Interview: Christopher Ruf "C.S.R." (SCHAMMASCH)

Hello Chris thank you or your time to do this interview. How are you?

Hi. I’m at home. I’m mostly at home and working from home. So yeah, that is my place to be.

Preparing or the upcoming shows I guess?

Yeah, among other things. I’m also a freelance designer. I do all the songwriting, all the show coordination and band things and also my design work from home. I’m always juggling between 10 things at the same time.

Oh I know that feeling because I’m also a designer and juggle between other things in the same time. So we are colleagues in that matter. Let’s start with the obvious reason we’re talking today. Ten years after „Triangle“, you’ve decided to bring the entire album back to the stage. The last time you actually played in Sofia was almost ten years ago, while you were touring „Triangle“. Now you’re returning a decade later to perform it for its anniversary. Does that feel like a coincidence to you, or perhaps like some kind of sign — a circle (or a triangle if you wish) closing?

I think it has more to do with the fact that we haven’t been touring extensively since around 2019. Touring became quite difficult for me personally in certain ways, and over the years I just felt that my capacity for it was fading. Since then, we’ve mostly focused on one-off shows, festivals and things like that. And, you know, Sofia — or Bulgaria in general — isn’t necessarily a place where bands like us have that many opportunities to play. I guess there aren’t that many promoters working with this kind of underground music, so the possibilities are naturally a bit more limited.

It’s not like we’ve been playing a lot in the surrounding countries either. We’ve done relatively few shows in that part of Europe over the years. So I think it’s actually quite cool that the timing now almost lines up with a decade since we were last there. And, of course, with the 10th anniversary of the album, it makes even more sense. But in the end, that’s simply how the live market works for us nowadays. There aren’t many countries where we play regularly anymore, apart from Germany, which is still probably our main territory for shows. When it comes to the rest of Europe, we play much more selectively, and Bulgaria is naturally part of that as well.

Has revisiting „Triangle“ actually affected the music you're creating now? Can returning to an old work unexpectedly point toward the future?

Interesting question. It was definitely quite a challenge to revisit the whole album, especially in terms of bringing it back into a live environment. It took a lot of work to make it fit the setup we’ve been using with the band over the past few years. We had played the entire album live once before, at Roadburn in 2017, I think, but back then we did it in a much more limited way. Now we really try to play as much of it ourselves as we can. Of course, there are still backing tracks, especially when it comes to the ambient parts of the album, because there are simply limits to what you can reproduce live, even as a five-piece band. Honestly, you’d probably need something like a ten-person band to perform everything without relying on any backing tracks. So it was a lot of work to translate the album, and especially those ambient parts, into a live environment that fits what we currently do on stage. And that naturally forced me to go back into the details of the album again.

I had to reopen a lot of old studio projects, and I realized that I had really underestimated how much work had gone into this record, especially the third part, the whole ambient section. The studio project for that part alone had, I think, more than 300 tracks in it. So you can imagine what that means.

Of course, I can. But does that mean that, in recent years, you’ve started looking at your work in a much more complex way?

Yeah, everything we’ve done has always been very complex when it comes to studio work. It’s always been like that, and I think to some extent it probably always will be. But right now I’m actually moving in the opposite direction. For the next release, I’m trying to limit myself a little more in terms of how many tracks I use. Instead of having another ten guitar tracks on top of the main ones, maybe there’ll be two or three — or none at all. I think it’s simply a different approach to creativity and songwriting. There are obviously advantages and disadvantages to both ways of working.

But honestly, I don’t think I’d have the patience nowadays to make something like Triangle again. As I said before, going back through those old studio projects made me realize how much energy I had back then — a lot of youthful energy, a lot of fire. I needed that, because otherwise something like that probably wouldn’t have been possible. Nowadays, you get older, life gets harder, and life is getting harder for everybody anyway. Society is in a pretty fucked-up place at the moment, and that tires you out. So with the coming record, I’m definitely steering towards something a little less complex.

Yeah, that actually leads to my next question Do you think the way people consume music today — through algorithms, playlists and increasingly AI-generated content — is changing not only the music industry, but also our ability to really listen?

