METALLIAN - Cemetery

Members

Vocals

DANIEL ZIZEK

Guitar

DANIEL ZIZEK

Bass

Drum

History & Biography

Cemetery was founded in Bayern, Germany in late 1980s and released a self-titled demo in 1991. At Dark Places was a 1992 demo. This led to a deal with the West Virginia label of Germany. An album was recorded, but the label disappointed and disappeared and Enter The Gate became a demo instead.

The band changed its name to Aeons End, toned down the extremeness, and released a couple of demos before disbanding. The reformation was in 2017. The name was Cemetery again and only singer and guitarist Daniel Zizek was returning. Memento Mori had issued a band compilation, called Enter The Gate (Discography 1991-1993), in 2014. Strangely, a couple of Americans joined the act for the 2019 demo, which was recorded in 2017 and 2018. The group opened for Master and Apsara. The Last Day On Earth was a 2019 demo.

A concept demo, called Thoughts on Life... and Death, appeared in 2025. Bassist Stefan Hendel had remained with Daniel Zizek. Guitarist Markus Heilmeier and drummer Tobias Kasper (both from Sweeping Death) had joined in 2021. The band was more harmonic and technical than the Possessed inspired sound of the 1990s. The new release dealt with the travails of an individual living under a totalitarian regime. There was a video for the song Thoughts On Life. The band was booked for Böbing Open Air 2025.

Reviews

CEMETERY - THOUGHTS ON LIFE... AND DEATH
Like this or not, these guys are incredibly proficient at their instruments, songwriting and arrangements.
For some odd reason, it had gotten into my head that Cemetery is a solo act and everything is being performed by one musician. Listen after listen had me thinking that the act is a solo one despite - and this is the strangest part - the complex and multi-layered music. Odd. Setting that misconception aside, Cemetery's Thoughts On Life... And Death is something of a unique concept. It navigates a range of complex stylistic maneuvers and tempos. It begins very much an extreme metal release with growls. It then proceeds to throw several rock riffs in disguise at the listener. There are more ambient moments a la pop music, some jazz on Truth A, classical on Thoughts On Death and even a synthesiser interlude. None of it is overwhelming; in fact, much of it is quite subtle. So subtle, that it could be missed and no one will accuse these tracks of not being extreme metal, but those deviations do exist. While many bands labeled 'symphonic metal' are simply wimpy, poseur, and synthesizer-laden, this band and this release are truly, authentically symphonic metal. Consequently, it has its turn at techno-metal with multiple layers and complicated arrangements, some Death-like music and even syncopated chords.
The opening segment is incredible. The inventive riffs, the pumping bass and the evil vocals are one thing, the octopusine drumming is another. Among The Dead is progressive rock riding an atomic bomb hurtling down towards its intended destination. The Death-ish Grief, Anger And Despair and its follow-up Physical Fear even insert a stutter effect for a pulsating moment or two. The latter allows the bass to shine and has a drummer lobbing artillery at the listener. This song has an instrumental section that is easily reminiscent of vintage Rush. Then hear Lock The Doors To Your Mind, which before the rock music guitar solo and leisurely bass, goes for the jugular with all the speed and zeal of a rapid-fire lightning storm striking again and again. This would take your life and be the end, which is why it is a good time to mention that the release is a concept that is "a 50-minute concept album about the rise of a totalitarian regime and the downfall of the individual." This band and this release are anything but lazy or conventional. Just the doubled, tripled or quadrupled channels and the crackling symphony on Believe are proof enough. - Ali "The Metallian"

Interviews

CEMETERY Brutal, beautiful and intelligent

Here is a dichotomy at play: on the one hand, Germany-based Cemetery proves the metal scene is in good shape given how sublime the extreme and progressive new release, Thoughts On Life... And Death, is. On the other, it reveals how saturated, decayed and unfair the scene is considering that this is a demo, an independent release, recorded and released by main man Daniel Zizek, and his band of capable band-mates, through their own means. What to do in such a case? Well, for one, pay no heed to scene hipsters, industry insiders and all these goofy labels, websites and magazines kissing the ass of the labels and whatever they release - regardless of merit. For another, fly into the depths of Germany, drive away from the bustling city, make a left turn onto a country road, stop, push open the cemetery's gates, drive through, have the serfs close the gate behind your vehicle and meet up with the aforementioned singer and guitarist for an interview. That is precisely what Ali "The Metallian" did. - 23.07.2024

