Greetings, Christopher! First of all, why such a strange name for a BM band? I’m wondering if you know that “korova” means “cow” in Russian…

- Greetings Kai! A big hello to all our Russian Brothers!  Sometimes we are supersonic, distorted and heavy, sometimes even  malignant and bizarre, but all in all we are no BM band. Therefore we didn't see any problems in choosing the name KOROVA, which is the holy golden Cow, the Symbol for divine and lucid Enlightment, for the Great Mother All, for the Unification of God and his Angels with Satan and his Demons.

Conceive that I’ve never heard anything in regards to KOROVA – what would you tell me then, so I could fancy what your band is all about…? Also, a little “history lesson” won’t harm anything, I believe…

- KOROVA’s first concert took place in November 1991. In December 1993  Moritz Neuner joined us on drums and from that day he and myself evolved  KOROVA to what it is today. The first result was our debut album "A Kiss In The Charnel Fields", released on Napalm Records in Spring 1995, which holds a complexe style – mixture somewhere between progressive black / deathmetalfields, gothic, psychedelic, minnesong and jazzy menticidewaves. That's our boring history. (Rest Question 4)

Do you think that such definition as “cyber barocco metal” fits your music and describes it really well?

- We used "Northgoatified Cyber-Baroque" to define our style in early 1994  before we signed at Napalm and meant it more as a Persiflage on all  those eclectic blackmetal bands inventing tons of new terms for their  "innovative sound". Somehow the press and mailorders continued to use variations of this strange definition even nowadays, although other terms like "avantgarde" or "future metal" maybe would fit as well or even better to communicate  a blurred imagination of our doing to the listeners within one pithy slogan. But all this has more to do with advertizing than with our music, which  everybody perceives in a different way, comparing it to different listening experiences, declaring it under different categories, just like everybody has a different idea in mind even about such simple terms like "chair" or "car". So maybe you understand that we personally don't care at all about definitions and leave this hard work to those who get paid for it - the marketing experts and the journalists (thus it's your turn now, Kai!).

What caused such a long period of silence between “A Kiss In The Charnel Fields” and “Dead Like An Angel” CDs?

- The long period of silence after the release of "A Kiss In The Charnel Fields" in 1995 was filled by collecting experiences with new electronical music technology and doing expressionistic and phantastic experiments on our instruments beyond all limits of the metal-scemes until the end of 1996. Then Herwig joined us on guitar and we started the work for our second album "Echowelt / Echoworld", because we thought the time was ripe for something totally new. In these days we thought such an Impulse would be necessary before doing the second KOROVA album. We combined the alienated science-fiction-elements from our elektro-experiences with extremest metal-instrumentation to create the next step in the evolution of heavy music for the next millenium. Unfortunately Napalm Records denied to do the production for this album, because they didn't see any possibility to find customers for this peculiar stuff. So we did spent about half a year on trying to find another company to release "Echoworld" without any success until also Michael, our bass-player, left us in Summer 1997. I moved to Italy because of my University-studies, listened to lots of popmusic and wrote the concept and four songs for the "Dead Like An Angel" album there, steering into a much catchier and melodic direction, which we recorded in January 1998. Napalm then immediately broke "the long silence" around KOROVA by offering us a very good contract and just three months later "Dead Like An Angel" was produced and released with two songs from the “Echoworld” album and one song done for another project embedded within the frame of five new pieces. That's the boring story of the long loud silence between our debut album and our second album. Maybe our first second album from 1997 will be released after our third  album in the Year 2000...

Are you pleased with they way “Dead Like An Angel” sounds? Personally, I’m not. In spite of the fact that Studio Hoernix appears as quite famous place, and despite the outstanding skills possessed by the ones involved in KOROVA, the CD seems to suck when it comes to the producer-ship…

- We just had three weeks to get ourselves prepared for the recordings, because my holidays from university in Italy and also the free days in HOERNIX were limited. The band and Martina had to start from zero with the new songs and really did great and optimal work within this short and stressful time. It's really very rare in the Metal-Scene to find people as reliable, professional and flexible as those involved in "Dead Like An Angel". So it was possible to do the studio-sessions just within four days and one day mixing. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to record this CD because of our time-tables, neither to speak of riskfully testing other studios than the house-studio of our record company. If you consider that the sound of the album is pretty okay, although I have to admit that it can be horrible on some Hi-Fi-Sets.  For our next album "Waterhells" we will have more Time and more Money to enter a better Studio specialized in metalsound. Probably it will include a new version of "Strangulation Alpha" as bonus-track, because especially this song really wasn't produced that well.

