Freddy Krueger's Ünderwear aka F.K.Ü has recently released their latest album “1981” that is more Crossover Thrash oriented. Metal Imperium talked to the band to find out more details…
M.I. - I am sure you are constantly asked this question but a lot of our readers may not know that F.K.Ü stands for Freddy Krueger's Ünderwear. How the hell did you come up with that name for your band?
When we started the band back in 1987 our second big influence besides horror movies was the crossover thrash scene with bands like Crumbsuckers, Carnivore, Wehrmacht, Mucky Pup, D.R.I. etc. And among them one band particularly, namely the band S.O.D.. Since they had a song on their album “Speak English or Die” called Freddy Krueger, that and our wish to make the name an abbreviation with three letters, just like D.R.I. we went for the F.K.Ü. aka Freddy Kruegers Ünderwear moniker. Adding the umlaut to the U just to make it more metal. Our first logo even had a pair of boxers with Freddys knife-fingers emerging.
M.I. - You are promoting your most recent album, entitled “1981”, which I thought was really strange, because for the first time you didn’t use the word MOSH on an album title...
We felt that after releasing four albums using more or less the same idea of having us on the cover and the title including the word MOSH we wanted to do something different. So you can call our first four albums the MOSH-era and now we are heading for the next one. But of course we will still encourage people to mosh out at our shows, that’s pretty much the essence in our mission to spread the horror and the metal.
M.I. - 1981” is inspired by horror movies from 80s, which you never denied being one of your biggest influences. But why 1981 in particular?
1981 was a really productive year when it came to producing horror movies, and especially in the slasher genre. The songs included on the album are definitely among our favorites but there’s many that were left out since we wanted to make a relatively short and intense album. Titles like Happy Birthday To Me, Bloody Birthday, Bloody Moon, Cannibal Ferox, Final Exam, Graduation Day etc. etc. could easily have made it if we would have released a double album. But since we decided in an early stage that we wanted to make a short and intense album we had to be extremely selective choosing the ones finally ending up on the album
M.I. - It is really interesting that all the tracks from the record have the names of horror movies, some more famous than others. What were the criteria to choose this bunch and not others?
See above.
M.I. - Also, the lyrics to each song kind of makes a synopsis of each movie, right? How do you condense a story in less than 2 minutes without upsetting the movie fans?
I think you should see our lyrics as extended taglines or plot summaries if you like.
M.I. - “Funhouse” seems like the odd character out of the “movie”... Was that intentional to include such a track in there?
The Funhouse was us playing around with the arrangement, looking back at how we used to write songs, especially on our debut-album Metal Moshing Mad.
M.I. - The last time we heard from you was 4 years ago with “Rise of the Mosh Mongers”. You now have a new drummer, so how is life going for FKU?
Yes we’ve finally got ourselves a new sticks man in Unspeakable Emp aka Emil Berglin, besides writing music he has brought a lot of both physical and positive energy. And he’s a big KISS fan and that’s never a bad thing. So I would say that F.K.Ü. are at a very happy place right now.
M.I. - Listening to the songs from “1981”, it reminded me of SOD and Carnivore, more quick songs and very direct. Are you embracing a more Crossover Thrash sound now?
When we started back in 1987 our main influences were mainly crossover bands like D.R.I., Ludichrist, Carnivore, Mucky Pup and Crumbsuckers and of course S.O.D. to name a few. And we felt that we really wanted to go back to that sound on this release.
M.I. - You have been promoting the new album live. How are the songs working, as well as the new band line-up? Any touring plans you can talk about?
We’ve been trying out 3-4 new tracks live so far and they are a blast to play live. They fit perfectly into how we want our gigs to turn out, intense and in your face and with no fillers.
M.I. - Final words for the Portuguese fans!
This goes out to all you Portuguese moshoholics out there, be sure to check out our brand new album 1981 and learn all the songs so we can sing them together when we hopefully come over to your beautiful country for some slashing and thrashing!
For Portuguese version click here
Interview by Vasco Rodrigues
