Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
Skyconqueror is a straight heavy metal band founded in the surroundings of Münster (North Western Germany) in early 1997 by Jan Tappert and Carsten Stiens. Shortly after Mirko Jankord became part of the band as the bassist and Niko Saloustros followed as the lead singer.
In January 1998 the debut demo CD "STREAK OF LIGHTNING" with five songs was recorded by Carlos Silva at the Subsonic Studio in Rheine and was released a few weeks later.
In February 1998 the first gig was played at the Silmarillion in Werne in front of a crowd of 100 crazy headbangers. A couple of gigs followed until the first show in the new line up was performed in July 2000 at the self-organized “Summer Metal Meeting” in Nordkirchen: Daniel Hiller (Vocals), Christian Kahlau (Guitar), Jan, Mirko and Carsten. In September of the same year the second 6-song-demo-CD "SILVER HAZE RISING" was recorded again by Carlos Silva.
The third demo CD „FORGED IN HELL“ – self-recorded in 2002 – contained six songs in the spirit of NWOBHM.
Chris left the band at the end of 2004, and SKYCONQUEROR continued as an unholy four piece. At the end of 2006 two new songs were recorded at Luna Studio in Lüdinghausen by Dieter Steffan for a compilation containing a variety of different music styles.
In March 2008 the "HELLSTORY" CD was also recorded at Luna Studio, containing twelve songs from the last ten years. This lethal dose of metal emerged from the pits of hell in June of 2008.
The following years the band gave several infernal gigs, took part in the movie “Fate and Destruction”, found new inspiration and collected a lot of material.
In July 2014 we released our current record “Under The Pentagram”.
How would you describe your style? Which bands influenced your music?
Our current style is most often described as old school heavy metal or NWOBHM. But we all have huge record collections. The biggest influence on the music of Under The Pentagram and our former recordings is the heavy metal of the early 80s. But there are different styles in hard music we love and which find their way in our songs (just listen to the guitar in the 2nd half of Demon – you surely will realize that we like some black metal as well).
It´s a wide variety of different styles we like – from Rush to Dissection, from Magnum to Slayer and from ZZ TOP to Darkthrone.
Why should a metalhead buy your demos/albums?
Because it rocks! No, seriously, if you are a fan of the eighties and like the metal from that period you should definitely check it out!
What have you released so far and how were your releases received by the public/media?
We never had a label or promotion agency that helped us out, and back in the days the networking possibilities were much smaller than now with all the fancy schmancy facebook twitter what the heck. So when we released our demos and or recordings these were received by a much smaller audience, but they were received very well.
Do you play live as well? How's your live activity so far?
At the moment we don't have any live gigs planned, but if you like our style and we fit it, just contact us, we really love to play live!
What should labels/zines/promoters know about your band? Why should they be interested in it?
We love our music, we think it deserves a place in today's world and we're going a long way for that. But we don't want to be ripped off!
What plans do you have for the near future as a band?
And tomorrow, we're gonna conquer the world!
No, seriously, we have some new riffs in our pipeline, that we'd love to record, although we're still concentrating on promoting our new record “Under The Pentagram”. And we definitely want to play some gigs, so stay tuned.
Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
Under The Pentagram can be bought or listened to on any major channel, including iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, cdbaby.com, well, however, perhaps you should first check out our facebook page under facebook.com/skyconqueror and listen to some tunes there.
August 2014