Any comments on the lyrics of yours…? For example, what “Europa In Flammen” tells about?

- The lyrics of "Europa In Flammen" are outstanding from the concept of the overall album and just serve to embedden pure martial aggression into music. "Europe In Flames" - nothing more to say... The rest of the lyrical background is about our Selfdisintegration-Daymares and flaming Ride into Benightment, about the Demon-Voice from the Storms of a trillion myriad Faces staring. Exausting Ambivalences spin the deathful Net of no Return. There's no Solution, there's no Salvation. There's no Solution besides Self-Dissolution, Decay and final Melting into the eternal Kiss of the pantheistic Goddess of Light, the blind Will, the physical Great United Energy, into our Mother All.  Consciously or not, but Self-Dissolution is the Major-Motivation of every human activity. If you watch TV or your children, do any kind of fulfilling work, put yourself under the leadership of an Aim, a Dogma, another person or a movement, fall in love and drown in sexual volcanos or so on or get a psychotic brainhit, it's all the same principle. It's all about leaving the bitter and isolated prisons of our monadistic personalities and forget ourselves into something bigger. "Strangulation Alpha" contributes the misanthropic and hopeless point of view about this basic concept. It is spilling Nausea on the whole false Prophets of Belief, Science, Consumption and Fashion, whom we follow our whole lifetimes since millions of years now without any possibility to  escape from this grinding wheels of the mankind-machine. One mania follows the other, one cheap trick to stiff entertainment into our suffocating throats follows the next garish "little suicide". Desires and their fullfillment are laid into our heads by the marketing-kings. They colour the immense and panic Nights, that perpetually surround us, with gaudy illusions - and we swallow and swallow until we sleep… Contrarily the religious and positive, but also very nostalgic Reception-Possibility leading to the concept of our forthcoming album "Katalypse2025" - I don't want to reveal too much - is propagandized in
"Our Reality Dissolves". In this scenario all Predictions and Myths about Apocalypse, Rebirth, Beyond, Salvation, Damnation, any Points of View, will be fulfilled in the Final Excessive Collective Selfdissolution of the Year 2025, when the Great Totalfragmentation of all human Existence into an overwhelming Menplasm-Primesea leads to Formation into a thin Senseskin-Liquid, that flows around the whole Earthball and pulsates as Biotech-Gaia, the allseeing Worldplanet-Eyeapple. Receiving all Waves, Atoms, Stimuli, Things and Movements all around in all Directions in all Scales and Zooms of Time and Space together at the same Time all we single Cells wane into the Great Human Bodiness and watch enthralled all Appearances, Perception-Konstrukts, the World's former Imaginations & Objects fracturing into the shining Kaleidoscope-Play of its Energy-Components and omnidimensional Mirrorfaces of the eternal divine Laughter. "Dead Like An Angel" are the silent Observators, the brave new androgynous Swans of the next Millenium, who watch this all with lucid supersensitive Eyes. Passively and paralyzedly staring they can't react anymore to what their brandnew-evolved Perception-Abilities catapult into their Senses. Several thousand years ago people weren't able to differ the colour Bluebfrom grey or black. It didn't exist in their language and to their eyes. Now the next step of developement waits in its cradle, and it's first  pioneers have to drag the heavy burden, the Agony of the whole Universe, with crackling nerves and soaring heads full of others desperate thoughts, deriving from first little Sensequakes and telephatic Amalgamations with the Environment, on their consoling Shoulders. Another dimension of this song concerns the old topic about the decision for freedom and therefore against frontiers and bindings. For freedom you have to pay the price of Chaos, Confusion and Solitude, while frontiers and bindings also have the positive aspect of being a sheltering Order and Orientation in the fluctuating Storms of our spontaneous Urges.  With the "Katalypse2025" - Story the progressive Way of Self-Dissolution is demonstrated, but there is also the contrary second possibility of returning into the sweet Paradise of the prenatal Mother-Womb by Means of Regression into the archaic egocentric World of a Child. A Child in Wish to sleep forever… The Child decoyed back home into the warm Wool-Funeralwhirls by the Sleepman in the phantasmagoric Finale of  "Der Schlafmann Kommt" (And Sleepman Comes), our Hymn to Sleep, Introspection and finally Death. You see, the albumtitle could have been any of the songtitles, because all Tunes just describe the same basic Idea under a different perspective. It's a pity that there is too little space to give you sufficient and deeper Explanations about the thoughts behind, but maybe you can imagine a bit more now. Feel free to think your own worlds to our symbols in the end, okay, for everything I told you now is just one moment out of many possible interpretations. Memories on memories on memories, words on words on words on words… that's the Essence of  Trip to the bleeding Planets (Unto the Light).

