Josef K. sounds like the name of Franz Kafka's “The Trial” hero…

It sounds so – yes, and it's real. My name is Josef Klumb, the whole name is Josef Maria Willheim Klumb. My artist name for a long while was Jay Kay (for English J.K.) but I returned to our own roots and need no American name. Josef K. - that's not just Kafka like – the mane seems to live it's own life – a lot of parallels to “The Trial”… Our fucking stupid music establishment and radical left and also the democracy believers – they rejected me, but it's ok for me. I don't wanna be like them, so I got no more problems with their kind of knowing what and who I am.

Kafka was great and I'm also a tragic kind of hero – don't wanna be a winner - in this media world of successful arseholes. And I'm also not a whore.

Let's talk about history of FORTHCOMING FIRE and its relations with VON THRONSTAHL and THE DAYS OF THE TRUMPET CALL.

FORTHCOMING FIRE has been formed in 1991, and me and Lars Wehr are the only members now left from the original line-up. Since my brother Bernhard (Burn-hard or BURNT-HEART) has left the band to do the full-time job with WEISSGLUT (a German major gothic-metal rock act (SONY/EPIC)) FORTHCOMING FIRE is not my formation anymore. My brother was mastermind in music. Lars is a talented guitarist, but my brother did the great work of composing the most songs. I was also a singer in WEISSGLUT, but there was big diffamation against me from radical left – and so my mind thing is VON THRONSTAHL now. It's between Neo-Classic, Neo-Folk, Industrial and more – in a fascistic style.

Back to FORTHCOMING FIRE – we did a lot of records: “Longing for Light” mCD, “Ekhnaton” CD, “Illumination” CD, “Heliopolis” mCD, a tribute to Jim Morrison “Lizard King” CD, “Je Suis” CD, “Suspected, Rejected and Burnt Alive” DoCD, “Watching Rome Burn” CD… Another mCD is planned. We are on around 20 different compilations.

For the “Je Suis” and “Suspected, Rejected and Burnt Alive” we worked together with RUSSIAN foto-model Olga Charova (Moscow).

Yes, there are lots of other bands and projects behind FORTHCOMING FIRE. THE DAYS OF THE TRUMPET CALL is Raymond P., a friend and musician of VON THRONSTAHL. We played together in early punk-goth-metal band called CIRCLE OF SIG TIU.

What is the tribute to Jim Morrison? Also all the FORTHCOMING FIRE's albums I've heard contain covers of classic rock-n-roll stuff from 60ies. What does interest you in such kind of music?

We did the tribute CD for Jim Morrison in 1993 I think, with the help of members of DEINE LAKEINEN, PROJECT PITCHFORK, CANCER BARRACK, TORS OF DARTMOOR, SECRET DISCOVERY and lots of friends. Our interest to such older pop-music came from our past – we grew up with such music, also with THE BEATLES and THE WHO and other great music.

FORTHCOMING FIRE's works are always eclectic and include tracks in very different styles…

Oh yes, FORTHCOMING FIRE was always different, and we just liked to do and to sound like we want. The releases are very different – lots of gothic and electronic bands may have the same sound on every their CD, but we didn't like that way of working.

Sometimes I think if your songs were more “politically correct” they could occupy radio and TV very easily.

If you would see these people in Germany, which call themselves POLITICALLY CORRECT – you must turn into a fascist. I mean, they will make people to believe to fight for a better world, for humanity and Brotherhood, Liberty… But they have not the important element to make it real – they have no real LOVE. And they are the new dogmatics – they build their new totalitarian system - in their minds firstly. I don't trust these people, they talk about “liberty”, but their liberty leads into captivity. And also this democracy of the Western kind is not a real Democracy – it's a betrayal, it's a Super-Capitalism, a totalitarian Reich of MONEY, it's a plutocracy, not a real democracy, it's a sickness. Too many shit, too many channels, too many of everything – and no more Roots.

I love my country and that's enough to call me a nazi – that's Germany, a sickness of the eternal guilt, but without me. I don't like the American way, I don't trust the peace-keeping missions – the West tries to control everything. They are the WARLORDS. Yes, maybe the Russians fight with heavy weapons in Tchechnia, but what's about USA? The blood they spill seems to flow more subtle – the victims are more subtle and they kill their own people with Hamburgers and Candys - in a slow way.

Like I love my country, I love EUROPE and I love my foreign neighbours. Russia stands closer to Germany than the World Police of the USA, that WORLD DOMINATION REGIME. Take care of the friendship with USA – they never let you go. They don't come with tanks and fighter-planes - they send Coca-Cola and drugs and maybe their sweet kind of pop-music, but this sweetness causes illness. Take care. The Russians are proud people, your roots are deep, and the RUSSIAN HEART is beating and the roots are living. Here in Germany it's a sin to love the COUNTRY. I never said GERMANY UEBER ALLES, but I have a right to feel something like own identity.
It's strange… The decline rules – everywhere. Strange time – very Orwell like – NOTHING IS LIKE IT SEEMS TO BE and HUMANITY turns into bestianity.

