BONFIRE frontman Claus Lessmann is featured in a new interview with RockEyez.com. An excerpt is available below.

Q: You will be coming to the States in July for Rocklahoma. How was it arranged for you to play that huge event?

Claus: "As far as I know, one of the present promoters of Rocklahoma is a big Bonfire fan since the '80s, when we last played the US. So he just contacted us and asked us if we would be interested to play this awesome festival, which is also well known over here (in Germany). Of course we said yes, because we have not been to the US since that time and it will be a big honor for us to rock you guys."

Q: Tell us a little about the latest Bonfire DVD, The Räuber.

Claus: The Räuber is a rock opera based on Die Räuber, a play by the German author Friedrich Schiller. There’s a CD and a DVD release. It was the idea of the German director Piere Pollitz, who thought it would be interesting to work with a rock band on some real tough stuff of German literature. From the beginning on they told us that we would not have to do something that has nothing in common with Bonfire. Do what you always do and what you wanna do... that was what they said... and so we did it, and it was and it is a lot of fun. The Räuber is not a real conceptual album. We just wanted to write a couple of real good songs for the play that would work perfect with the story. Also we intended to make them sound not like typical theatre songs, because that’s the type of songs I really don’t like. It also was kind of obvious to us that the title must be The Räuber, because that’s the name of the play. We tried to use a lot of the original lyrics or lean on to them as much as possible and usefully. That is also the reason why some of the songs are in our native tongue German, because it developed a very strong effect on everybody who listened to the stuff. It was quite interesting to use German lyrics as well and mixing it with the English lyrics and it also was kinda natural, because the play is by a German author.

Go to this location for the complete interview.