Interview с Blind Guardian : DARKSIDE.ru

You have played in Moscow three times, and each time you had a different venue. Which of them is the most comfortable one? And which of the concerts did you like better?

I liked all of the concerts. The first one was very special for us, because it was the first show that we did in Moscow, and it’s always something very special to come to a city or country in general for the very first time. You never know what to expect, you don’t know how the fans will react to the songs, and how they will behave in general during the show. But it was awesome, it was overwhelming. I think my favorite venue was actually the one that we played the last time (DK Gorbunova), it was a kind of old theater, and I just like the atmosphere of those places. It reminds me a lot of some venues that we played in Japan, they also have a lot of those old theater places. It’s very nice.

Most bands nowadays first release an album, and then go on tour to present the material to the public. But you did it differently – you are already playing shows, and new album “A Twist In The Myth” will only be released in September. What made you go on the road so early?

(laughs) The original plan was that the album should have been released in April. But shortly before we finished all the recordings, our singer Hansi got sick and had to stop singing for about four or five weeks in order to recover. Because of this we couldn’t keep the deadline for the album anymore, and we had to move the release date. But we kept the release date for the “Fly” single, because all the songs had already been completely done. Those first shows were already booked, and since the single at least was released at that time, and there were a couple of new songs that we could already present to the people, we didn’t see the need to cancel or move those shows. We said, “OK, we’re gonna play them, we will return later during the tour anyway, so we can then present the full album.” And it was a good decision – at least we played the new songs that were released on the single, it was the first time we played live with our new drummer Fredrik Emke, and those were for us the first concerts after three years of not playing live at all. Now we’re still rehearsing for the main tour, it will start in about four weeks, in early September, we can’t wait to go out and present the full album and play for you again.

Great! Does it mean that you will have some more shows in Russia?

There will be more shows in Russia, yes!

Just like “A Night At The Opera” (2002), the new album took four years to make. What were the main difficulties in making the album this time? What consumes more time – writing songs or recording them?

Writing songs took more time. But it’s not that producing the album took four years, not at all. After we released “A Night At The Opera”, we were on the road for 1.5 years, and even after we finished the tour, which was in November 2003, we still couldn’t start working on new songs, because we were working on the DVD, which came out in April or May 2004. Only at that time we started writing new songs. We can’t do this while we’re on tour, we need distance to the old songs, we need to have our heads free, we just can’t do this on the road. So we only started in the middle of 2004, and songwriting itself took a bit more than a year. In August 2005 the started the recordings, which lasted for half a year, which is pretty good for Blind Guardian. (laughs) And since then we have been stuck in promotion and preparations for the tour, so we’ve been busy all the time.

The new album cover is painted by Anthony Clarkson. Why did you choose this particular painter this time? And how did it happen that Nikolai Simkin from Russia designed the booklet, and his constant partner Leo Hao is not involved at all?

Nikolai has been working for us for quite some time, and we are very happy with his work. We had several artists that we talked to when it came to the design for the “Fly” single cover. We really liked what Anthony Clarkson did, and we talked to him about the album cover, too. We told him what we would like to have, and we are very happy with the result. We wanted to have something that has a kind of “Imaginations From The Other Side” atmosphere, just in a more modern way, and the result is exactly what we imagine. That’s in contrast to Andreas Marschall, for example, who did the original “Imaginations…” cover. Marschall is a kind of traditional artist, he’s using a lot of airbrush techniques and stuff like this, while Clarkson is using a lot of computer stuff, and the result is exactly what we wanted it to be. It’s a typical Blind Guardian cover, but on the other hand, it looks very fresh and modern.

Your new video for the song “Another Stranger Me” is already available online. But how much will it be shown on television in Germany and other countries?

A good idea, you should ask th

e TV stations! (everybody laughs) I hope, of course, and everybody in the band hopes, that TV stations will show it. It’s a typical problem, especially here in Germany – MTV and other music channels don’t really show much metal. It’s not what they’re aiming at, they prefer to play Britney Spears and whatever all day long instead of play other bands. But, as you said, it’s already online, so at least we can make it available to the fans, and everybody interested can check it out. Obviously we hope that it will get some airplay at TV stations, but this is something completely beyond our control. In our opinion, it’s a very good video, it’s definitely the best one that we’ve ever done. It deserves to be played, so let’s just be optimistic.

As far as we know, you initially planned to shoot a video for “Otherland”, but later you changed your plans and chose “Another Stranger Me” as the video song. Why did it happen?

