about these social issues also fits that vibe. This is a communication coming straight from you to the audience. Also, with a radio signal, you don’t necessarily know who will hear you, but you hope someone will.
Celina: That was really important for us. I’ve already said this in a few interviews because I want to be open about it: while we were in the studio recording this album, I was having a really bad time, mentally. I had a very strong bout of depression, and I’m still in therapy, but that was my darkest point. I realized that as soon as I was transparent about it, other people would also open up to me about their experiences, and that made me feel better.
For example, in the beginning, I had to stop working, and I was too scared to talk about it with my colleagues. But as soon as I did, colleagues told me, “I have anxiety attacks.”, and “I have depression, too.” That gave me a real boost. That’s how we realized that being transparent about these topics is important for other people, too.
HMS: It makes a difference for other people in ways that we might not even know. It seems to lift some of that weight. I think that people have becoming more open about mental health issues and darker emotions. The old rules of society were that you don’t talk about your personal issues.
Manni: Especially in Germany!
HMS: You have to appear to be calm, successful, so it’s like a mask.
Manni: Like when you get asked, “How’s it going?”, no one would ever say, “I feel like shit and I want to die.”
HMS: Right! There’s a pressure to give the polite answer. But now you know there are some people you can give a real answer to. The song “Heartache Radio” is really special in that way, it suggests being real.
Manni: The idea of “radio” worked out really well for the album, too, because we have lot of diverse tracks and that feels like a radio play-list if you play it from beginning to end. It’s also our most unusual track in some ways because it has a reduced feeling.
Nick: It has almost a mellow, lo-fi feeling. It’s not super-fast or super-aggressive. It’s a little bit swing-y, which is not our typical songwriting. But when we play live, it’s like it opens the dance floor for the audience.
HMS: The vocal feels very conversational, too. It’s a great introduction. But that reminds me that you have a literal “intro” and “outro” on your album, composed of piano music. That’s so interesting alongside the genres that you work with. What led to that?
Celina: Actually, we got the idea in the studio because there happened to be a piano there. I play a little bit of piano, and I was bored because it wasn’t my turn yet. Patrick was playing drums and while he was recording, I thought of trying to play “Burning Hearts” on the piano. I tried to play the melody and I wondered if it would make the album more well-rounded to have an intro and the outro might pick up on the first song again.
HMS: Another song that you have released earlier that provoked some conversation is “Don’t Die”, which also has a live play video. I know it comes from a heavy subject and probably everyone in the band had some connection to the ideas in this song. It seems like people are really responding strongly to it, too!
Celina: Yes, more strongly than we thought they would. It’s been really touching that people have come to us after a show and said, “Hey, that song is really moving.” Some have even said that it really helped them.
Nick: We didn’t really expect this song to be one of the more well-known songs from the album. When we finished recording the album, I didn’t think this song would be a stand-out, but after we made the video, we’ve received a lot of comments and direct messages. A lot of people, in-person, have said that it’s their favorite song of ours so far. I didn’t really think of us as a band that could actually achieve something like that. It’s an intense topic, but I’m still surprised by this.
HMS: The helpful thing about the song is that it can apply to many possible situations, figurative and literal, and people can all find a way to relate to it.
Celina: I think that’s because we wrote the song from two different perspectives. It is about mental health, but also had a lot to do with not giving up on what you stand for. Also, Nick’s father got really sick during the pandemic. It was partly written for him.
HMS: I can see how it relates to whatever we stand for, and whatever makes us individuals. Where do you play that one in the set? Is it held for the end?
Celina: It’s actually pretty early!
Nick: It’s the fourth or fifth song. I don’t know how that happened, but it’s actually a pretty good fit. It could almost go anywhere.
