The Other comes from Germany, thye have played their horrorpunk for over 20 years. Now they release their new album Alienated and its so fucking good. Listen to it and the read the interview. This interview was done in october 2025.

You have been playing together since 2002, is it still fun to do this as it was in the beginning?
-Oh, it sure is, otherwise we wound’t be doing it. We are going foreward step by step, playing cities and countries we haven’t played before, playing festivals we haven’t played before and share the stage with some of our favorite bands each year. And: our last album was our first chart-success. So yeah, we’re moving ahead and enjoying it.

What´s the biggest difference if you compare when you started, with concerts, the way you do music etc?
-Oh man, so many things are different.. Back then you brought your amps and cabinets, plugged in and played. Now we have a stage set-up with our own in-ear and a fixed sound that we can control ourselves. We use modeling amps, don’t need cabinets or cables. All that is great. What’s not great: having to promote each show like crazy with all those social clips on all platforms to activate people  to come to a show. And often even spend money on social advertising. Promoting the band has become almost a job. I wish we could just write songs and play them live. But no - you gotta play the social game.

When I look at your side on Discogs it seems that you have had the same members almost the whole time? How do you get out with each other?
-Sadly that’s not the case. We’ve had members leave all the time. The after effects of Covid hit us hard - the whole band besides myself changed. The good thing is: we are stronger than ever with my creative songwriting partners VanTom and J. Ends, my old buddy Jag Boone on drums and our original bassist Andy Only back in the band.

To play this sort of music, how is that?
-Not sure if it’s different for us than for other bands who play a different style. But what I like about playing our songs is, that they have a lot of energy that pours out into the crowd and that we have a lot of audience participation. People who come to our shows love to sing along. That’s soooo much fun.

One of my favoritebands in this style is Left hand Black, what do you think of them?
-Great band, good buddies. We’ve played together once in Germany and hope to visit them for a show together in Sweden some day. We’ve never played Sweden before. I’ve seen LHB at three other shows and they are really great. Great punch!

To play this sort of horrorpunk, was it obviously from the beginning?
-Yes. We started out as a Misfits cover band and then started writing our own songs. The first songs were very simple, very Misfits-like. With album 2 - “We are who we eat” - we started developing our own sound and I would say we really found it with album “ - “New Blood”. These days we’re better on our instruments and have added some more atmosphere and dynamics but live we still play our old stuff, too. And love it.

You are never tired of the musicstyle?
-Never! We really love this style. It gives us enough freedom to play around with Punk, Metal, Goth and Rockabilly and create a great mixture. Horror Punk is genre that has many influences and some of the bands of the genre sound totally different to each other.

Other good bands in the same style?
-Too many, to list them all. You will of course know Misfits, Samhain, Danzig, Blitzkid or Calabrese. But you need to check out Zombeast, Dark Ride, Nim Vind, The Rosedales, Ghoultown, Creeper, Grave Robber and the totally awesome new album by Mourning Noise.

Good bands from Germany? Any good bands from Sweden you like?
-Horror Punk bands? The Spook, Wolfskull, Hellgreaser, The Crimson Ghosts, Max Schreck… man, so many. From Sweden I really liked The Spookshow back in the days. And I really dig The Dahmers.

What does the word punk mean to you, is it only a word, a musicstyle or is it a lifestyle?
-It’s an attitude. It’s about being active, aware, supportive, about caring for the scene, the creatures and people on our planet, the world. There’s one thing that Punk absolutely is not and that’s fascist. 

You release your new Lp on Massacre, howcome you  change label?
-Our former label Drakkar does not exist anymore. So we re-activated our own label Fiend Force Records - where we released our first three albums and also the legendary “This is Horror Punk” compilations and albums by Blitzkid, Nim Vind, Bloodsucking Zombies from outer Space, Rezurex, Shadow Reichenstein, The Spook and many many more. We’re so happy that Massacre licensed the label and that their professional people take care of all the business. So we have our own label but a strong partner. And we sign new bands, too. We released albums by Darker Days, Zombeast and coming up is the first full length by Dark Ride from Santa Cruz..

I have only New Blood since before, how many albums and singles have you done?
-“Alienated” is our ninth album. And we’re releasing a 7” along with it with the title track to a documentary about the actor Vincent Price. So this is our first real vinyl single.

When you play live are you playing songs from every record?
-We will play songs from the new album on the upcoming Hell Nights tour, probably all three singles, and more from that album when we headline. We also throw in crowd faves from all albums. For example: we could never play a show without “Beware of Ghouls”. 

You sing in german on some song on every record you have release almost, why not more songs in german?
-It’s hard to sing about horror in German. It can either sound too harsh or to cheesy. For example the word “ghost”. Sounds good in english but childish in German - if used in a horror context. Our German songs are mostly darker and sometimes personal. Our language is excellent for that.

What does inspire you to write lyrics?
-What surrounds me, what I read, watch and experience. I like taking inspiration from books. With this album though it really was all the changes in the world. Covid, the russian invasion of Ukraine, AI, the rise of dictatorship in many countries, of course the orange ape on the other side of the atlantic and his billionaire buddies. All these things led to a feeling of alienation - hence the album title.

Is it any chance for us to hear politics in The Others lyrics, whcih is your most political song? Or doesn´t music and politics suits together?
-We did write songs with a political subtext. Our second album had the track “Shadow from the past” with a pretty clear statement against fascism. And there were more, like “Absolution” from our eighth album “Haunted” with the line “Kein Gott, kein Führer, keine Religion” - “No god, no führer, no religion”. This new album has some strong statements as well. “Die Human Die” is probably the most obvious one. People are monsters - and that song questions if humankind should not deserve to fall victim to a meteorite impact, like the dinasours.