METALLIAN: Dani, thanks for your time for this interview. I know that with a history of over 35 years you may roll your eyes at this, but could you fill in the readers on your history and the journey? The band may have a long history, but many readers would not be familiar with the act to this day.
DANI: Cemetery was founded by me, singer, guitarist and songwriter in August of 1990. Drummer Michael Bolz was the co-founder and bassist Robert Mayr joined the band shortly after. We played many underground gigs with no-name bands, but also with bands like Fleshcrawl, Dark Millennium, Atrocity, Torchure and Pyogenesis, which were well-known at that time and still are. We released a demo cassette in 1991 which was well received in the scene back in the days and recorded our debut album Enter The Gate in 1993, which unfortunately wasn’t released back then. We stopped Cemetery in 1994, invited a singer and switched to progressive metal. Think a mix of bands like Death, Dream Theatre and Pink Floyd with female vocals. That’s how I try to describe the style of the follow-up band for Cemetery, under the name of Aeons End. This project was also stopped in 1996 mostly because I got tired of music and the scene in general.
Cemetery was reactivated in 2017. The driving force for that was mostly former guitarist Roland Weihmayer who moved to Los Angeles permanently in the early 2000s and who wanted to play the old songs live in the USA. I agreed with the idea of his, but at the same time my love for Cemetery started growing again. I wrote a new album, which is called The Last Day On Earth. The demo was recorded in Los Angeles and at my home here in Bavaria, mixed by Paul Fig, mastered by Dan Swanö and self-released in 2019. To promote the release, we did a Western European tour as support to Master.

METALLIAN: Presumably, you mean that Roland wanted to play the songs in the USA with you. Either way, did you play any shows there?
DANI: It was like this: Roland came up with the idea to form his own version of Cemetery because he wanted to play the songs. I agreed and this band would have been without my participation. So, he would look for musicians and then teamed up with drummer Dave Ferrara. I think guitarist Pat Shea who is in the US line-up of Master was also involved in some way - or he just introduced Roland to Dave. This part of it I don’t know exactly. After a while, Roland’s band had not started yet; Roland asked me if I would be interested in writing new songs for his US band. I also agreed and started writing. The first songs turned out to be good and due to this process, my interests in Cemetery grew and we decided to start together again. This was basically the rebirth of Cemetery and what turned up in the 'comeback' album, The Last Day On Earth. We haven’t played shows in the US, but I went to Los Angeles to practice with the US line-up.

METALLIAN: There was a news item years ago that the band had signed with Andy Classen's WVR. Is this story correct and, if so, what happened?
DANI: That is correct. We signed a deal with WVR for a couple of albums. I don’t remember the whole story anymore in detail because it happened more than 30 years ago, but the plan was to record our debut Enter The Gate at Mr. Classen’s studio. Due to a delay with the production work he had before our schedule, we were free to choose another studio for the production. We teamed up with Falk Gruber who had already produced our demo and who worked with bands like Atrocity and Sinister. Atrocity had just recorded its second album Todessehnsucht right there before we entered the studio. Here and there, Atrocity’s Alex Krull and Mathias Röderer showed up at the place to do final tweaks to their new album or just to check out what we were doing there. It was a good time. So, we worked on the production throughout spring of 1993 pretty much confident that WVR would like the outcome. Yet, nothing happened! It was quite difficult to reach out to WVR and we stood 'in the rain' for months without any information about what's going on. Later that year, we learned the label had gotten into business troubles; that’s, at least, what we were told, and that they were unable to release our album. Things got worse then. We tried to find another established label. Some of them rejected us, some of them told us that because of the unclear situation with WVR they want to take a step back. It wasn’t even clear to us if we could use the name Cemetery anymore. To work with underground labels did not make any sense to me because we got ripped off in 1992 when we had a contract for the release of our single, which also never happened. All of this made me very mad about the business, which I am still to this day. I simply stopped the band in 1994. I had had enough of the 'biz.' But honestly, I don’t want to speak about it too much because I only remember fragments after all these years and don’t want to say something wrong.

METALLIAN: I heard what you just said about not wanting to speak too much about that period, so one last question here, but which was the label you dealt with in 1992?
DANI: It was Turbo-Music, a death/black underground label from Germany.

METALLIAN: Who doesn't know about Turbo, second only to Seraphic Decay, and ahead of Pavement, in the annals of metal scene rip off-o-rama? By the way, the last time I spoke to Alex Krull was in 1995. He ended up in an argument then and there with Nuclear Blast's Markus Staiger, which Staiger handled well, I thought, as I watched the two. OK, Dani, moving forward, could you tell us about your intentions for the new release?
DANI: The intention to make a concept album came to me after I wrote some of the lyrics and some of the musical themes. I found out that the story should be told over a complete album and so I began to write the songs in a specific order. It made the whole process easier for me since I have had a clear target where I wanted to go and what I would like to express with it. What started as “yeah… let’s make a new album” became something bigger and more emotional.

