Slow Green Thing was a random find for me around the time your second album came out. I sensed a broad overall influence of doom and stoner genres with others woven in periodically. How would you describe it? Do you believe you've achieved what you set out to do with the music? 

We have followed the doomy riffs since the first days, that's the core of our music. Of course there have been phases where we sometimes lean more towards stoner, later more towards doom... it reflects our state of mind quite well. Our "doom" songs are more dark and melancholic, whereas the "stoner" stuff is faster and more energetic. That's also good, we just reflect ourselves in the music. Also, the many band members contribute to the colorful mix - not to forget the former members - we've had a total of 3 bass players and 2 lead guitarists so far. That's also an interesting fact, the band stays the same at the core, but the nuances change from time to time.

We make exactly the music we envisioned in the beginning - basically slow, gritty, sometimes faster, but always “earthy” and groovy. Of course, in the beginning you never know where the road will lead, but you're constantly evolving. We love what we do and it should stay that way.

The band's name I believe characterizes the band well. Where did the name come from?

Well, that's a long and fun story. The name was a crackpot idea – first, we preferred the name “Ooze”, because it made the teenage mutant ninja turtles mighty. “Ooze” is basically a green slime. But apparently, 1000 other bands do like this name too. So we were not sure about that name. 

During one of the discussions about the band name - it was during the Elder gig in the legendary Chemiefabrik Dresden in 2013, our former bass player Kay said a little depressed in German: “lasst uns doch einfach langsames, grünes etwas als Namen nehmen!” (“Let’s take a name with words like “slow green something” in it”). So the quick translation of this monolog is basically our name – SLOW (“langsames”) GREEN (“grün”) THING (“etwas”).

The band has been around for a number of years now. What are some struggles and accomplishments you believe the band has encountered? 

Most of the struggles are self-made - like having too little rehearsals, trying to find the perfect riffs etc. In fact, it was sometimes challenging to find the time to rehearse. Still is. We all have families now, kids and work sometimes puts obstacles in the way. So keeping the band alive is probably the most important task and it is taken seriously by all of us - rehearsing regularly, playing gigs and most importantly always writing new songs - it has to be fun. We also always want to be productive, we're not a rehearsal band - although of course we've been playing less gigs since corona time. But the pandemic period also had positive sides, because we finally had time to convert our rehearsal room into a studio and we recorded and mixed our upcoming album there ourselves.

Apart from that, we also lost quite a few musicians in the last 10 years - we already have the third bass player and second lead guitarist. The reasons were different - sometimes people left the band themselves, sometimes we had to split up because time, work or whatever made band life totally difficult. 

The current sticking point is the rehearsal space - music is an expensive hobby and also in Dresden it is very tight, especially in recent years, as far as cheap rehearsal space is concerned. We had to leave our previous room a few years ago and since then we have a pretty expensive place to stay, which on the other hand has other advantages. If it gets even more expensive, it's uncertain how we'll continue there. But it’S always important to us to always stay on the ball.

Not to forget about production - we were very lucky in the last few years with our label Fuzzmatazz, so we had relatively little expenses for album production. But now it has changed. On top of that, there's inflation. The current release will already make it through the stage, but we have to look perspectively now that we can finance the upcoming albums - but that will be fine, we have always found a way.

All the problems and challenges we feel and see with all the other friendly bands in Dresden and outside - especially with bands of our size. We also have to mention that we are quite privileged in Dresden and Germany in general compared to other EU countries, regarding the music scene. We have some clubs, the conditions are almost always good. But there are also a lot of bands, so the market is pretty saturated. So you still have to look and be active yourself to stay on the water. At this point, a cheer for our Dresden buddies, bands and booker - among others Elbsludgebooking - who push especially the doom/stoner/sludge scene.

I saw Slow Green Thing has supported some larger acts such as Church Of Misery and Crowbar. How was that experience for the band? 

