Living the FIRE is a Dresden-based heavy metal band that has been enthusiastically mixing various styles of heavy metal since 2012. With their classic four-piece lineup, their music seems so familiar at first that you can't help but cross your arms, shake your hair, or nod along to the rhythm. And yet, their songwriting continues to surprise you with its no-holds-barred blending of their diverse influences.
From catchy riffs and melodic solos with power metal style vocals, to blast beats with and harsh thrashing with deep screaming, to tender, lyrical ballad sounds, the four musicians fluidly combine their diverse influences. After the forced worldwide break, the guys report back with their new, 100% DIY and concept album NEWMAN. They stay true to their influences of Heavy Metal, from the 70's to the early 2000's, which they virtuously demonstrated on their last album THE NEW ONE, but without renouncing the inspiration of Heavy Metal of the last 20 years. Their new music is darker and heavier - but also on NEWMAN the listener should expect a musical wink.
-Interview- (9/10/23)
1. How did you get started with music and how did you develop your sound? Who thought of the name "Living the Fire" and is there any meaning behind it?
When drummer Phil and singer Clemens first met, they connected right away over their musical aspirations. Right from the start they were intrigued by their totally different view and likings in the broad range of heavy metal music and wanted to see, how it would be possible to incorporate Phils likings for extreme metal subgenres with Clemens’ idea of making heavy metal as fun as possible for each musician and surprise the listener.
Luckily, guitarist Sebastian wasn’t looking for a specific type of metal music, but just wanted to play whatever felt right to a song right away. This and his high technical skills made him the perfect translator for the often conflicting ideas of the singer and the drummer. When founding bassist Jonas left in 2019, Martin became part of the LtF-family. Adding a very different skill set than Jonas, we were able to take a huge step in songwriting and musicianship.
2. What do you want people to take away from your music?
We want the listener to have fun listening to the music while at the same time giving some food for thought, if anyone cares about the lyrics.
3. How would you describe your sound to the average listener?
Living the FIRE is a broad range of Heavy Metal, incorporating classic and modern elements. The most defining part is the wide vocal range of our singer and the focus on guitar riffs rather than huge solos. You will not find two songs that sound alike, though you will always find that they sound like Living the FIRE.
4. How has Covid affected what you do?
Covid almost ended LtF. Clemens was living and working in another country for a year and with borders closed, actual rehearsals weren’t possible. So we focused on songwriting, but only achieved about two and a half songs, because online communication still is a huge barrier if you want to develop a song bar by bar together.
5. What’s your take on the current state of Metal?
There are so many talented musicians and there is just too much music to hear. We personally love our old and new heroes. But often it feels like the metal scene is more and more atomizing itself. We find it kind of sad that everything needs a label and metal can’t just be metal. On the other hand, we think there is no such scene as the metal scene concerning an overall sense of connection to and respect for each other via music. It doesn’t matter if you listen to NWOBHM or extreme sludge domm black death tehcnicals prog metal core slam – metalheads will always connect.
6. What's next for Living the Fire?
We are working on our first story music video and already writing songs for the next album. It will be 15 years Living the FIRE in two years. For that, we want to rerecord our first album and add another 8 songs to it, to show the development of our journey.
7. Any shoutouts?
Special shout out to our friends over at Radio Jack.