It’s not that we planned to do a video for “Otherland”, we were just thinking about which song we would like to choose for the first video. We eventually agreed on “Another Stranger Me”, because in our opinion it’s one of the strongest songs on the album. And also concerning the lyrics… The story of the video is based on the lyrics, and it was just the perfect story to make a video. We talked to several video teams, heard their ideas about it, how they would like to do the video, and as I said, we are absolutely happy with the result.

Can you tell us a bit more about the shooting process? Many people will be surprised by seeing you in office suits – whose idea was that?

(laughs) It’s part of the story, you know. It was the idea of the director for that video. The whole thing takes place in the 1930s environment, there is a private detective investigating some murder cases, and during the story he discovers that he’s actually a split personality and that he’s involved in all the murders. The director suggested that the band should of course show up in the video, but that it should be dressed in that kind of style as people would dress back then to make it fit the video. We tried it, and the result looks pretty good, in my opinion. It’s very unusual for us, but it’s nice. The shooting was big fun, we shot our parts in a film studio, in the room that they built up for the story to take place, there were blue screen shots, there were all kinds of shots. The director later edited a lot of stuff on the computer. We were there for two days, then we had to leave because we were to go on working, and then they shot all the stuff with the actors. Unfortunately we couldn’t watch this, we only saw maybe one hour of shooting the opening sequence with the guy that played the private detective. It was great, it was very professional, and it was very interesting for us to do. We learned a lot about this video business, it was fun.

The new album will be released in several formats – in addition to the regular edition there will be a limited European digipack version with a bonus track and an additional CD, and a so-called book edition. What will this book contain?

I have to admit that I’m not really sure because I’ve lost completely the track of what’s coming out. As far as I know, the book edition will also contain one of those seal rings, back then in the Middle Ages they sealed letters with wax used rings as a kind of stamp in that wax. That is what goes in the book edition. Then there will be a double CD digipack edition, CD 1 will be the regular album, and CD 2 will have a bonus track, a kind of Blind Guardian media player, pictures, and maybe even the video. As I said, I’ve completely lost the track of what Nuclear Blast is planning, because we are stuck in promotion all day long. (laughs)

And what can you tell us about the Japanese bonus track “All The King’s Horses”?

That’s a song that will also be released in the rest of the world. It’s a song that I wrote, it’s a kind of semi-power-ballad starting with acoustic guitars, getting heavy in the middle and fading out into acoustics later. It’s a rather melancholic track. As you said, it will be a bonus track in Japan, but we will release a second single, “Another Stranger Me” - I think the planned release date is January, but I’m not sure about this – and “All The King’s Horses” will be on that single.

You have always been very good at cover versions, but the only tribute album in which Blind Guardian are involved is the Dio tribute (“Holy Dio”). Have you ever been invited to take part in other tribute CDs, and what do you think of the concept of tributes in general?

If it’s done well, it can be a nice thing, and the Dio thing – we enjoyed it. We have been involved in other tributes, too, but the Dio tribute was the only time when we have been actually approached and clearly asked – the guys came to us and said, “We’re gonna do a tribute to Ronnie James Dio, would you like to take part in

it?” That’s why we recorded that song (“Don’t Talk To Strangers”), we recorded it especially for that tribute. There were other cover versions that we did that LATER were used for other tribute samples. For instance, we did “The Wizard” by Uriah Heep, which was later used for a Uriah Heep tribute, but back then we recorded it just for ourselves, there was no talking about a tribute sampler. In addition, our version of “Beyond The Realms Of Death” by Judas Priest was a Priest tribute, and again, we just recorded it for ourselves. Doing a cover version can be very interesting, it’s just a nice thing to do – playing your favorite songs, maybe trying to turn them into Blind Guardian songs. Sometimes funny things happen, I remember when I talked to some fans about “The Wizard”, and I mentioned Uriah Heep, they didn’t even know it’s a Uriah Heep song, they thought it’s a Blind Guardian song. “We like the song that you wrote, blah blah blah…” Eeh, we didn’t write it, it’s 20 years old, and it’s from Uriah Heep! (everybody laughs) If some people discover these old bands by listening to a cover version of a band that they like, it’s fine, perfect!

We think a lot of people will feel the same about your latest cover version, “In A Gadda Da Vidda” by Iron Butterfly, as many of your fans have never heard the original version and didn’t quite understand the purpose of covering it. What made you choose this particular song? Have you considered any other variants?

We like that song, it’s a song that everybody in the band always liked. It’s a song that has to be played heavy, this riff is a metal riff. Andre (Olbrich, guitar) just started playing round with it a bit, and we tried to turn it into a Blind Guardian song, adjusting it a bit to our style. We enjoyed the result very much, especially for Hansi it was an interesting thing to do, because the way he sings that song is completely different compared to the way he would normally sing a Blind Guardian song. There is no big message in picking that song, we just liked it a lot and… well, we covered it.