METALLIAN: In the same breath, knowing that the concept deals with a "totalitarian" regime, could you define 'totalitarian' for us? It is useful to be on the same page as far as context goes.
DANI: In short, a totalitarian regime attempts to use power and violence to gain control over every aspect of an independent citizen. Be it their political views, what they should think, how they should behave, et cetera. Thoughts On Life… And Death tells the story of the rise of a regime and the downfall of individuals. The story is told from the perspective of a citizen, I used to call him Jim, who realizes the change in society and who suffers the full consequences in the end.

METALLIAN: It occurs to me that the band has achieved music that is both complex and complicated and yet also contains big riffs. How much of the structure is deliberate and how much is the result of natural and organic songwriting?
DANI: This is a difficult question for me to answer, as songwriting is a natural process form (for me) and I sometimes simply don’t remember how I came up with an idea for a section or riff. I learned over the years that no matter how complex a song might turn out, there always needs to be some element that works like a glue between the sections. There must be a flow to it. Once I record a new song at my home studio, I listen to it several times and, if necessary, I start tweaking guitars or recording new sections until the song fully meets my original expectations. I try to capture a certain feeling with every song I write. Everything on this album is basically intentional. We are probably not the band that is letting things just flow. We love clear structures. I like big, boundary-pushing music like all the progressive heroes in the 1970s played, but also '80s heavy metal where phenomenal opening riffs were state-of-the- the-art. I want to have it brutal, beautiful and intelligent at the same time.

METALLIAN: What is the meaning behind the pulsating segments on the songs Grief, Anger And Despair or Physical Fear?
DANI: I don’t exactly understand the question.

METALLIAN: The sound to which I am referring occurs on the Grief, Anger And Despair at 1:48 and on Physical Fear at 3:44.
DANI: Ah… very good! You listened closely to the music. Thank-you for that! What you are hearing there is a guitar trick called stutter or machine gun. I do this with a special volume pot. It’s called kill-pot or kill-switch on my guitar where I can interrupt the signal by hammering rhythmically with the fingertip on that pot. I love this trick especially in combination with a flanger- Pedal. This 'stutter' effect can also be produced when using a guitar with two humbuckers by muting one humbucker and switching fast with the toggle switch between the humbuckers. I heard this technique from Randy Rhoads first when I was a kid. To this day, Randy Rhoads is still one of my all-time favourites. Just listen to the Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads, both may rest in peace, live album called Tribute.

METALLIAN: Appreciate the detailed explanation, Dani. The quality of the recording is also something of a pleasant surprise. Could you tell us more about the circumstances behind the recording?
DANI: Thank you for asking this! For the production we teamed up with Sergej Dukart who runs Walzwerk Tonstudio here in our area, that is Weilheim/Bavaria. Sergej is not only a friend of ours, as we are all located in the same area, but he really knows his stuff and has a pair of excellent ears. Before we started, we talked a lot about how the album should sound as natural as possible. Therefore, Sergej took really care with micing the drum set. Additionally, our drummer Tobias Kasper also loves the natural sound of a good kit. Tobias is a very dynamic drummer with excellent techniques and skills. No matter how fast or hard he plays he always is leaving some space to put some extra crème on top of the cake. Due to the drum production not being over-compressed, you can hear all the little details Tobias is putting into his excellent drumming. For myself, I especially love the transparent sound of the toms where I can almost 'see' the skins. So, for the drum sound we got two ingredients: a top engineer like Sergej Dukart and a ridiculously skilled drummer, Tobias Kasper.
For the guitar sound, we basically took the same care. I have recorded the guitars at my home studio. Guitarist Markus Heilmeier and I tried different sets of microphones over a period of three weekends and found out the best position for the mics in front of the cabinet. After all, I still wasn’t satisfied and talked to Sergej again and he lent me his Bogner 4x12 cabinet which smokes my old rusty Marshall cabinet easily. To capture the raw sound of my old Marshall JCM800 amp, I started recording at painful volumes. After two days I couldn’t stand the noise anymore, turned the volume down a little bit and started again.
Stefan Hendel also recorded the bass here at my space, where I also did the vocals. Markus Heilmeier recorded his solos at his home. We came back with all the tracks to Sergej’s studio and there he began with his magic. Which means, he knew exactly how the album should sound and put all his skills into it. He also did the mastering. We couldn’t be happier with the result.