Of course. I can’t really speak for myself in that sense, because first of all, I don’t listen to that much music nowadays for various reasons. But I was never the kind of person who had a Spotify account and listened to music that way. It was never really my thing, because I didn’t like that way of consuming music from the beginning — turning it into this kind of by-product of everyday life, almost like background noise. That’s how I feel people often use it. And of course, the more everything moves in that direction, the less we’re actually able to pay attention to what’s happening and really get to the core of a piece of music. Instead, people just skip to the next song if one part doesn’t fit their mood, sounds different from what they expected, or simply doesn’t grab them immediately.

To me, this way of listening to music — if you can even call it that — is quite perverted. It deprives the work of its value and, in many cases, of its core meaning. Of course, that doesn’t apply to every kind of music. But with something like what we do, it’s definitely not meant to be consumed like fucking fast food. It’s there to be absorbed. You’re supposed to go on that journey, let yourself be taken by it, and really dive into what is happening. And to me, it’s a huge tragedy what is happening to art right now — not just music, but art in general. I really don’t think humanity is doing itself any favors by moving in this direction.

It’s actually quite a tragic subject for me to talk about because it affects me every day. It affects my motivation and my passion for what I’m doing, because at some point you start feeling obsolete. And then, of course, you have AI coming on top of everything else, which for me makes the whole situation even worse. So yeah, I genuinely feel under attack from all of these developments. Not just Spotify, not just playlists, but very much AI as well, and the direction all of this is taking.

Everything is algorithms, apps and platforms...

Yes, of course. Really, all of this stuff is designed so that some fucking billionaires can put even more money in their pockets, while everyone else is simply deprived of more and more. In the end, it’s just greed — growth for the sake of growth. And, you know, there’s a word for that: “cancer”. That’s really what it is to me.

Yeah, exactly. Well said, really well said. But in the same time we also live in a time when people are increasingly sensitive to language, imagery and ideas, and artists can very quickly become the target of outrage or so-called cancel culture. Schammasch deals with darkness, religion, symbolism and uncomfortable ideas — subjects that can easily provoke people. Do you ever think about that, or do you simply follow the art wherever it takes you?

I think there’s quite a lot to unpack here. We were never really the target of any of these things, probably because we’ve always approached what we do with a certain amount of common sense. The topics and ideas we express through our art can be interpreted in many different ways, and I also believe that art should be allowed to do a lot. At the same time, of course, there are certain limits and boundaries, and as an artist you have to bring some common sense into your work. If you don’t, then you also have to live with the consequences. And in some cases, there absolutely should be consequences.

But on the other hand, I think a lot of art nowadays is being attacked or condemned for the wrong reasons. And that’s not really productive when it comes to the role art has in society, because art has always been a space for criticism. And criticism has to go both ways. It can’t just be, “As long as you say what I believe is right, everything is fine. But the moment you step outside that line, you become my enemy and should be forbidden.” That’s not how criticism works, and it’s not how common sense works either.

But to answer your question directly, it’s not something I think about when I’m writing or making art. I don’t really consider whether something might provoke that kind of reaction, because I was never really a target of it, and I don’t think I will be — at least not in any way that would be justified.

So I simply express whatever I want to express, in the way I want to express it. It’s never really been a problem so far, and of course I hope it stays that way.

Schammasch has always maintained a certain distance between the individual person and the artistic entity. Do you think hiding or reducing the personal identity of the musicians allows the audience to engage with the music more deeply, without the personality of the artist getting in the way?

Yes, I think that puts it very well. And of course, that’s one of the main reasons why we still do it this way. Our personalities don’t really have much space in how we present ourselves as a band or as an artistic project, because that’s simply not what it’s about. Putting too much focus on the individual takes attention away from the core — from the message, the expression, and the artistic experience we want people to have when they come to our shows or listen to our albums.

On the other hand, it also makes me much more comfortable with what I’m doing, especially on stage. I don’t need my face to be on a million pictures all over the internet. I don’t need this kind of personality cult bullshit or the feeling that I’m somehow important just because I’m playing on a stage somewhere. I’m really not concerned with those things.

And over the past 10 or 15 years, I’ve been grateful many times that we chose to do it this way. It still allows me to walk around at a festival, for example, without necessarily being recognized, and I really enjoy that.

I simply don’t need this personality cult around me. Again, I think it just takes attention away from the more important things — from what we’re actually trying to do in the end.

Do you think mystery is becoming harder to preserve today, when artists are expected to constantly explain themselves through interviews and social media, like we're doing today.

