Pro Patria

"Welcome to the Pleasuredome" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. This is my number one all time favourite and I’m sure that many people will frown when I say this. The problem with Frankie is that most people consider them to have been a commercial product rather than the creators of brilliant music. They were effectively more of a marketing hype back then, with all of these scandals that were created on purpose in order to make them popular, the “Frankie say” T-shirts, videos that they knew right from the start were going to be banned by the puritan BBC etc. This is really unfortunate because it has drawn the attention away from their music which, to my opinion, is the most complex and ground-breaking ever created, also thanks to Trevor Horn who is perhaps the greatest producer of all time. Try to count the number of different layers and sounds in 'Relax' or 'Two Tribes' and you’d be amazed. They were also the first band to do away with the classic verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus song structure which is present in just about every song as from the fifties. There are some exceptions such as 'Stairway to Heaven' or 'Bohemian Rhapsody' but these were more artistic deviations from the mainstream. 'Relax', on the other hand, in spite of its unusual structure, keeps you jumping from the first note till the last. I could write a book about Frankie, but it’s probably best that I leave it at this.

"Black Celebration" by Depeche Mode. They were the great trendsetters of the eighties, stubbornly rowing against the current and unabatedly doing their own thing in spite of devastating criticism and getting booed at e.g. during the ‘85 Werchter Rock Festival. They created seven amazing albums in only nine years’ time and if I have to pick a favourite it’ll be "Black Celebration". It certainly wasn’t their most popular album, perhaps because it was effectively their darkest work, but I’ve always experienced it as their most personal, most gripping music. It was one of the beacons I could relate to whenever I, as a kid, got overwrought with emotions and was in dire need of support. This album’s never failed me.

"Spiral" by Vangelis. I could have mentioned "Gashed Senses And Crossfire" by the Frontline Assembly, "Bites" by Skinny Puppy, "No Comment" by Front 242 or "That Total Age" by Nitzer Ebb, but for this interview I prefer to mention something completely out of the ordinary, and yet, not quite so much. Vangelis was already doing electronic music a decade before Kraftwerk and he was also light years ahead of them, as testifies this extraordinary album that, even after forty-five years, still sounds breathtaking. He was one of the founding fathers of electro,  along with Delia Derbyshire, Josef Tal and others and it’s simply astounding what the man produced using home-built synths. In these early days he even managed to perfectly recreate the sound of a tolling bell, which is one of the most complex and difficult sounds to produce electronically. Apart from that and like most of his music, this album carries the listener far away on a mind-boggling mental trip.

Peter V.:  Receiving that invitation was indeed a surprise to me, because for as far as I was concerned Pro Patria had died in 1999 and I hadn’t done anything with music ever since. This period of inactivity was not only because I’d become increasingly disappointed that my hard work during the nineties hadn’t borne any fruits, but also due to circumstances which forced me to abandon music. I was surrounded by people who didn’t believe in me and who wanted me to become a “responsible adult” (whatever that means) and suddenly making music was no longer part of my life. By the time I got the invitation, however, my personal situation had again changed dramatically, much to the better this time, and I’m now surrounded by people who really believe in me and who want me to continue with Pro Patria. Every artist will tell you that support from their environment is vital and I’m certainly no exception. I have to thank my wife in the first place because it was she who convinced me that I had nothing to lose, so I went for it. 
Peter V.:  I had always been Pro Patria and the name had achieved some modest popularity in the nineties, so it was only logical that I’d pick up where I had left. It made things easier to return to the scene and I’m sure that many people were happy to see Pro Patria on stage again after all these years, if I can judge by the pats on my shoulder from the audience and from the other bands. Doing that Familientreffen gig was a sort of liberation to me. Suddenly a button was switched on in my head that had been shut off for so long and immediately the ideas started to pour out again, as if they’d been locked up all of this time and were pushing the door to get out all at once. How could I have refused to let them out? 

Peter V.:  I’ve always been a non-conformist and even though I’ve obviously been influenced by the great, I’ve always tried to do my own thing and to create my own specific style. The idea was to start exactly where I had left off and so the first songs I created, 'Pray for Salvation' and 'Living in a Cage', were derived from demos I had been working on in 1997, during the “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” production because at the time I was already thinking about a successor. I hoped that using these old, unfinished songs would create a seamless transition with the new album. Unfortunately, it didn’t, and there were two reasons for that. First of all, I consider myself to be a musician, certainly not a producer and I wanted to learn the dark arts of mixing and mastering myself in order not to always depend on others. This was a serious miscalculation from my part because I had never anticipated that mixing and mastering were so difficult. I got it completely wrong and the album sounded… terribly, much harsher than I had imagined. In the meantime I’ve remastered “Back to Basics” which should now sound more in line with my other work and everyone who’s bought the original CD can get the remastered version for free, just send me a message.

Another reason why “Back to Basics” became somewhat different from my old work is that exactly twenty years had passed between them and now I believe that no-one could have picked up exactly where they had left off after such a long time, especially since that period had been extremely painful. I was no more the same person, torn by grief and nightmares about the past, but also looking at the future with joy and confidence, and this clearly reflected in the music. On the positive side, this long, hard period proved to be an excellent source of inspiration and the songs and lyrics for the album jumped out of my mind in only six week’s time.

Peter V.:  “Back to Basics” I realised that my new work was perhaps a bit too much off the mark and I needed to reassure my audience that it was still me and that Pro Patria would always be the same. Hence “Executioner” the style of which, to my opinion, fits nicely in between “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” and “Back to Basics”. 'I Watched You Die' is also one of the songs which originated in 1997 and which I used to ensure continuity. “Oppression” is a remake of the very first song of the very first demo we recorded in November 1988. On this album I’ve tried to amalgamate many different styles and ideas whilst elaborating them with the established Pro Patria sound. On this album I’ve also tried to push the EBM barrier a bit further and even to do some experiments, just to see how far I could go.  

Peter V.:  The title “Godless” has two meanings, actually. First of all, I’ve always been critical about religion because you should be allowed to decide for yourself what you believe in rather than other people conditioning you as from birth with what they want you to believe. It’s a theme that has always been prominent in my lyrics. Be critical about everything that people have told you and decide for yourself. You have a free mind. Peter V.:  The message of the album is hard, as explained above, plus the music is razor-sharp, so I needed artwork that reflects this. We’re done with all the soft talk as nothing seems to be changing. We have no more time to lose, so it’s time that we finally start dealing with this global problem. I hope that a shocking image may contribute to us waking up.
Peter V.:  Ah, that’s an easy question to answer! 'Angel', without a shred of a doubt, and for a variety of reasons. First of all because I think it’s the most interesting song on the CD from a purely musical perspective, combining acoustic and electronic, also combining several musical ideas. Secondly because it’s again an extremely personal song, describing how I emerged from a time when I truly believed that my life was utterly spent. Most importantly of all, because this song is dedicated to the angel who pulled me out of a desperate situation and who would later become my wife. 
Peter V.:  Since the dam was broken four years ago, the music keeps coming to me like an avalanche. I often wake up in the middle of the night with new ideas in my head, begging me to be transformed into songs. So I can tell you that work has initiated on my fifth full album, which should be out sometime next year. I still can’t tell you what it’ll be about; it’s usually during the writing process of an album that I get a clear idea about where I’d like to take it to, but the music for the first track is already finished. Now I have to come up with some good lyrics. Let’s see where it’ll lead me.Peter V.:  It was a real pleasure doing this interview and I hope that your readers find it interesting to read. Thank you for your kind support. 

This interview was commissioned through our Ko-fi page.