IH8YH Interview

IH8YH (GER) produces flyers, video bootlegs (in the past), shirts, graphics and other music related stuff.

Please introduce yourself and what you`re doing.

Hi, my name is Joerg but i commonly go by the nickname "Naggi". Like you already mentioned, I am doing all sorts of artworks for bands, mostly in the hardcore scene, i've done tons of video bootlegs in the past too


Please tell us how you got the idea for your name – I HATE YOUR HEROS (IH8YH).

"I hate your heroes" is a line from an Alec Empire song from his "Intelligence and Sacrifice" album. During the time that record came out, all my so called friends were listening to some stupid bullshit music and they all hailed it as THE one true thing. I hated all that stuff. So when I got that record and heard Empire scream that line it was like 'yeah man!' and I started to use it as tagline kind of. I dont even remember when I started to use the shortform of it but it had probably something to do with the Internet haha. Over all the years it became like a trademark for me, you know... Then i think about 3 years ago my friend Andy from EMBRACED BY HATRED, he's now playing in THE ICE as well, did a Tag-logo of the shortform and I loved it and got it tattooed on my leg.


For which bands did you work? And what did you create for them?

oh man thats such a list... Labelwise i did stuff for Alveran Records (lots of different stuff), Filled With Hate and Massive Bloodshed. On the bandside there are: The Anxiety Infect, Ashaiya (unfortunately they split up so that stuff was never released), Bastard Lovechild from London, Black Friday 29, Blastout, Blood By Dayz still have an unfinished artwork from me that might be used in the future, Brothers In Crime, Bun Dem Out for which I did the artwork of their "The Few The Deep" album, Circle of Death, City To City, Cold Existence from Vegas, Copykill, DLS, Embraced By Hatred, Fallbrawl, For The Glory, Forsaken, From My Hands, Gunned Down, Heavy Hitters from California, In Blood We Trust, Los Muchachos De La Noche, Powermonger from London, Reborn To Conquer, Reduction (I basically did EVERYTHING that you can touch haha), Ruckus, Screamin Silence, Six Ft Ditch, Unit 731, World Gone Mad and probably a few others i've forgotten. you're lucky I'm keeping all my work since a while otherwise that list would have been VERY short. I also did stuff for a new clothing line called "They Live, We Sleep!" with a Conspiracy Theory theme, I did tons of flyers for shows, lots of them for Rico 17 Stitches. Pressure Festival posters, catalogues, some stuff for Crews like DRM, RBS and SOSF, a logo for the Radioshow "Mayhem" and some other stuff. last but not least i've worked with Times of Grace tattoo but thats mainly "put it together"-Stuff like Pete has fixed artwork and wants to have it as a flyer or something like that. that was name dropping galore


With which band / label would you like to work with?

I have some merchstuff for Strapping Young Lad that is unreleased, that would be amazing if that would get printed some day. Crowbar would be a dream and the biggest honor ever. theres not much bands that would be realistic but I'd love to do stuff for other genres maybe, like Doom, Black Metal, and so on. All the dark stuff but anything really. I'd love to do something completely different too, like an Indieband Artwork or something like that. there are even some hardcore bands that would fit to such an artwork. It gets a bit boring to do hardcore all the time.
Labelwise there isnt really something I'd love to do stuff for. Rucktion Records would be cool but they have all their stuff worked out and it always looks good so thats ok :)


How does it work? Do you ask the bands for a job or do they ask you to design something?

Mostly its bands coming to me asking for a shirt design or whatever they need. Or like Rico17Stitches how is coming to me every week with a new flyer haha. that guy is insane... I'll try to get into the style of the band then if they have no special wishes for the design. So i listen to their music, check out their lyrics and the way they are and then try to come up with something that fits their overall style.
But sometimes I get an idea for a specific band and I just do it to see what it looks like. Like REDUCTION. I'd say 95% of their stuff is coming from my brain. Its pretty easy since their singer and me like the same stuff music and movie wise, we are both sick individuals haha, So when i have an idea like "oh... people burning on the stake" I know he will like that, so i just do my ideas and most of it gets printed. It works the same with Six Ft Ditch for example. I'll send it to them then and if they wanna do it cool, if not it's cool too.


Are your drawings for free or do you earn some cash for it?

It's more of a hobby for me and it also depends on who is asking. Reduction for example is getting everything for free since i know their singer for like 10 years or so. So good friends pay less haha. But i also had the cases where i said "listen... normally i'd take XX€ for that but it only took me like 10 minutes so give me XX€ instead, its cool" or when i really had fun doing something I will take less as well. but i'm still not expensive if you have to pay the full price haha. I don't make a lot of it but it pays some shows.