As far as I know, you also sing in ANGIZIA…

- We already finished the Recordings for "Das Schachbrett Des Trommelbuben  Zacharias" in February 1999 with rather radical line-up changes… Ask  Engelke for more information. All in all the result has come out pretty interesting, because Engelke is doing the major part of male vocals now himself with great theatralic expression. My vocals are a bit reduced therefore compared to "Das Tagebuch…". Also Moritz and Florian of KOROVA on drums and accordion and Eviga of DORNENREICH appear on this record .

Are you going to continue working with Engelke and co.? By the way, I was truly impressed and shocked in the same time, when I discovered that there’re few verses on “Das Tagebuch…” CD sung in Russian!!!

- I hope you weren't too shocked because of the bad pronounciation and  grammar when hearing the Russian Stanzas, because Engelke is a big fan of Russland and has placed all bigger concepts of the ANGIZIA albums in  this scenery. It's a tribute to your impressing country and culture. You should contact him for an interview!!

Are you associating with anyone within Austrian BM scene besides ANGIZIA? Are you familiar with the band called TRIFIXION? Their works seem to be rather close to yours, also being very vanguard…

- The debut album of TRIFIXION was really outstanding, but as far as I am  informed he has stopped making music years ago. We are in contact with DREAMS OF SANITY and DORNENREICH from our Hometown, with P.K. and Lucia of ABIGOR and GRABESMOND, Elisabeth of DAAGARD, who has helped us with live vocals, sometimes with the sick boys of BELPHEGOR and many others. I am in a elektro-trip-hop-band with Renaud / ELEND here in Innsbruck and Moritz is playing drums for EVENFALL now. Somehow everybody knows everybody in our little Austrian scene and we have great solidarity and support among each other.

What roused you to invite Martina Hornbacher as a female singer? Did you know her personally before, or decided to invite her being charmed by her voice after listening to THERION’s “Vovin” and “Komodia” by DREAMS OF SANITY…?

- There was friendship between DREAMS OF SANITY and KOROVA since we  started to organize bigger concerts together here in Tyrol in early 1994. After Martina left them it was no question for us to ask her if she could do the female vocals on "Dead Like An Angel", because there isn't anybody better for this job in our hometown and we also come out well on personal level. It really was a pleasure to work with her, because her creativity and sensitivity has made absolutely the best out of our songs with her cool lines. It is very uncertain though that she will also sing on our next album, because she has got certain contractual duties with her other bands, which forbid her outer activities. Anyway, what she is working out at the moment will surely be one of the most bewiching surprises on the metal sector in the nearer future...!

Can you describe your own personality in few words? In short, who is Christopher Niederwieser?

- Christof Niederwieser of KOROVA is the Wind of a Trillion Myriad Voices.

What is your attitude to the animal world and fauna in the whole? Do you stand for total urbanization or “Greenpeace” activities are something more close to your innerworld? Is homo sapiens a superior creature, or a greatest Nature’s failure?

- Biotech Gaia EARTH needs both - the constructing Order of the Architects  and the flickering Life of Nature to grant the human Will a Maximum of  Freedom. Of course the balance between both is always a bit disturbed. And you Russians should know even better than we rich assholes here in Middle-Europe, how disturbed the balance is at the moment concerning the U.S.A.-reigned World Economy System, the clearest mirror of the world's actual status quo in the middle of a big toilet. Organizations like Greenpeace (at least in theory) or even public Institutes (at least here in Austria) are important to preserve the rights of Nature's silent voice against the Robot-Fist of the Capital.

Do you know anything regarding Russia? I hope there’s at least a couple of bands coming from here you’ve heard already…?

- I know the splendid descriptions of the Russian Spirit by the great books of Dostojewski, one of my most favourite writers, and Evgeniy "Nabahm", one of my favourite Russian Potz-Friends. He and Alexej have moved to Germany some years ago before getting 18 years old to escape from the perverse Military-Service-System and are now playing drums and bass in my Side-Band SHINING OF KLIFFOTH. Sometimes I think I am infiltrated by Russian Spys...

Thanks for answering this one… Would you like to say or wish anything?

- Look out for the KILLER OF 1999 - 6661: our third album "Waterhells" in the Sommerhells of 1999…

KOROVA contact –
Email: katalypse@hotmail.com