One Step Ahead – Hinter Fassaden Interview

Redstar73 Blog: Please can you introduce your band. When it was started? What about your name?
One Step Ahead: We are ONE STEP AHEAD from the small Saxon town Limbach-Oberfrohna. We were founded at the end of 2010 and are playing hardcore-punk. Before that we played in various other bands and were and still are active in political and subcultural groups for a while. Half a year ago our bass player dropped out and since then two friends of us helped us out on our concerts and played bass. It was difficult for us to find a good and suitable name for our band at the beginning.
There is a song called ‘One Step Ahead’ by the band ‘Guerilla’, which we liked very much (especially content-wise), so we named our band after it.

Redstar73 Blog: You are going to release your new album soon. Please tell us about it.
One Step Ahead: Our album called ‘Hinter Fassaden’ will be released as vinyl and download in a few months by the record labels RiotBike Records and Streetwar Records. It is a consistently political album and we hope the music is a bit diversified. The songs show the whole history of our band because some of them we wrote five years ago and others were completed just before the recording. Thematically our songs are primarily about the strengthening of reactionary and fascist powers since the rise of PEGIDA in Germany and the related changes in society. As well we try to point out problems in our own scene so other people reconsider their own acting. In the song ‘Ihre Fassaden’ we say that we do not need right-wing tendencies in the punk- and hardcore-scene and that we do not tolerate merchandise from R.A.C. or right-wing bands on our shows. We definitely wonder how the reactions on the album will be and we can hardly await to hold the result in our hands.

Redstar73 Blog: What other releases have you done so far?
One Step Ahead: The album ‘Hinter Fassaden’ is actually our first album after five years. In 2011 we released our first demo on CD-R and after that we were in studio to record some songs for various Samplers. Two years ago we burnt all of our previous records on a CD and distributed it to the people for donation on our shows. We made two different versions of this CD – the ‘Riot Dogs’n’Cops’ version and the ‘Clench ya fist’ version. Both versions differ only because we liked the idea that people can decide which design they like the most personally.

Redstar73 Blog: How important is for you the DIY idea and politics?
One Step Ahead: Punk is not business. But unfortunately the reality is different. Booking agencies are growing more and more, there are huge salaries for famous bands or reunions of ‘punk legends’, which seemingly have no longer a connection to the scene. And those determine the image of bigger punk concerts or events. In our opinion the idea of DIY is one of the most important in the punk-scene and that’s the reason why we always like to play at solidarity concerts. But politics are very important for us as well. We really like it when concerts run under a political context or when there are some antifascist information points. We think punkrock can only come along with an antifascist self-concept. All too often right-wing tendencies were able to spread? under the mantle of the non-political inside the scene.

Redstar73 Blog: What are your plans for the future?
One Step Ahead: Well at the moment we have no concrete plans for the future.
As a start we want to make our upcoming record public and want to move around a little bit.
In 2017 we would like to make another tour and also play some international concerts, like we did this year. Maybe we will write some new songs as well so that our next album won’t take another 5 years to be released.

Redstar73 Blog: Give us your Top 5 Oi! & Punk Songs
One Step Ahead: Oh, that’s really difficult… we listen to quite different music but we were able to agree on these five songs: