Believe it or not, Divine Anger is a metal band from another dimension. One moment, they were playing the biggest gig of their life in Wacken – on their side. The next moment, they woke up here, in a reality that is home to you but alien to them.

Now, the six musicians are on a journey to return home, and their first wish is to play their way into the ears and hearts of metalheads, with their expressive power metal – a style that ranges from melodic to aggressive but is always catchy as hell!

Everyone has heroes, and Divine Anger’s strongest influences are metal bands like Iced Earth, Helloween, Angel Dust, and Nocturnal Rites. At the same time, all band members enjoy the impact of more aggressive metal genres.

So, you will mainly hear clean vocals in their songs, but you will also often hear screams, growls, or blends from these different vocal styles, inspired by subgenres like melodic death metal or alternative metal rather than specific bands.

Divine Anger was founded in 2015 by Barry Ross (bass) and Luke Krämer (rhythm guitar), in Hamburg, Germany. With Misaki Hayashi (keyboard), J.J. (lead guitar), Damon (drums), and ART3M (vocals), Barry and Luke found irreplaceable comrades-in-arms, and today, they together form the permanent line-up of Divine Anger.

Although currently completely unknown in our metal scene, Divine Anger has already built up a reputation as a serious newcomer band in their dimension. Indeed, they were just one step away from signing their first record deal, which was to happen right after their gig in Wacken.

But then, things changed.

This was preceded by the release of a demo called We Are Divine in 2018 and the EP Guru Of Hate in 2020 – but in their dimension. Therefore, the band is now working hard to bring their songs to life on our side.

On December 1 their first single Behind The Wall was released. In 2021, a second single Always Now and the EP Guru Of Hate will be unleashed on our ears.

Find out more about this unusual band and it’s out-of-this-world band members – here’s our interview with Luke Krämer!

Beginnings:

Barry and I have been friends since our first days at school and we always hung out together. Since we have a very similar taste in music, we developed in the same direction and eventually picked up instruments ourselves.
Our first stages were our room and then a garage – very classical. Then, smaller gigs and various ‘lineup’ changes with friends and acquaintances followed.
2015 was one of the most important years in our lives. Here we made up our minds and decided to take the band issue seriously. Divine Anger was founded. From then on, we pushed the pedal to the metal, wrote songs, tried a lot of things, and searched for the ideal band lineup.
About three years later we arrived at today’s lineup: ART3M sings, Barry plucks the bass, Damon plays the drums, Misaki adds keyboards/synthesizers, J.J. plays lead guitars, and I rhythm guitars.

Behind the name:

Our band’s name means a lot to us. And the funny thing is that there is actually a lot more behind it, which we only realized after a few years.
The first idea came only because we found the word Divine so cool. Then, we tried different combinations and finally ended up at Anger, because we thought that it fits best with metal.
Funnily enough, the well-known term Divine Anger was the final result. We were totally surprised that this name is not being used by any other metal band. And that, as we now know, neither here nor in our home dimension.
BAM! And so the name was set for us. From time to time we are asked if we are religious and therefore use the name. But this is absolutely not the case and I can speak for everyone in the band.
It’s not influenced by this and we love the name Divine Anger by now, because we associate something completely different with it than most people usually do. For us, this term is the expression of anger that is justified because it is selfless and therefore ultimately not destructive, but constructive.

Serious. Playful. Extraordinary. Power. Metal.

Describe your music in five words!

Inspiration behind “Behind The Wall”:

“Behind The Wall” is the first single release from “Guru Of Hate”, our debut EP. It is a concept CD and tells the story of several key events around World War II. We know that this theme has of course been treated artistically many times before, but it has touched us deeply and inspired us to our songs and you can’t really fight against that as a musician.
The song deals with Anne Frank and her family. In 1942, the situation became so threatening for them that they had to go into hiding in a back building in Amsterdam. Anne Frank wrote her world-famous diary there. On August 4, 1944, the Nazis found the Franks’ hiding place. A few weeks later, the family was taken to Auschwitz, and its members were separated. Anne died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in early 1945.
We read about Anne’s wish that her story be told over and over again so that she and her loved ones could live on in people’s hearts even after their deaths. We hope our song is a small contribution to this and the fact that humble heroes never die.

COVID-19:

To be honest the subject has taken us quite by surprise because we didn’t have this pandemic at home. All in all, of course, Corona makes everything more complicated and more difficult, especially within the music field.
All the same, only talking about us, it’s currently quite alright because we have to start over anyway and rebuild everything from scratch.
Besides, we had a lot of luck and by chance and nice people we found accommodation on a farm in the north of Germany. Here we are far away from everything and can fully concentrate on our music and the next steps.

Online concerts:

We would love to it but it will take more time. We have to rebuild some very basic things and reconstruct all the music that was already completely finished before the dimension jump.
We also have to find back into a materially stable situation where all band members feel safe and comfortable. Some of us can handle the current situation better than others, but the bottom line is that it will take a lot of time before we are back on safe ground.
So we are very happy that we have already found fans on social media, who are also really nice metalheads. This is so important for us and gives us a lot of energy, hope, and courage.

Fun facts:

Yes, there are indeed two very funny stories. The first one concerns J.J. and the circumstances of how exactly she became a band member. That was purely by chance. We were all at the Wacken Open Air in the same year, but independently of each other. J.J. was desperately looking for the closest bathroom and ran into Barry by coincidence. He offered her the toilet inside his caravan.
Afterward, we all got into a conversation over a few beers and BBQ and a little later J.J. was a part of our Divine Anger family. The irony of the story is that if she hadn’t had to go to the bathroom so urgently, she probably never would have played music with us.
The second thing is about Damon and actually more like a running gag. Damon is so tall that he is often not completely depicted in pictures. Then either the head is missing or everything from the shoulders up. It’s hilarious! By the way, we tease him a lot with it, but that leaves him indifferent.

This goes out to everyone who has read this interview so far and is still engaged: Stopping here is not a good idea, because this was just a glancing light. Join our community on our social media channels and dive further into our story on our website. We have the feeling that we are at the beginning of something big – create this together with us…

A Message to readers