Well… (laughs) The funny thing is that I’ve turned down pretty much every interview for quite a while now. The last ones I did were, I think, sometime early last year, maybe around January, for the latest album cycle. But even before that, I hadn’t done many interviews for probably five years or so.

It’s something I’ve become extremely careful about because, to be honest, I grew quite tired of explaining too much about what we’re doing. If you give ten interviews over the course of one or two days, you quickly notice that the questions are often the same, and naturally you start repeating yourself. For me, that gets stale pretty quickly. And of course, that’s not always fair to the interviewer, because they might be asking you something for the first time even though you’ve already answered it nine times that day.

So that’s one of the reasons why I chose to give far fewer interviews over the years, and I still do. I made an exception this time because of the upcoming show and the promotion around it, which is obviously a good reason to do one. But when it comes to random interview requests without any particular reason or purpose behind them, I usually still turn them down. I’m simply not that interested in explaining too much about what I’m doing. It’s all there, and it’s open to interpretation. That’s part of the purpose of it in the first place.

And it's mostly already said in the music

Yeah, or at least it’s there to be explored. And sometimes explaining too much takes away from that exploration. I don’t think art necessarily has to be perceived in exactly the way the artist intended when they created it. It’s really up to each person to find, or even create, their own meaning in a piece of art

I see. You're right. So thank you again for doing this interview with me then!.

Of course, no problem.

So let me just wrap it up a little bit. So Schammasch has always existed somewhere between extreme metal and something much broader. Do genres still have any real value to you, or do they become limitations once an artist develops a strong identity of their own?

I don’t think genres have ever had that much meaning to us, especially not to me when it comes to the band. I still value certain aspects of metal genres, of course, but in terms of my own creative work, I don’t think those labels really serve much of a purpose anymore. They haven’t for a long time. As you said, genre definitions can limit your perspective, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid. If anything, I’ve been moving in the opposite direction for the past decade or so.

That said, on the upcoming record there is a certain amount of conscious limitation for specific reasons. But that’s more about creating a particular atmosphere or vibe, not about trying to fit into a specific genre. I don’t really see Schammasch as part of this or that movement within metal. We fit where we fit, and in other places maybe we don’t fit so well — and that’s completely fine. For me, genre boundaries are really just different colors you can use on a canvas to create whatever it is you want to create. That’s basically how I’ve seen it ever since I started working on the band’s second album.

After all the darkness, philosophy and symbolism around Schammasch - what is the least Schammasch thing about you in real life?

….The Least Shamash thing?

Yes.

….Oh my God! (Laughs) What a question!

I'm trying to lighten up the end of the interview (laugs).

You know, it’s funny because, of course, there’s a certain image we try to convey under the banner of the band. But as a private person, I’ll probably disappoint a lot of people by saying that I’m really not a very serious guy. I joke a lot, I can be silly — I’m just a fucking regular guy, really. And I guess that’s probably the most un-Schammasch thing about me.

Just by being regular?

Yeah, I mean regular in terms of how I live my everyday life — maybe not so much when it comes to my job, because that’s still pretty irregular compared to most people’s lives. But yeah, what can I say? I really enjoy video games, for example. Maybe that’s something people wouldn’t necessarily expect.

I think people often assume that behind all these projects and all these mystified images there must be this really weird, obscure, strange, almost alien person. They create this image in their heads.

But from my own experience of meeting many musicians — people I also had certain ideas about beforehand — I can tell you that in probably 80% of cases, those images turn out to be quite wrong. Because in the end, we’re all just people. That’s really all there is to it.

That's true. Yes. Okay. So thank you very much for this interview. It was a pleasure. Can I ask you just to leave a few words for the people that will be coming to see Schammasch, maybe for the first time in their lives?

Yes, of course, and thank you as well, by the way! We really hope this will be a special experience for you — maybe something a little different from what you would normally expect from a metal show. We’re very happy to finally be able to come back after all this time, and we really hope we can leave people with an experience they won’t forget anytime so.

Okay, thank you very much for your time, Chris, and looking forward to see you on the show.

Cheers! Thank you too, and see you there.

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More about SCHAMMASCH

Website: https://schammasch.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SCHAMMASCH
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schammaschofficial/

Tickets for the show in Sofia - buy here

Author: Nikola Petras
September 2026