The piano in the industrial workshop.
The piano stood among concrete and construction dust—an object that had outlived its era, forgotten between worlds. High industrial windows flooded the space with light but no warmth. The air itself seemed resonant—as if these walls still held an echo, some past strike slowly dissolving into their depths.
A strange feeling arose there—as if the walls were listening. Not reflecting sound, but truly *listening*, waiting for music that could appear within them and hold up the heavy vaults of the old factory.
Clara sat at the instrument as if she had always been a part of this space. Without rehearsal. Without pathos. She simply placed her hands on the keys, gently and tenderly. The melody filled the ether, and the room ceased to be empty.
I expected to hear a fragile sound, almost like glass, ready to shatter under its own weight. But the piano responded differently. It held.
It did not break the silence, and it did not decorate it. It gathered the silence around itself, as gravity gathers dust into a star. Each note sounded as if it possessed weight. Not a metallic weight. A soulful one. That soulful weight—not crushing, but holding. The kind that keeps things from falling apart and resonates in the chest.
Music was born as an emotion and assembled into the construction of a work. Later, I would understand: some spaces exist for a sound that hasn’t yet found its form.
That was the first time I noticed that Clara does not try to lead. She did not pull attention; she did not demand that one follow the melody. Her sound did not dominate — it stabilized. It returned something living and vulnerable to the music, something that later we would long consider a weakness and therefore hide behind a wall of decibels.
I didn’t immediately understand why Jürgen called her the Siren.
Not about a scream. Not about seduction. Sirens don’t scream—they force everything else into silence.
When Clara touched the keys, depth bloomed in the space. Not silence—but *attention*. And in that attention, even the metal seemed to breathe.
At that time, we didn’t yet know that one day this sound would find rhythm and density. But at that moment, it already existed — like a project that hadn’t been realized yet.
Now, years later, I think more and more often: perhaps music is not simply created by people. Perhaps it seeks its carriers. Sometimes through chance—sometimes through those who happen to be there and don’t run from what they hear.
This story is an attempt to record such moments.
I am no historian. No writer.
I am an engineer—trained in calculations, in the strength of structures, in the limits of material. But over time, I understood: sound is also built. It has a frame, tension, load-bearing beams, and points of destruction.
And if music is not recorded — disappears faster than rust consumes iron. Therefore, I keep this chronicle as part of all the creativity. I write because some events cannot be measured by instruments. They can only be held by words while they still retain their temperature.
Preface.
My name is Viktor Stahl. And, it seems — in this place I should tell about myself, as in a preface to a future story.
I was a witness to Metallherz’s birth—its catalyst, its participant, or simply the person standing there when music first began seeking form.
I never wanted to be a frontman.
I wanted to be responsible, like my older brother Jürgen.
When you design a guitar, you don’t think about the stage. You think about the tension: where it will build up, where the metal might not hold, where the wood will begin to live its own life.
With people — it’s the same. Mistakes simply cost more.
My work was always mental. Blueprints, calculations, forms, proportions. Ten hours at a monitor erase the body’s sense. When you stop feeling weight, you lose clarity.
Therefore, I came to the gym. For the weight.
Iron doesn’t lie.
It either yields or it doesn’t. It returns you to the body, and the body — to the present moment. After a good workout, thoughts become simpler. Stricter. Cleaner.
I build the body the same way as guitars: step by step, without sudden decisions, with the understanding that any tilt will sooner or later create a crack.
Music for me is a continuation of the same logic.
Hans gave us the foundation — a rhythm that does not waver.
Clara — the vertical and the breath.
Konrad — the space and the depth.
Jürgen — the direction and the height.
My task is not to prevent these forces from supporting each other.
When I ride my bike, I don’t think about the route. The road builds its own order. Speed erases the unnecessary, leaving only what truly matters. In those moments, lines are born—not as poems, but as confessions that sync with the rhythm.
I don’t consider myself an artist.
Sculpture — teaches me to understand space.
Drawing and Photography — to see volume and form.
Welding — to unite parts into a whole.
But it all started not in an empty gym and not at an old piano.
Point of Origin.
I have often tried to remember exactly when this story began.
Not when the band appeared.
Not when the first song sounded.
But when a feeling first arose in the air that sound is capable of becoming something more than just music.
Sometimes the past returns not as a memory — but as a frame.
Not as a whole story, not as a sequence of events, but as one motionless moment in which everything that will happen later is already hidden. As if time held its breath for a second, allowing one to see the contours of the future — still blurred, still without a name, but already inevitable.
The answer always brings me back to one evening.
Without a stage.
Without an audience.
Without plans.
Just a workshop — the place where Clara and I rest from the city bustle, where I work on my Harley, where the metal cools slowly, holding the memory of fire inside. Where silence is never empty and always waits to be filled.
Nothing special was happening that evening.
That is exactly why it turned out to be important. Real changes are rarely accompanied by loud gestures. They come almost imperceptibly — like a crack in an alloy that seems accidental at first, but later determines the strength of the entire construction.
I didn’t know I was at the point of origin.
I wasn’t looking for a beginning.
I was simply living a moment that would later become the first impulse.
If I close my eyes and try to return there, I always feel the same thing: the warmth of the fire, the smell of smoke, the soft sound of a guitar without an amplifier… and a voice that wasn’t trying to be heard—only to be.
It was there that the story first found its breath.
(from the notes of Viktor Stahl)