Yet one more question about bonus tracks – you said the song “Dead Soul Of Misery” will be a darker version of “Fly”. What does it mean – are you experimenting with death metal or gothic metal?

(laughs) I have to say that I like a lot of death metal bands, but Blind Guardian will always stay Blind Guardian. During songwriting we tried a lot of different parts for “Fly”, and in the end we realized that we had enough stuff to make two songs out of it. We played around with this a bit, and we ended up having two versions – one appears on the album and single, and but we also put together the second version, which contains some completely new parts and some parts that are the same but in a different tuning, so they have a completely different atmosphere. It’s the same song and a different song at the same time, and it’s very funny to listen to. “Dead Soul Of Misery” is not really gothic or anything like this, it’s still Blind Guardian, but it’s very dark, unusually dark for us. I like it a lot, and a lot of people will be very surprised when they hear it.

“Fly” itself is quite unusual as well, because it has a sort of oriental flavor. How did this track come to life? Were you inspired by your visits to Japan?

Not really by visiting Japan, but we always try to get fresh and new influences into our music. We always try to do something that nobody else did before. It’s not that we sat down and said, “We have to do something that has an oriental atmosphere,” this is something that happens naturally. You have an idea, you have a melody, riff or whatever, you work around it, and it grows like this. It’s the same with that song – it was not really planned to make it what it is now. There is never a plan when we start writing a song, you just have an idea, you start working on it, and you see where it takes you to. As I said, “Fly” is a very unusual song for Blind Guardian, it’s definitely not the typical Blind Guardian song, and actually that’s why we chose it to be the single – we wanted to show the people, “Hey, expect something different from this album, don’t expect it to be “A Night At The Opera” Part 2” or “Imaginations From The Other Side” Part 2.”

Now it’s time to ask you about the lyrical side of the album. Is there a general concept or idea behind the tracks this time?

There’s no concept, all the songs are completely independent of each other, and they are inspired by all kinds of things. “Fly”, for instance, is based on the movie “Finding Neverland” and the story of Peter Pan in general. There is a song about Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” saga again, there are songs about mythology, there are stories that Hansi created on his own. It’s a typical Blind Guardian mix, but there’s definitely no concept behind it.

Many fans, especially in Russia, got to know Blind Guardian thanks to your only concept album, “Nightfall In The Middle Ear

th”. Is there a chance that you will do more concept albums in the near future?

There is a pretty good chance, because for several years we have been working on a side project, which is a classical album. This is typical Blind Guardian music, but played by a classical orchestra with Hansi singing to it. The plan is to finally record this after we finish touring for “A Twist In The Myth”, and to release this album in 2008. Mostly likely this will be another concept album based on “The Lord Of The Rings”. But as to regular Blind Guardian albums, we don’t have a plan for it. It might happen again in the future that we will do a concept album based on some story, but there are no concrete plans.

How did Viktor Smolski (Rage) get involved in this symphonic project? And what is his role there?

First of all, he is a good friend of ours, and he’s a brilliant musician, especially when it comes to this classical stuff. That’s why we asked him if he could help us with this. When Andre, for example, writes this classical stuff, he does it with his keyboards, programming every instrument, but he can’t write down the actual score that he could give to an orchestra. That’s when Victor got involved – we talked to him, and he helped us with it. He got all the pre-production recordings from us, and he turned it into the score that we could give to an orchestra so they can play it.

Victor tends to leave his trademark, so to say, on everything he’s working on. For instance, if we take the latest album of Rage (“Speak Of The Dead”, 2006), there is a bit too much Victor and a bit too little of Peavy and everything else. Are you sure it will not happen to Blind Guardian?

Yes, because he doesn’t have to do anything with songwriting, he’s just transforming what was composed by Blind Guardian. He doesn’t have any influences on the composition, he’s just putting stuff down on paper.

A few years ago you arranged your own festival in Germany, the Blind Guardian Open Air. Was it a one-time event, or do you plan to do something like that again?

We will for sure do something like this again. It’s just not going to happen every year or every two years, we want to keep it something special. A lot of people have asked us, “Will it happen on this tour?” No, it won’t happen. We’re thinking about all options at the moment. For example, when we release this classical album, it would be an opportunity to do another Blind Guardian Open Air then, and maybe we could perform this classical stuff live on one of the days and play a regular show on the next day. We are just thinking about all this and finding out what we can do. For sure it will not happen this year or next year, but it will for sure happen again. As soon as we come to an agreement and make a decision, we will publish it, and everybody will know about it.

