SHOSTA interview (part 1)

“It’s sometimes scary and also frightening.”

3 facts:
– Shosta was founded in 2020 and was created as a solo project by Peter Grimm after his band Intrigen fell victim to the pandemic.
– Peter has been playing in various bands since he was 13 and has been writing lyrics ever since.
– After the first EP “Wachsen”, it was time to bring Shosta to the stage, and so the project became a three-piece band.

With the album “Wandel” (release date May 10, 2024), Shosta embed themselves somewhere between dark wave, post-punk and eighties synths. We talk to the trio about change, human copies and casting pearls before swine.

Torn?
Orkus: What’s the band name all about? What does Shosta mean?
Peter Grimm: I spent a large part of my school years at a music boarding school in the Harz Mountains, where the focus was on classical music and choral singing. Because of this, classical music in particular has a great influence on me and I have my favorite composers Dmitri Shostakovich is at the top of my list. His music and also his biography have something very special about them for me. He was Stalin’s house and court composer and at the same time he detested the Stalin system. This dichotomy, which most likely also affected his mental health, can be clearly felt in his music. On the one hand, the heroic pro-system work to survive, and on the other, the pieces that express incredible frustration and inner turmoil. That really fascinated me.

O: Let’s stay on the subject of “names”: Why does “Wandel” fit so well as an album title?
PG: I think that change is such a fundamental part of all our lives (whether we allow it or resist it) that everyone can find themselves somewhere in the term. Perhaps that’s what makes it so appealing and attractive as an album title.

Changes?
O: What do you associate with “changes” in general? Is that something desirable or frightening?
PG: I think it always depends on how you deal with change. Do you want to be and/or remain versatile? Do you feel comfortable in the here and now and want to delay or even prevent change? I personally associate change with something positive and something that you have to let happen. You have to be and remain adaptable, open and tolerant of new things. We live in a world in which everything around us is constantly evolving and we often make life difficult for ourselves if we oppose these developments. That takes energy and is nerve-wracking. I also don’t like many things and how they are changing these days. Especially with regard to the culture industry and the experience of culture as such, this is sometimes difficult for me to grasp and understand. But that might be going a bit too far.

Natural cycle?
O: The album concept with its three acts is very well thought out. Was this planned from the outset or how can we imagine the work on “Wandel”?
PG: This concept actually came about while we were working on the album. So far, six songs were finished and they all built on each other in some way. Then I had the idea of forming the album into this structure, which increases and builds up more with each song or each act, and I then wrote corresponding lyrics to complete this structure. The result has become very coherent for the three of us and so you could now theoretically listen to the album in a circle and follow the cycle mentioned in the song “Karussell”.

Human copies?
O: One song that particularly inspired me was “Plastikmensch”. Is this our future? Or has it long been a reality? Colorless, conformist existences?
PG: The three of us also talked a lot about the song and each of us had different associations with it, which I myself found very exciting. Moritz said that the text made him think of rich American reality TV families, and Nico thought of the scene in “American Psycho” in which Patrick Bateman gets ready in front of the mirror in the morning. I think a lot about how we as humans deal with different things. I notice this in a special way with music and art when I look at certain trends and the current music landscape. They copy what they can, and everything somehow looks and sounds the same. It’s the same when I look at “ordinary people” (I’m deliberately exaggerating here). It is particularly noticeable when I see young groups of people who appear to have been copied in terms of hairstyle and clothing. That is sometimes creepy and also frightening.

Pearls before swine?
O: There is also a video for “Gold”. Decadent with pig masks. How did this cool concept come about?
PG: I thought for a long time about how best to stage “Gold” – the concept of capitalism or decadence – and the criticism of it. The idea with the pig masks originally came to me when I was standing in the dance hall of the Residenz in Bamberg. Somehow the term “pig system” came into my head. I am annoyed by money. I’m annoyed by it because it’s a concept that somehow has to be there and you can’t really let go of it. There are people who absolutely need it and people who have far too much. And those who have it then take it from the people who need it. In the video, the two pig heads eat raw pork. This is precisely what is intended to illustrate this grievance. They eat their own people and then indulge in a decadent and unbridled frenzy. Sometimes I get the feeling that criticism of capitalism and wealth is an old chestnut. But perhaps this simply shows once again that this is a highly topical issue where “change” is very, very urgently needed.

Watch the video here:

In the next part, we talk to Shosta about their formative albums, art as zeitgeist, the black scene and take a look into the future.

Claudia Zinn-Zinnenburg

Line-up:
Peter Grimm – vocals, lyrics, songs
Nicolas Frank – guitar
Moritz Fris – drums

Experience SHOSTA live:
April 27, 2024 DE-Ansbach, Die Grotte
May 09, 2024 DE-Nuremberg, Der Cult
May 19, 2024 DE-Leipzig, Dark Affair
May 24, 2024 DE-Bamberg, Kontakt Festival
May 25, 2024 DE-Braunschweig, Nexus
June 07, 2024 DE-Cologne, 674fm
June 08, 2024 DE-Gelsenkirchen, Here is not there!
June 14, 2024 DE-Gera, Kaiserwerke
June 28, 2024 DE-Hildesheim, KuFa Lösecke
July 05, 2024 DE-Würzburg, b-Hof

Do you already have your tickets?

Listen to Shosta in our “Current Issue” playlist:

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