The Obelisk Questionnaire: Godzilla in the Kitchen
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Eric Patzschke, Felix Rambach and Simon Ulm of Godzilla in the Kitchen
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
What we do I describe as having fun! But the most important thing is that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We spend a lot of time together and for this reason it is important to spend this time with a smile on your face, no matter how serious the music is. Of course, our music is basically serious and so are the topics we address with our covers and videos. We started jamming and quickly realized that we all shared similar musical roots. First songs were written pretty easily and so we decided to stick to that process. In some way we express what moves us. Every time we jam something that really gets us, everyone in the room knows immediately: that was awesome – let’s make something out of it. You could say the songs depicts our emotional state at the time it were written. In our two albums, of course, we have gone through a development. Exodus is more of an overall concept, whereas on Godzilla In The Kitchen we also had many different songs related to the genre. We love both albums and they mean a lot to us as a band.
Describe your first musical memory.
Eric Patzschke: My musical inspirations are manifold. but today i would limit myself to my biggest inspiration: Led Zeppelin. To this day, I can turn on any record by this band without a single song on it annoying or disturbing me. The songwriting is simply impeccable, everything fits, the sound is timeless and what inspires me the most is that they never thought about music genre. There is rock, prog, psychedelic, folk, country in their songs but in the end it is still Led Zeppelin. For me simply the greatest band in the history of music.
Felix Rambach: The discovery of the band Porcupine Tree was one of the main turning points in my musical development. When we had our final concerts at the music school, my teacher wanted me to play “The Sound Of Muzak” by Porcupine Tree. By that time, I covered a lot of rock and metal songs from Slipknot, Green Day, Lamb Of God, System Of A Down, but also some of the older stuff like Dire Straits, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and so on. But when I was introduced to the musical work of Gavin Harrison, I was immediately flashed. The combination of his sound and the way he constructs his drum parts were kind of a game changer for me. I really wanted to become such a musical and interesting drummer like he is. Since then I have studied a lot of musicians like Danny Carey, Benny Greb, David Garibaldi or Jeff Porcaro (and still do). I like how all of them manage to serve the music while preserving recognizability by their sound and the way they play. They always add something special to the music. And that’s what I want to do when we write our own songs. Make the music more interesting while keeping the vibe of the song running and evolving. For me, there is never a master plan, we jam and whatever comes out, if we like it, we keep it. That’s what I really love about our music, every song is always kind of a retrospect at our emotional state of the time it was written.
Simon Ulm: I am pretty sure my first musical memory was listening to the “Made in Japan” Live Album of Deep Purple. I remember listening to the Bass Lines of Roger Glover and thinking: I definitely wanna do something like this. I think this was before I started walking. From there on I sucked in every Rock and Metal song I could get my hands on and dreamed of moving people with hammering bass lines myself. When I was thirteen, I discovered “Forty Six & 2”by Tool and immediately bought a cheap bass guitar and amp. That’s how it happened!
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Wacken 2022. We were invited to play six shows at the biggest metal festival in the world. It was the first festival experience as artists and also the first time Wacken Open Air for us. Having both of it checkmarked in one run is definitely something we are very proud of. We have a very detailed report on our website if you wanna read about all the details of this trip.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
It wasn’t possible for us to get together on a continuous basis after graduation in 2016. We each had to earn money and come to terms with our new lives as workers. In 2020, we all finally settled back in Leipzig. So you can say that we were very inactive as a band for at least 5 years and only saw each other once a month. It was a very hard time for the band. But we always believed that we would get back together in one place and go for it. Funnily enough, that happened in the middle of the 2020 pandemic. We remastered the first album and recorded the second one straight away. 2022 then Wacken and touring and we can’t wait to go on tour again this year.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
What we notice, not at least because it affects our own music as well, is that everything is getting way more technical. There are numerous ways to set up your gear in the way you want it to achieve the sound you’re aiming for and the result is that music itself is getting more and more detailed. The term “sound” is becoming increasingly important, you want one that makes you recognizable but not too diverged from the average listening habits. It’s a tough balancing act. Plus, with today’s capabilities for everyone to produce and promote their own music very easily, you have to compete with a lot of other musicians. However, this – in order to keep your music interesting and some sort of outstanding – leads to whole new approaches to writing music and thus to many niche genres.
How do you define success?
To us, success is measured by response. As artists, we make our art to transport something. Since we don’t have any lyrics, we aim to transport feelings by our music. And the idea of transporting something seems to lose sense when there’s no one receiving it. We want to take the people out on a journey with us, either to forget about their everyday worries, problems and anxieties or to process them in a world we created. So basically, every person truly appreciating our music is a success for us.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Ok let’s try to stick to something unserious here. A story from our last tour in October 2022: Simon, our bass player, was so exhausted shortly before the end of the tour that he took his sleeping bag and lay down on the board next to our car and just slept for two hours. We still have no idea how he managed to do that and why he felt better afterwards than before, but we hope that our sleeping situation on tour will improve in the future and that we can offer him a warm bed next time…
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A 3rd album :)
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Art is a way of communication, it transports feelings and emotions in a way that spoken words aren’t capable of. Today, a lot of popular music is produced with no real intention, lyrics are vacuous and the main goal of those songs is to be not annoying or irritating. It kind of leads you to not listen properly. But if you make music as art because you have something to say, you want people to listen, to feel what you want to make them feel, whether its pleasant feelings like love, joy or uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, depression, frustration and so on. You need the full spectrum. Otherwise, you’re not producing art, you’re producing entertainment.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
The development of hangover-free beer!
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