When you search the internet (especially youtube) you`ll find thousands live bootlegs of shows filmed by amateur / hobby filmers. We remind all the great stuff you uploaded years ago. Is it possible that you shoot some videos again?

If you buy me a good videocamera, I will start shooting shows again hahaha. You know it's funny kinda. Even close friends still ask me "dude did you film us last week?" for example. but my cam broke more than 2 years ago. It became such a common thing... Me taping the Shows. It kind of is branded into peoples heads that I was the guy with the Cam filming every show. Theres a hupe box with something like 300 Tapes of unreleased FULL SHOWS somewhere at the Massive Bloodshed "Office" that NO ONE has ever seen except me and Samis. DON't ask me if I plan to release that stuff to youtube some day, cause I don't.


You are Straight edge for more than 10 years, aren`t you? So we two guys aren`t sXe, but in our opinion it`s a lifestyle for yourself, not for other. If we remember correctly we never ever saw you in “sXe-merch”. What do you think about all the HC-Kids, who wear a sXe-shirt, mesh short, clock, belt and shoes? Also this kind of guys who present this attitude extremely?

I'm Straight Edge since birth. so almost 29 Years now and counting. I have two or three Edge-Shirts, yeah It's three I think but I don't wear them often. Like you mentioned, It's something I do for myself. A pledge I made while my father was an alcoholic when I was a little kid. I swore to myself never to put anyone through the stuff my family had to go through because of his weakness. So i never tried alcohol or drugs or cigarettes. It's something you really do for yourself and maybe for a few loved ones like in my case. I think that the more outspoken people are about being straight edge, the more likely they are to drop it again. You kinda can tell when someone is just in it for a while and is as outspoken in like 2 years as i was in 10 years of knowingly being Straight Edge. (because I didnt knew there was a scene for my way of living when i was younger, I only got to know about that when I got into hardcore of course) It's like... you don't see normal people sporting shirts with "I don't do Heroin, i just drink" because they know that Heroin is the worst shit and it will very likely kill them in the end. So why should someone who's not doing alcohol sport that on a shirt?! There's no point to it in my opinion. You just do that stuff and thats it. But it's really up to everyone themselves how outspoken you wanna be about it but remember... the higher your throne the deeper the fall.
People that know me might think now "hey, you got Drug Free tattooed..." so what. It's my leg, its my skin, i have the oath I've given to myself put under my skin as a reminder. thats not YOUR business since its not your body.


Furthermore you coach a HC-Community (slamdancers.net). Everyone who is in HC (or thinks he is) can register to exchange information, opinions and stuff like this. Please tell us something about this board.

slamdancers yeah. It was started several years ago by my friend Tom, whom I got to know from bootlegging shows, he did that too. Since we were listening to the more mosh-oriented style of Hardcore, the stuff that now has degenerated into "beatdown" now, we had people from those bands on the board when it started cause they were our friends. so over time it grew to almost a thousand users until we decided to close the board. the people just posted too much stupid bullshit and we didnt like that so we kicked about 700 people out, closed the board and cleaned it up. We just kept all the people we knew personally and the ones that were really cool. Because of that the board got the reputation of being full of haters and stuff like that. So we had it closed down for about 3 years. During that time the small community got very close and we all became friends! Late last year we decided to open it up again but it all happened like i predicted it. with Beatdown being the latest trend all those idiots came to the board again. The problem with these people now is, they come into a tight group of friends. Its like you are out having a BBQ with your good friends and someone foreign knocks on the door of your garden and whats some of the meat too. So all new people are put through some kind of mental obstacle course and frankly 90% don't make. either they get kicked out again sooner or later or they sometimes even leave themselves haha. Of course all that doesnt give the board a good reputation but i couldn't care less. It's mainly a board for this "core-group" of members that know each other for years. If too much new people piss me off too much, I'll just close it down again for a while. I don't give a shit. There's so many other boards out there that anyone can join.
So.... join and try your luck haha! see if we like you! Chances is we don't


You know that we like Brain-Storming… so here we go:

Mezzo Mix?
blood in bottles and i'm the vampire. tastes best in cans though haha

PS3 or X-Box 360?
PS3. It's a Sith Console!

Violent Dancing?
Outlet of Anger. Violent Fun between friends. What's a little blood between the ones we love.

Worldcup 2010?
totally sucks! the referees should be executed.

Your favourite band?
All out war. period. and A Fine Frenzy in the "non-hard-music" sector.


check out:
www.ihateyourheroes.de
but don't really check it out haha. it's my personal blog and full of boring bullshit I care about that mostly have nothing to do with hardcore.