METALLIAN: In my opinion, the hard work has paid off. Thanks for the detailed and interesting answer either way. I am curious though, do you use your home studio commercially to record other bands as well?
DANI: No, it’s just for my own recordings. It’s my man cave so to speak.

METALLIAN: One oddity, given the focus on a concept and messaging, is how much of the album is instrumental in segments. How does this structure fit in with the lyrical focus?
DANI: We think the instrumental parts fit very well into it. With such sections you let the album breathe. It’s like making a movie. There can’t be dialogues all the time. Sometimes a strong shot says more than words. Since I sing and play guitar at the same time, I am also glad for the opportunity to rest my voice in-between and simply enjoy playing with the band. A friend of mine once said she enjoys it when a singer just shuts up his face for a while…

METALLIAN: OK! Elsewhere, Thoughts On Life... And Death is an independent release. The lack of a label likely is either because the band avoided looking for a record company or that any offers were inadequate. Simply put, labels release so much crap nowadays that is inferior that any band could have a deal. Why is Cemetery not on a label?
DANI: We sent the materials to a couple of established labels, but only one of them answered… and declined. But to be honest, we did not put too much effort into it. We are realistic in this case knowing, that a big breakthrough usually doesn’t happen. I know a bit about label politics and I have accepted that Cemetery will probably never sign a good deal because there are millions of bands out there. Many of them are actually damn good! We, somehow, never made it into the 'inner circle.' Do I ask myself sometimes why band X or band Y has a contract, and we don’t? Yes, I do. But I don’t grieve about foregone opportunities. Not in music and not in my life. To team up with a small underground label mostly makes no sense since there is nothing that they can do for us which we cannot do on our own. For this release we teamed up with Markus Eck and Metal Message - who’s also from our area - to help us with the promotion. I personally think a good booking agency is the most important factor. Playing good gigs means a good reach. Maybe the album is so strong that we will catch the attention of the scene… who knows?

METALLIAN: The music is strong enough, but what does that have to do with success, Dani? Seems I am more cynical than you are, but fact is the scene is mostly revolving around social media hits, gimmicks, controversy, being gangster, making it into the news for anything except talent or music, lame cover versions or having a hype machine behind you so that all the so-called reviewers can give you their standard nine or ten out of tens. None of this has much to do with music. Next topic: the band's biography offers: "performances are rare. The simple reason: You don’t let yourself be sold off. For good gig offers at reasonable conditions, however, the band likes to exchange the rehearsal room and studio for a stage." Could you unravel what this means? What are "sold off" and "reasonable" implying?
DANI: What I want to say is, that Cemetery is not the band that drives 500 kms to a club gig, gets paid 50 Euros and drives home the next day with the ears still ringing because you’ve done the gig with a shitty PA System and a guy at the mixing desk who’s more interested in his smartphone or next beer. There may be some bands who have done this a lot and still do, but we don’t. Everyone in Cemetery has had his own experiences over the years. We all played in different bands and learned it the hard way, but there is also the other side of the game. If there is an opportunity at a great venue, festival or to play with other cool bands, then we go all in, of course, and prove that we can keep our high musical standard while also being on the stage. You should know that Markus Heilmeier and Tobias Kasper are active in their own band, Sweeping Death, where they play many good shows and present their progressive metal at a ridiculously high level. Moreover, bassist Stefan Hendel is active in the band Red To Grey, a thrash metal group from Munich. So, these guys are always in top shape when it comes to practices or playing live with Cemetery. I, for myself, mostly practice at home since I don’t have the time or the interest to play in another band. Music-wise my focus is fully on Cemetery.

METALLIAN: Well, to be fair, the sound guy may be American and is touring with the band in Canada, Asia or Europe. Can you blame him for loading up on actual beer before heading back to the US, where he'd be stuck drinking piss water? Dani, those were my questions for today. Thanks goes to you and the crew for the music. The final query pertains to Metallian. Everyone agrees that Metallian is the best website for metal. What is your reason for agreeing?
DANI: Well…uh…I honestly never heard of Metallian! But please don’t ask me since I hardly follow the scene. Sorry (laughs)!

Well, that is clear now. With that said, singer and guitarist Daniel Zizek, guitarist Markus Heilmeier, bassist Stefan Hendel and drummer Tobias Kasper have something special with Thoughts On Life... And Death. For further information visit here.

If you enjoyed this, read Fleshcrawl

Cemetery