That was great, of course! You realize that they are all just normal people. Some of them have their quirks, of course, but everyone does. Some are open and talk to you, others are rather closed. Basically, we've only had good experiences supporting bigger bands so far. You also see professionalism on another level and of course you learn something new. Often there is time to talk to the artists in between... like recently with Kirk from Crowbar, where we talked about Kemper Amps - nerd stuff. It's also always nice to see Elder in Dresden, once we were able to support them directly and exchange a few words - they are really relaxed people, some of whom we have known for a long time. There are also Greenleaf, Dopelord, Monolord, Farflung etc. to mention, which we remember fondly.

Your last full length is a few years old now. Is there any new music being written? 

Yes, Amygdala came out in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic - which disrupted the release process a bit - but still the record was well received by heavy metal fans. At that time we also had the guitarist change - Andy left, Dave came. That was painful, but there was no other way. And with Dave as a sound engineer we now also have an awesome combination that allows us to record and mix our stuff ourselves. Which is what we've been doing ever since. The next album - Wetterwarte/Waltherstrasse - is coming in early 2024 - we produced that thing completely ourselves, it should go into production soon (with help from our label). And as already mentioned in the beginning, we are always productive and so for now we have 3-4 new songs additionally, which will be released sometime in the future. Partly we play the new stuff already live, because it's just awesome.

Out of all the platforms to engage fans with, what are your favorites to promote and sell your music? 

That's definitely slowgreenthing.bandcamp.com. But actually our website www.slowgreenthing.de is a good entry source. Of course we are represented on all common platforms, although some of us are very critical of this commercialization and exploitation of artists by the big streaming players. But you would be naive and stupid not to use these channels. Of course we don't get a cent from it, but the reach is simply important to us. We are always happy when we can sell something via bandcamp - but that has increasingly stagnated for a few years. More important is the direct support at gigs - we have some merch and the sales help us to finance our new records. That's also how it works for all of us personally - when we go to gigs ourselves, we try to support the bands by buying merchandise directly at the gigs.

I'm not too familiar with many German bands that I know of. What is the scene like where you come from? 

The scene especially in and around Dresden is very good from our point of view. We don't know it much different, because we live here for a longer period and it's normal for us - but we also talk to bands and artists from other regions and countries and therefore we see how privileged we are here - we got good clubs, festivals, locations and organizations around Dresden and if you don't act too stupid, you gonna get gigs and your fan base. Of course it's all an expensive hobby, you can't make money with it on our level - it's not our goal either. But all in all we have enough possibilities here to be creative and to live it out that way. As already mentioned in the beginning, there are of course problems with affordable rehearsal rooms - that is definitely one of the negative things. 

People know each other - bands, bookers etc. - many are artists themselves, have their own projects and so the scene in Saxony grows and thrives. It's similar in other regions, but we have less insight there. But Germany generally offers diversity in this area. You just have to have time and find the time to accept even longer distances to get to a gig - for a band it has to be worth it. In general, there is always catering, fees, etc. which are not so self-evident in other countries.

I'm not going to list band names here that come from our region - the list would be long, but there are so many in the Stoner/Doom/Sludge area - you can certainly find a lot on bandcamp, there you can also search for hashtags.

If you look a little further, Leipzig and Berlin are not far away and there is a lot of activity happening - especially in the capital city. In the summer, the small and large festivals attract people to attend, some only strictly tailored to certain genres, the other again cross-genre and that makes everything pretty exciting and varied.

What are some new long-term plans for Slow Green Thing? Any tours or festivals the band will take part in? 

Actually, we don't have any fixed dates for gigs at the moment, but will need them 100% and should take care of them soon - not at least to promote our next record. We never had a tour before, mainly because of time management. And a tour would have to be planned first, which is something we don't really do - unfortunately we don't care about gigs that much and we don't have a fixed booker. But who knows how everything will turn out. New songs come and so does the desire to play them live.

If you could book any concert to play what would your ideal lineup be?

Nasty question! You can answer it sarcastically or not - we all have our idols and would certainly like to be on the same stage with them... but let's stay realistic. Gigs with current exciting bands would be the best thing we can imagine right now - every band member surely has his own music taste and would want to see his lineup totally different. It could be a mid-sized festival with such favorites like Slomosa, Slift, Windhand, Acid King, All Them Witches... we would fit in very well here thematically. But sometimes great lineups come up without you seeing it coming beforehand.