VADER mastermind Piotr "Peter" Wiwczarek was recently interviewed by Metal-Rules.com's Arto Lehtinen and Luxi Lahtinen about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal-Rules.com: Something has happened in the Vader camp. The previous members Mauser (Stefanowicz, guitar) and Daray" (Brzozowski, drums) have left the band. Were you surprised that they left all of a sudden, and at the same time?

Wiwczarek: "Well, first of all it was not at the same time, maybe close. But it is something that has happened before so, it’s not like a disaster, we’ve just changed members. They wanted to do something different, they decided to do something different; you can’t do anything good if you don’t want to. So for Vader it’s actually good that these guys have left the band, because now we have those who are dedicated and want to do it. The guys playing with us now are kind of like session members at the moment, so we’ll see what happens in the future. It’s not just my decision as a leader, but especially their decision if they want to join us for longer or not. To be in Vader is not just like the good part. The bad part is having to spend the time touring. It’s hard work, you have to sacrifice yourself for that and not everybody can stand it. I think the biggest problem is to find a good member – it’s not problem to find a good musician, it’s a problem to find someone who can spend time touring for maybe two thirds of the year, far from family and friends. That’s something hard."

Metal-Rules.com: You’ve just released this collection album of re-recorded versions (XXV) of the older Vader songs from several albums. What was the idea of the whole package?

Wiwczarek: "Actually I don’t like this kind of thing, it always means ‘time is over’ or something like that. There is so much to do yet for Vader, there’s still people who like to see us more and more so this is no time to say ‘goodbye’. And doing the music, I think that’s the best thing we could do for fans. This album is very specific because we recorded it mainly for a new generation, the generation who knows us from IMPRESSIONS IN BLOOD and THE ART OF WAR. And that’s why there are no songs from these albums included. So we focussed on the first records and a few never released tracks just to close up the beginning of Vader. And that was the main idea for XXV. And better for those fans who have followed since our demo-days. I think it’s also the best gift from the band because we collected all the songs from the last 25 years on one album, but not just collected – re-recorded to give them a new sound. The idea came also from the album Saxon recorded for their 20th anniversary with that kind of stuff. We just recorded more songs. I found it great idea and followed the same idea."

Metal-Rules.com: You recently had the Vader anniversary show in the end of August this year, with several other bands sharing the bill as well - like SAMAEL, GRAVE, ROTTING CHRIST, GOREFEST, MARDUK, etc… How did you pick up those bands for this special event anyway? Were also the former members of Vader taking a part of the anniversary gig?

Wiwczarek: "First we thought it wasn’t going to be easy because every band is enough known, and the question was, are they going to understand the idea of this evening? Because not everyone can forget about their pride and play as a support band. Because it was our anniversary we wanted to play the long set and that’s why we played at the end. It’s not like we wanted to show that we’re the best because we play last, that would be stupid. So each band has the same time to play. We were talking to many bands but not every manager can swallow that so that’s why it was an honour for us to have some of the bands on the bill. This was mostly a gift for the fans – lots of them stayed from the beginning to the end, 12 hours non-stop in the mosh, I remember I talked to the Grave guys after that and they were shocked as they had never seen that from 11 before noon till 11 at night the people could still be so ready, not tiring. That was nice. So that was like a big step back into the good times in the past. And that was the main idea. And I’m so happy that – well we couldn’t do everything that we planned because of the size of the stage and some logistical problems – but all in all I think 90% it was a success and the people were happy and that’s important."

Metal-Rules.com: Will there be a DVD of this?

Wiwczarek: "First we wanted to do that but that would be a problem because we’d need to sacrifice about two or three hundred people [fans] for that, because the team needs the room at the front of the stage. The stage was not as big and we didn’t want to do something like ‘Vader and the rest’ so we kept everything in the background but we left enough big stage for everybody, for the bands to feel like men, like a band. They were guests, not the support guys. The other problem is, when there is a camera, you act differently, and we count on spontaneity, a spontaneous concert. So we decided to leave that idea and just do a show. And you know if it’s not recorded, it’s one of a kind. It wasn’t recorded so everyone could buy and watch, it was one of a kind. And we didn’t expect that so many people would be interested, but a month before the show, everything was sold out, there were people who wanted to pay four or five times the price for a ticket. We tried to keep the price as low as possible but it wasn’t ass-cheap. That’s good though, it means people are into it indeed. And not just from Poland – we had visitors from Russia and from west and even a few guys from America who flew to Warsaw just for the show."

To read the entire interview head to this location.