No, FORTHCOMING FIRE never was a nice band, we never kissed the arses of the media-people, there were no commercial success in sight, when you got the wrong meaning…

But what you have in sight then? Which people and ideas attracted you?

Oh, there are so many persons European-wide whose thoughts shine through this darkness, too many to name – fascists and not-fascists, Christians, Catholics, nihilists, anarchists, artists, more in the past than today…
FORTHCOMING FIRE did not start as a political group – we had nothing to do with politics. They made us a political band after I said what I wanted to say, and so the problem began. But it's ok. In a philosophical way we've been orientated towards the APOCALYPSE - and a new Beginning after the FIRE. Difficult to explain – my English is not good…

I noticed the word “fire” appears in your works very often.

It's the element of the Apocalypse. And I like the temperament of this element – and the relationships. What else could heal the world but FIRE?

Are you pessimist or optimist, regarding the world fate?

Oh yes, of course, we shall overcome everything. I see a lot of negative tendencies everywhere around us – this time, this age is a dark age – but I see also a light coming, the “light at the end of the tunnel” maybe. But it's not a NEW WORLD EMPIRE – it's the NEW WORLD ORDER. I like the word EMPIRE too much to see it close to the NEW WORLD TOTALITARISM which is rising. EMPIRE is against this kind of “order”. THE NEW WORLD ORDER is the NEW WORLD DISORDER, everything seems to be turned upside down. I don't believe in their kind of liberty, etc, and I never trust all those mechanisms to make everything and everybody equal to the others – I like differences. I think American way of the NEW WORLD ORDER will rise and rise and will infect the rest of the world in big steps, this kind of totalitarism will come to a highest point - and on the highest point will take away the mask of humanity from it's ugly faces and then even the blinded will feel the grip of the NWO.

From today's view I can see (here in the West) how the seeds grows, how this false kind of humanity infects the minds of people – they want to be good and human, but it's a cold kind of humanism and it's low and empty, like Nietzsche said when he spoke about the LAST MAN.

Every sickness has it's time – and the return of real ORDER is only a question of time. Let them play WORLD DOMINATION with McDonalds Coca-Cola and Power-Politics – in the end of the decline stands a new Beginning and then the Empires will rise again – maybe – a real Order will rise, based on real and deep foundations.

What about last events in Western Europe (or rather Eastern America), demonstrating the way NWO states destabilize the situation everywhere they need to weaken possible enemy. They support Albanian and Tchechenian bandits, there are evidences of direct contacts between various USA secret-services with IRA or even German extremist Turks organizations. One day they could easy blow up the situation in your country – it they will not like something…

It's great to see your point of view and your kind of not being blinded. That's absolutely right – the agents of NWO create those fireplaces wherever they need them. And it's right – Western Europe become EASTERN AMERICA and Germany, as the heart of this Eastern America, is in a very desolate situation – no self-consciousness, no independence, but lots of business and industry to pay and pay for our past, and not more than 5 % of the Germans know that our GOLD-RESERVES are not placed in Germany – no – our GOLD in placed in AMERICAN bunkers in the USA. Strange things happen here in secret ways.
Do you know that Germany is the only country in the modern West, where second and third states can record phone-talks of private persons? Not only the German secret agencies can control your phone or fax etc messages, also USA and ISRAEL secret agencies can do this. And those agencies do not just stay in contact with Turk extremists, they stand in contact with very many different kind of extremists from different sides, playing games which are really unbelievable for mass-people. It's the same with radical left wing in the 70ies-80ies and the radical right wing of today – the hardcore extremists are made by state, and lots of the so-called TERRORIST ATTACKS in the past and the present are not done by extremists – RAF or NAZIS – it's the work of undercover secret agents. You must know, the most people in the West are satisfied with BREAD and GAMES, but if you take a look behind the scenes, you see other games, complicated games going on. It's the big interest of the USA, Israel and the German shadow-government to keep the hardcore neo-nazi scene alive – neo-nazi in this way does not mean NATIONAL-SOCIALIST in a honest way, in today's Germany it means only violence, football, skinheads, burned asylum-homes etc. This is what they like to see as nazism and this is what they create with. Not only I know about lots of agents working in this way. The NWO needs such neo-nazis, it's important for it to create them. And don't believe that the last bomb in Duesseldorf against Russian Jews was made by real neo-nazis – it's the game of a state or states of NWO. It's power politics.

With our kind of politician Germany will never become independent. If somebody would try it – as a politician – they call him a nazi, and that's the way he finishes. Everybody in today's Germany is stamped as NAZI if he speaks for independent Germany. Yes, the NWO would blow up something like a war situation, if Germany would be GERMAN again.

Ok, let's turn to VON THRONSTAHL. Your last album “Imperium Internum” is dedicated to Division Charlemagne and Imperium Europeum. Could you explain what do these mean?

The DIVISION CHARLEMAGNE was a fighting division of the German WAFFEN-SS – not SS-brigades for the tragic concentration camps . The Division CHARLEMAGNE was a division of French soldiers fighting for the idea of IMPERIUM EUROPEUM, not for the German Reich, but more for a kind of HOLY ROMAN REICH… in direction of EMPEROR KARL. Their enthusiasm has been broken till the end of Second World War like the enthusiasm of the soldiers of general Vlasov – my English is too bad to tell exactly what I mean – but the WAFFEN-SS was a big army of foreign soldiers fighting against bolshevism, communism, capitalism, etc.
The idea of IMPERIUM stands against the ideas of equality, false liberty, wealth-power, etc.