On the song In the End it feels almost that you have listened to Ghost or something like that, it feels that that song is differing from the other songs, what was the idea with that song?
-We’ve always had very slow songs on our albums. From “Wolf” on the first album to “End of Days” on Casked Case. And I had this idea a couple of years ago and we first played it sort of like an almost acoustic track, something that reminded my of Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings” albums. When the new monsters joined the band, they really liked the track but we chose to make it more bombastic and gothic. But we kept the Johnny Cash-like vocals. I love Ghost but that song was not written with them in mind. But I can see why people would compare it to this great band.

To live in Germany right now, how is it? Is it many problems there?
-Wow, tough question. Yes, there are problems. The economy is going down, a fascist party is winning elections especially in the easters states that used to be the East Germany, there are strong anti-migrant voices everywhere and politicians want to cut the social system. So yeah, we’re experiencing some of the same shit that lots of countries are. And the club- and concert culture suffered after covid. A lot of clubs and venues closed and people don’t have so much money to go to concerts anymore. They pay 200 Euro and more to see Metallica at two shows in three days or pay 350 for a big festival but don’t have 20 Euro for a small band in a club in their home town. I still have a little hope that we see how the United States are being transformed into a dictatorship and that we will try to prevent this in Germany and the rest of Europe. But Europe needs to be strong and work together against all this.

I can imagine that a concert with The Other are sweaty, what´s the best of playing live?
The best part is when we see the people enjoying it. Singing along, jumping, crowdsurfing, visiting us at the merch booth after the show, making friends all over the world. That’s what we love. As much as we enjoy what we do - writing and playing music - it’s the people’s reaction that gets us going.

Which type of people comes to your concerts?
-The first subculture that accepted us with open arms was the Goth scene. We played big Goth festivals before the Metal festivals even knew who we were. That has changed and we played Wacken three times and many other Metal festivals. These days we draw Goth- and Metal people, plus Punk-Rockers and Psychobillys. So yeah - a merry gathering of Alternative people with a passion for the darker things in life.  We get people who like to dress in black.

What is the most chaotic thing which ever have happened during a The Other-concert?
-One thing I won’t forget: We opened for our heroes The Damned. I was standing on stage, right in front of the audience. Our intro way playing, I had my first raised, ready to go straight into the first song. But: the intro ended and nobody played. I looked around and I was alone on stage. And hurried off backstage. What happened was: our drummer had forgotten to bring his sticks on stage and had to run to the dressing room. He did not return in time and the other guys left the stage as well. But nobody told me. So I was all alone and didn’t realize it. I was standing there trying to look cool and evil while behind me everybody hurried off stage. Most embarrassing moment ever.

Whichs is your favoritesong to play live? And which is the song is most popular in the audience?
-On of my faves will always be “Beware of Ghouls” because it’s such a simple and great Punk-Rock track and everybody knows it. You can just let loose, enjoy it and hear the audience sing the chorus with us. I love it.

Do you do any covers live if you do , which songs?
-We sometimes did “Skulls” by The Misfits as a little tribute to our own history but recently we played our cover version of “Dancing with Tears in my Eyes” - originally by Ultravox - live. And it was very well received. So we will definitely add that to the setlist if we have enough time. Great song. We played shows with Ultravox singer and songwriter Midge Ure and that’s why we got the idea to record our version.

Please tell me a little about the lyrics on folowing songs

I give you the creeps
-That song has probably the most typical Horror Punk lyrics. Campy, dark, romantic. It’s about Vampire love and Vampire Bites. Don’t we all love Vampires?
Alienated
-The theme song to our album. It’s about the feeling of not belonging on this planed anymore, about wanting to escape to another world, of just leaving this planet and humankind behind and go where we feel at home.
The witch from outer space
-That song if pure fun but it’s also another song about a strong woman - like it’s predecessor “X-Ray Eyes” on “Casked Case”. This one is about a witch that comes from another planet with her rocket broomstick and looks for a partner to take to her home and to mate with. The lyrics are sexy and trashy… There should be a movie about this song.

What happens now, is it a tour with the new record?
-We will go on tour with Wednesday 13, Blitzkid and Calabres in Germany around Halloween, then play some headline shows in January and festivals in the summer. We will release an EP with songs that we didn’t use for the album. We kept some really good ones for that EP. Even another German song and possibly a cover by a German Dark-Punk band, too.

Futureplans for yourself?
-I still hope to be able to make music for a living some day. And I have my records label, I orgazine the Hell Nights tour with our booker Flo (Hamburg Records), I host 80s Glam Metal parties and I write for magazines. I hope I can continue all this - maybe full time some day.

Many bands do their own beer, is it anything you have done? And if you would do that which type of beer would it be and what is going to be named?
-Actually a friend of ours is working on a liquor for the band. But to be true: i’m a beer guy. I love all kinds of beer and our tour rider says “Local beer please, no Beck’s”. So we get to try new brands all the time. There is a local beer here in Cologne that I really appreciate called “Schreckenskammer Kölsch”. Kölsch is the local type of beer from Köln/Cologne and Schreckenskammer translated into something like “Chamber of Horrors”. So a The Other beer should be something like that. But maybe with a little red or green syrup to make it look gruesome.

Wisdomword?
-TikTok is not journalism

Something to add?

-We would really appreciate it, if you people out there check out our album. If you like bands like Misfits, Danzig, Type O Negative, Ghost, The Cult, even Volbeat - you may like The Other. We dare you to listen!