You can experience the band here: wrestlemaniacsrule.bandcamp.com
Who came up with the image of the band, wearing lucha libre masks? I love the fact that your singer is using a barbed wire baseball bat attached to his mic in your video for "Still Real to Us."
PR/AP: Since many are unfamiliar with you here in the States, let us know how Wrestlemaniacs came to be a band.
Mariano: It all started by visiting a German indie wrestling show back in 2016 and some guy asked us if we were musicians cause he wanted to found a new promotion called "WrestlingKult" and needs a theme song for it. At that time we were all playing in different bands but thought it was a fun idea and agreed to do one. Couple weeks later we recorded "Join the Kult," which is still their theme song today. After that we wrote three more themes for German wrestlers, but that was soon becoming a little bit boring because they all had a specific idea of how their song should sound. So we thought let's go and make it how we wanted it to sound, fast, raw, more metal, and that's where the madness began.
On your first release you got Nick Gage to do the intro to the song you wrote about him, "MDK." How did that come about?
Mariano: That was basically a cameo we bought. I got a birthday Cameo which ended up really cool so we thought let's buy another one as intro for the record. We later met Nick Gage in person and handed him the EP - he is a really nice guy and remembered the song and the Cameo (or at least said he did). MDK ALL F'N DAY!
I got to meet Virgil once at a flea market in Ohio, and of course he was alone. I could tell he really didn't want to take a picture with me, and he kept trying to get me to buy more autographed pictures even though I had already bought one. Whose idea was the song "Meat Sauce King," and have any of you ever met Virgil before? Sadly, we can't now, since he has passed away.
Mariano: Unfortunately not, but the stories about lonely Virgil and his really funny social media posts were reason enough to write him song.
Is an element of humor important to the music? Why?
Mariano: Definitely! Wrestling just delivers so many funny moments. Some songs or lines like "March of the S.H.E.I.K." with the Iron Sheik cursing or the "only half the brain" line in "Vicious Sycopath" from Sid's WCW promo where he said "I only got half the brands than you do." We also love these funny gimmicks from the '90s like Repo Man, Gillberg, Mantaur, The Ding Dongs... Songs about the Shockmaster debut or the Steiner Math promo are on top of my wanna do list. (That would be goddamn amazing. -AP.)
Is "Death by Lariat" about the legendary Stan Hansen? Tell me about that song.
Mariano: Yes, I'm a big fan of Hansen and Bruiser Brody and all those American "gaijins" that wrestled in Japan in the '80s. Eat the Turnbuckle already did a Brody song, so we thought let's honor Stan Hansen. And his lariat is a very underrated finisher!
Who came up with the image of the band, wearing lucha libre masks? I love the fact that your singer is using a barbed wire baseball bat attached to his mic in your video for "Still Real to Us."
Mariano: The name and the masks result in the first gig we had, the event was called "Rumpelfest." I don't know how to properly translate that but the idea behind it was that musicians from different bands get together for one night only and start playing without any songs or rehearsals, just by improvising. We were asked to participate, so we thought let's call it Wrestlemaniacs, wear lucha masks, and just play some tunes and wrestle a little bit on stage. As soon as we began the crowd started to wrestle each other at first and then us - it was pure chaos. We also met our second guitar player at that show cause he broke his cheekbone in the pit.
Tobi: The WrestlingKult theme already existed but that was the point where we decided to make it a real band.
Everything seems to be improved, from sound to songs, on Don't Try This At Home. Were you focusing on songwriting even more this time around? The songs are very catchy.
Tobi: The songs were written over quite a long time. "We Want Blood" for example is one of our oldest songs and was originally for a no longer existent German indie promotion. They only used it once and then went out of business. So I don't think we changed a lot, we just grew closer together and knew better what we wanted. Also the guys in the studio understood the assignment very well and made us sound as mean as possible. (They succeeded wildly! -AP)
What is it about pro wrestling you like so much?
Mariano: Most of us grew up with it. When you see it as a child on TV for the first time it is just fascinating and mesmerizing in both ways. Two guys beating the shit out of each other and the crowd goes nuts, good guy vs. bad guy, the bright lights, the entrance, the music. Those were real life superheroes. I also love the different styles of wrestling, similar to all the metal genres, sometimes you like it traditional so you listen to Judas Priest and watch Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior at Wrestlemania 6 or you want thrash, then listen to Bonded by Blood and watch Bruiser Brody vs. Abdullah the Butcher, you want some Vulgar Display of Power watch Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka, rock 'n roll with Motorhead and Triple H vs. Taker, Okada vs. Omega with some Blind Guardian tunes, Slowly We Rot with some 2000s CZW TODs and so on...