The booklet's photo, where men stand leaning on spades, reminds me similar scene from Leni Riefenstahl's “Triumph of The Will”…

Yes, the picture is made at the REICHPARTEISTAG area in Nuernberg, where Leni Riefenstahl did some great works. The SPADES in our hands symbolize our will of creating, maybe our IMPERIUM INTERNUM. Also, the SPADES are to be seen as a symbol for searching of foundations. To search and to built.

As VON THRONSHAL you took part in WAVE-GOTHIK-TREFFEN 2000. Any impressions from it? And what do you think about its infamous end?

Oh, no, not really – the collaboration of German mass-press, left wing politicians, police and state-power did everything to cancel the gig. But I fooled them all. The band played before VON THRONSTAHL (THE DAYS OF THE TRUMPET CALL) is the half of VON THRONSTAHL. Police and bodyguards forbidden me to enter the stage - but nobody of them checked that directly after the last song of THE DAYS OF THE TRUMPET CALL, VON THRONSTAHL started their show without me, but with 3 other men left and right behind the empty micro-phone-stand, with a flag and SPADES in their hands. The audience checked it – at once – with big applause and standing ovation. After 15 minutes of VON THRONSTAHL show with playing the CD with my voice and playing live guitars – they stopped us, but it was too late, we've been victorious at Leipzig.

It was Napoleon's sun of AUSTERLITZ which I've seen shining on this glorious day.

You could hear about the decline of the festival, but it was not an infamous end - it was FAMOUS end, because the spirit of independence was there and the improvisations were great and the audience liked that all. INFAMOUS could be the new beginning with lots of busy-people which can never create the spirit of the last ten years. And no one else but the old organizer Michael Brunner can stand so strong again to book such bands as DEATH IN JUNE, OSTARA and all other proud troops.

It seems the “new” practice of German officials to ban and cancel gigs by the bands they think to be “right-wing” go wider and wider... VON THRONSTAHL, OSTARA, FORSETI,…

It's absolutely typical for the Western falseness of FREE SPEECH and liberty, freedom and democracy. It's not really because some of the bands are more right orientated or not, it's because these artists touch their roots. It took to long time to keep the youth back from their roots – if you take them back from the roots, you can do everything with them. Somebody who knows about his roots will not be equal with everybody – for the NEW WORLD ORDER everybody has to be equal to each other. Adolf Hitler said: “One folk, one reich, one fleader”. The NWO means “ONE world-wide mass, ONE WORLD, ONE MARKET and a small MASTER-RACE to lead the idiots”. It's so typical for this time to cancel gigs. Let the cancel gigs more and more – our scene will grow on this.

This scene is represented mostly by bands from Germany and Italy… A kind of cultural revanche?…

I think it's more an act of self-perception - self-consciousness that finds it's way of speaking. We touched our native roots and something flows again – something is in move. Yes, lots of traditional ideas come that way, but in avantguard way also. We are not dumb traditionalists, the most of us came from punk, anarchism, communism and so on, we've been inside 'em – and now we came back and nothing will be the same. Not only Germany and Italy are coming this way – Rumania, France, UK, Polska, Spain – the whole Europe is moving. And believe – our FORTRESS EUROPE stands not against RUSSIA in our spiritual way – it's more against the West. This thing must be clear – MOTHER RUSSIA stands close to us. Ok, we like most of the American music, but I don't like to see the American sickness to grow and grow – into a world-wide spiritual misery.

What about the German music scene in general?

It's a sickness today - a big business, no independence any longer. You must know that the ALTERNATIVE CHARTS are leaded by MAJOR COMPANIES acts. Businessmen rule the scene - busy rat people dominating the scene – it's all too much, too many magazines, and everybody wants to grow bigger than others, and the most of them can lick my arse – they are mostly not real friends of music, they are friends of success. I have got my problems with the scene, and they can have their problems with me.

How do you see a musician place and role in this world?

A musician, artists or rebel in the year 2000 shall not stand in the tradition of denying and destroying the old. During those adventurous rebellions of rock-n-roll history we saw the world going down – it was great to see and strange to live, but it's over – more and more. The music and art shall not be AGAINST no more – they must be FOR something. But everywhere I look and see, I see rock-n-roll clowns and marionettes ruled by music industry and behaving like “it must go deeper and deeper”. Maybe VON THRONSTAHL and others like to show – “ok, if you think it must go deeper, make may day, but we try other way”. And it's not a way just of a re-turn.

Your concluding remarks for Russian audience.

Yes I believe in the German-Russian friendship, from people to people, artist to artist, not politician to politician. The war against Russia was a big tragedy – I can't find words for this, in English. After so many miseries, after communism and glasnost, Russia has to return to it's deepest SELF before taking irreparable step into a kind of democracy which is not what it seems. The RUSSIAN BEAR shall not lick too much honey – it makes him sick.