The point where the engine screams, but the road hasn’t been chosen yet.
It was a time when we didn’t yet know who we were, but we understood with frightening clarity who we didn’t want to be.
Thus emerged the period we later called “Zero Kilometer.” A point on the map where you stop not because you’ve arrived, but because the road ahead doesn’t have a name yet.
The Final Flame.
We were still searching for form, language, scale. But the sound had already been found. Jürgen and I erected a wall behind our backs that resembled the fortifications of a besieged city—rows of Marshall amplifiers arranged in a semicircle. The volume knobs were turned all the way to the right with the kind of fanaticism usually reserved for turning an ignition key or one’s own fate.
We weren’t so much playing as summoning an element. The guitars didn’t sound—they pressed. It wasn’t a “wall of noise, ” but a wall of weight: deafening, dense, without windows or doors. To us, it seemed that this was exactly what power looked like.
Clara didn’t have to sing; she had to cut through the frequencies. Her voice collided with our wall of electricity like a living bird with a turbine. Sometimes she was blown away. Sometimes she passed right through. And in this resistance of the material, there was something truly beautiful.
A person who remembered Clara from the conservatory would hardly recognize her now. The dresses had vanished—as if they had never existed. Their place was taken by torn jeans, a leather jacket, and the gaze of a person ready to sing as if something truly depended on it. She gripped the microphone stand not as an instrument, but as a weapon.
Our song “The Final Flame” became the anthem of that time. “The Final Flame” eventually became a wildfire. Not that careful, tamed fire that heats metal in a blacksmith’s forge, but a primal element. It licked the ceiling of the garage and, with the indifference of an ancient deity, devoured everything it could reach.
Listening back to these recordings now, I don’t hear failure. I hear the search. “The Final Flame” truly became the last flame of that period. It burned away illusions—and left behind ash. And ash, as we know, is good soil.
It was there that we first felt solid ground. We began to understand: to sound powerful, you don’t necessarily have to scream. Music doesn’t ask for hysteria. It demands weight. And weight cannot be imitated—it can only be earned.
I once asked Clara why she needed all this—the factories, the roar, the heaviness—if she could have remained in clean halls and even tonalities.
She replied:
— “There, you can hear yourself too clearly.”
Sometimes it seems to me that we build music out of opposites.
Clara listens to how form is born in silence.
Jürgen listens to how it screams at the height of the wind.
And I only try to understand where, between them, the sound of Metallherz appears.
The Night Road.
After the rehearsal, we didn’t leave for a long time.
The sound continued to live in the garage—viscous, warm, like metal that was taken off the fire prematurely. It seemed the walls of the workshop were slowly breathing it back out, holding the last vibrations in their concrete ribs.
Clara sat on a cable case and was silent.
She is always silent after rehearsals. Not because she gets tired. It’s just that she knows how to let the sound go gradually—like letting water out of your palms without splashing.
Jürgen checked the equipment as thoroughly as if he intended to leave it here forever. He is never in a hurry. There is no haste in him at all—only movement. I noticed long ago: Jürgen doesn’t like to stop, but he doesn’t like to leave abruptly either. He always closes the space behind him carefully, almost respectfully.
When he slammed the last case shut, the garage became unexpectedly empty.
— “Let’s go home, ” he said calmly.
Outside, the industrial zone was already asleep. The rain had ended recently, and the wet asphalt reflected the lanterns as if the city had lit the road for us in advance. The air smelled of iron, dampness, and something electrical—the scent of places where sound is born louder than people live.
Jürgen’s SUV stood at the gates as a heavy dark mass. This car looked like it was created not for roads, but for directions. It never seemed like a city car—even when it stood among houses.
We got into the car. Jürgen turned the key.
The engine spoke with a low, thick sound. There was something soothing in it. Such a sound doesn’t rush you—it holds you.
We slowly drove out of the industrial zone. Warehouses, pipes, concrete skeletons, and power lines drifted past the windows. All of this looked like the scenery of a world in which music is still only learning to speak.
Clara leaned against me.
She looked out the window and hummed almost inaudibly. Without words. Just breath between notes—short, almost imperceptible phrases that appeared and disappeared, as if she were checking if the sound remained inside her after the rehearsal.
I listened to her and thought that it is precisely in such moments that I understand why we play music at all. Not for the stage. Not for the volume. For this quiet state when the sound no longer rings, but still lives.
Jürgen confidently led the car onto the highway leading to the city.
He drives just as he plays—without sudden movements, but with the feeling that he sees the road further than the headlights allow. Sometimes it seems to me he doesn’t drive the car, but negotiates with it.
The speed gradually grew.
The tires slid softly over the wet asphalt, and the road markings disappeared under the light of the headlights in a steady rhythm—like a metronome that counts not time, but distance.
Clara stopped humming and put her head on my shoulder.
I felt her breathing gradually level out. She gives herself to the music completely and after such creative tension, she always becomes surprisingly calm—almost fragile. In such minutes, it is hard to recognize in her the person who a few hours ago held a wall of overdrive with her voice.
An interchange appeared ahead—a huge concrete ring suspended in the darkness. Several roads diverged in different directions. In this void, they seemed drawn, as if someone were offering you a choice on which your entire life path depends.
Jürgen turned off the engine.
I heard the metal of the car slowly cooling, clicking quietly in the darkness.
Clara leaned forward.
— “It’s beautiful here, ” she said almost in a whisper.
I looked at the empty roads receding into the darkness, not understanding what she meant.
Jürgen got out, took a folding knife from his pocket, and drew a circle with the point on an old metal sign that had nothing on it. The sound was dry and ringing—like a short note accidentally extracted from the night.
He looked at the intersection and said:
— “Kilometer Zero.”
The roads diverged into the darkness like strings that no one had touched yet.
— “This isn’t even the beginning of the road, ” I remarked, looking at the empty sign.
— “No, ” Jürgen folded the knife and put it in his pocket. — “This is the calibration point. The place where the engine is running, but the vector is not yet set.”
Somewhere far away, a train passed. The steady rhythm of its wheels on the rails lingered in the air for a long time, slowly dissolving like a reminder that movement continues even when you stand still.
We drove on. The rumble of the train faded, but I could still hear Clara’s quiet singing.
I used to think that Jürgen nicknamed her the Siren for the strength of her voice.
For the fact that she didn’t drown in our overdrive. Only now, looking at the opening lights of the metropolis, I realized: sirens don’t try to outscream the storm. They exist inside it. And that is why they are heard.
Back then, during the “Zero Kilometer” period, we didn’t realize this. We didn’t seek balance. We increased the pressure.
And the fact that her voice survived in this fire was enough for us.
Looking back, I understand: Zero Kilometer is the place from which we finally began our movement.
Industriality, repetitiveness, heaviness—was there even despite the English language. Only one thing was missing: self-trust.
We didn’t know then who we would become.
We rarely thought about the future at all.
We were just driving home—the three of us, through the night, through the sound that hadn’t yet had time to cool inside us.
And only much later did I understand that sometimes the path begins exactly when it seems as if you are returning.
(from
the notes of Viktor Stahl)
The Final Flame / Metallherz — read the lyrics, watch the music video.