Tobi: I actually stumbled into my first wrestling show when I was on a metal festival. The band that was playing did not interest me so I went to the place next door where wXw Superstars of Wrestling took place to have a beer with some friends that were there. Nobody wanted to see a ticket so I went further in and when I stood in front of the ring Walter (now Gunther) was slamming his opponent so hard, the ground shook. I was in love immediately.
Do metal and pro wrestling go together? I find a lot of metalists like it that I talk to.
Mariano: Definitely. Wrestling brought me into metal. I got the WWF Full Metal: The Album in 1996 and the two opening tracks "We're All Together Now" and "Thorn in Your Eye" were metal songs featuring Jon Oliva of Savatage, Scott Ian of Anthrax, and some other metal musicians. Also, many wrestlers had and still have metal songs or riffs as themes. In 1998 I saw a wrestling TV show in Germany where they had the music video of Stuck Mojo's "Rising" in which Raven and DDP played in at the end and begged my mom to buy me the record.
Hagen: Like Mariano said, the fascination started as a kid, watching guys like Diesel, Razor, Bret Hart, and Shawn Michaels beating the shit out of each other. Then the WWF released a sampler, Full Metal: The Album out in 1996 and the love for wrestling and metal combined. And after all these years you can listen to this on our records.
What are your musical influences for this project specifically? I imagine they're diverse.
Mariano: Main influence overall I would say are Eat the Turnbuckle. They started the whole idea of a wrestling themed band with the combination of music, lyrics, look and show. Other musical influences we can all agree with are S.O.D., Slayer, Sodom, Obituary, Power Trip, and the famous German singer Kalle Haverland.
Are you familiar with the TV Show "Dark Side of the Ring" at all? I would imagine you could dig through that for song ideas for sure!
Mariano: Yes, of course, I think we watched almost every episode so far. There are indeed some songs whose ideas came from the show like "I Shot Dino Bravo" and "Cocaine & Cowboy Boots."
Who is your favorite wrestler of all time? Mine is easily Kazuchika Okada, but if you asked me when I was eight years old, it was Hulk Hogan!
Mariano: Well mine are Macho Man Randy Savage and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Eight year old me was also a Hulkamaniac and a huge Ultimate Warrior fan!
Tobi: SABU! I also like Jon Moxley, Blue Meanie, and New Jack.
Hagen: CM Punk, Stone Cold, Roddy Piper, Dustin Rhodes, The Goon, and Barry Horowitz.
Who had the idea to write "I Shot Dino Bravo" for the record? I laughed my ass off when I read that title the first time, and I knew I had to listen to this band!
Mariano: That idea came while watching his Dark Side of the Ring episode.
Tobi: Hagen came up with this black metal-ish riff, it only took a few minutes to write the whole song.
What's next for Wrestlemaniacs? Are you writing or playing shows at all?
Mariano: Currently we are preparing for some summer festival shows. We don't play very often because we also have other bands we're in and wanna keep our shows like a Brock Lesnar appearance - a special attraction.
I couldn't figure out who "Cocaine & Cowboy Boots" was about. Tell me about that song.
Mariano: That's also from a Dark Side of the Ring episode which has the same title. It's about UWF Promoter Herb Abrams who wanted to participate with WWF in the early 90s. He booked some famous names and big arenas and even got a TV deal but shit went downhill fast as he wouldn't pay his wrestlers and only a couple hundred people showed up at the shows. One final day he was found dead - high on coke, oiled up and wearing nothing but cowboy boots. So I thought that's a good story.
Do you plan on doing any videos for any of the new songs like you did for the last record?
Tobi: Yes, we plan to shoot a video for the title track "Don't Try This At Home," it's gonna be a wild DIY slobberknocker. (That's the best kind! -AP)
Do your shows get wild at all? Does the crowd get into the spirit?
Mariano: In Germany wrestling isn't that popular or mainstream as it is in the US, so sometimes people at first are a bit confused and maybe even disgusted when we enter the stage and hit someone with a barbed wire baseball bat, smash someone through a table, or cut someone open with a pizza cutter. We always have some special moves. It also depends on where we play. One time we were almost kicked out of a festival because we smashed some light tubes on each other.
Tobi: That's why we added a disclaimer to our Instagram. The light tubes were fun though, I'd do it again.
End this interview any way you like, and thank you so much for doing this.
Mariano: Always remember: this shit is f'n real to us dammit! Watcha gonna do when the Wrestlemaniacs run violent on you!
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