Ahead of their tour with Fearless Vampire Killers from May 4-13, we caught up with Christoph, the guitarist and clean singer of metalcore band annisokay from Halle, Germany to talk about the upcoming dates. See what happened below…
Your tour with Fearless Vampire Killers is about to get underway – what are you most looking
forward to about the tour?
Our biggest goal as a band is to travel the world and play shows in front of as many people as possible. This UK tour is going to be our first step out of Germany, and we can’t wait to rock the stage and meet many fans over there. Of course we also can’t wait to see many cool places in the UK – London is one of our favourite cities of the world.
Is there any city or venue you’re most excited about playing?
Playing the Underworld venue in London is actually a dream come true for us. The city is beyond amazing, and so many great acts have played this venue before us. Of course we’re excited if people dig our live performance, but what eliminates our doubts is the fact that we already have many fans over there that also can’t wait to see us live.
What can fans expect from the upcoming shows?
We always do our best to perform our show in the most energetic way possible. Also, interacting with the audience is a big part of our show. We want to make our songs sound very close to how they sound on our record, but we also also love to bang our heads and go crazy on stage! Wall of deaths or our crowd surfing are common things in an Annisokay set!
What do you like most about touring?
Besides playing many shows in a short timeframe, it’s definitely getting to meet so many cool people. We always hang out at the merch table after our set to talk to the fans, make pictures, sign stuff and just have fun. We made many friends on tour, and never get sick of meeting new ones. Also, seeing so many different places and cities is cool. Too bad we usually don’t have much time on tour to lurk around the cities.
Is there anything you don’t like about touring?
Yeah, probably the shower situation! As a touring band we’re also used to sleep in very fucked up places, but sometimes it’s really hard to fall asleep if it’s a really dirty shelter. Also sitting in the van for many, many hours a day isn’t the coolest thing, but it’s all more than worth it in the end!
Have you got any interesting stories from tours gone by?
Actually our tours have been pretty unspectacular so far! No real crazy things happened yet, besides two blown tires, but that isn’t even worth mentioning. At a time before we had these professional tours going on, we had a show at biker club bar. We were told to play last on that evening but before we even set up our stuff on stage a huge fight between the crowd broke out. We escaped with our instruments and backline through a window in the backstage, and our guitarist ripped his trousers. No one thought about watching or playing a metal show that evening anymore! But I guess touring days are more boring than people would expect, though. Who knows, maybe our run through the UK is going to change that!
If you could tour with any band, who would you choose?
Probably Architects. They are a huge inspiration for us! We already shared the stage with them at a festival and loved their performance. They are cool dudes to hang out with! We had a lot of luck with the bands we’ve toured with though – our German mates from Callejon, Eskimo Callboy or Emil Bulls have made our latest tours a great experience we never forget. Also Silverstein from the US are very cool dudes we really miss to touring with. However, I have a feeling our tour with Fearless Vampire Killers is going to be awesome as well!
And finally what does the rest of the year have in store for annisokay?
After playing many cool German festivals this summer, we will go on a big headline tour through Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The tour will be named after our latest album “Enigmatic Smile” and our friends from Fearless Vampire Killers will actually support us on that run! We also plan on shooting another two video singles for this album besides the first one we already released called “Carry Me Away”. We love shooting videos, but it’s always a huge amount of work, as we usually do them by ourselves.