How much were you personally involved in the making of this festival? Did you pick up bands yourselves, did you take part in organization matters?

Yes, we were very much involved in this. We worked with the guy that is also in charge of our regular tours, our booker, but it was just him and the band working on this festival. We were involved in picking the area where it should be, deciding what bands we wanted to have there, nearly everything. It was a lot of work, and this is one of the reasons why it definitely won’t happen this year and next year. We will be on the road until the end of next year, and we don’t even have time to think about something like this, to concretely plan and prepare something.

And did you like this experience? When we were involved in arranging shows in Moscow, we found out that it’s not that easy to enjoy the event…

It was an interesting experience. It’s not something I would want to do all the time, I don’t think I’m born to be a concert organizer (laughs), I’m born to be onstage and play the show. But it was an interesting thing, and when the time comes and we’re gonna do something like this again, I guess everybody in the band will be involved again. It’s good that we could rely on the help of the professional team that works for us all the time anyway.

We know that with Blind Guardian you filmed a lot of shows in 2002, but this material has never seen the light of day. Do you have any plans to publish in eventually?

There are no concrete plans for this. There will be more DVDs in the future, that’s for sure, and when we’re gonna release the next DVD – whenever it might happen, I don’t know – we might also use some of that footage, But knowing Blind Guardian I think we will record something on that actual tour and just use older stuff as a bonus disc or something like this.

How often do you personally watch DVDs by other artists? Do you have any favorite music DVDs?

I have a lot of DVDs, but most of them are movies. (laughs)<

/i> Concerning music DVD, I have a few favorites. I recently bought Pink Floyd’s “Pulse”, this is the one that I really like a lot. But I don’t watch that many music DVDs, I prefer seeing a real concert to watching a concert on television. The atmosphere is just not the same, and I prefer to be there in the middle of the crowd and actually feel what’s happening there than to sit here at home on my sofa and watching it on TV.

What was the latest concert that you’ve been to as a regular visitor?

(sighs) A good question! We were at Wacken Open Air last week, but we didn’t go there as visitors, we had an autograph session and interviews there. I think the last concert I went to just to see the band was Nevermore, it was sometime last year when they toured with their latest album.

More about unreleased material – there were rumors that “Nightfall In the Middle Earth” was to be followed by an EP. Did you really have some material for this release, and what eventually happened to it?

It’s true. We had four more songs that we originally wanted to release, but we didn’t have time to complete the recording of those songs during the “Nightfall…” sessions. As usually, we were running behind our schedule, so we thought, “We’re gonna go back to the studio, record those songs later and release them as an EP.” In the end we didn’t do this, because Hansi got serious problems with his hearing back then, I don’t know the name of that disease in English, it’s when you have this constant beeping in your ear. In his case it was caused by stress, and there was no way of finishing those recordings. The only song out of those four that was eventually recorded was “Harvest Of Sorrow”, which was released later. The other songs are still somewhere on hard disc systems (laughs), but so far we’ve never used them. We might use them one day, but now it doesn’t make sense to release this EP, because it’s related to “Nightfall…”, it’s much too late for this. But who knows – if we’re gonna do something like “Forgotten Tales” again one day, we might use them for that. We will see.

After many years of working with Virgin Records you switched over to Nuclear Blast. Why did you choose this label, and are you satisfied working with them?

We chose Nuclear Blast because of their philosophy, their ideas and visions of what they want to do with us, how they want to work with us. It just perfectly matched our own ideas and wishes, so it was an obvious choice. We liked the team, everybody of them was very enthusiastic about working with Blind Guardian, and we’re absolutely happy. Considering things that are going on now, everything is perfectly fine. It was the right choice to go with them.

What are your impressions so far about the work of your new drummer Fredrik Emke? What did he contribute to the band?

He’s brilliant. The great thing about him is that he’s a brilliant drummer that is absolutely familiar with the Blind Guardian style. He’s been a fan of Blind Guardian for many many years, so he knows exactly how Thomen (Stauch) played the drums, he knows everything about Thomen’s style that is part of the Blind Guardian music. What he managed to do is go on drumming in that style, so he didn’t really change this, but on top of this he could still add his own influences. We didn’t lose anything that had been there before, we just gained new things on top of this, and this was perfect for us. Fredrik is a really nice guy, it was great fun doing the album with him, it was great fun playing the first shows with him. And we can’t wait to go on tour now, it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Fredrik became a full member of Blind Guardian immediately after joining the band. But why does your bassist Oliver Holzwarth remain a session musician for so long?

He will always remain just a guest musician, because we never had an intention to take an extra bassist into the band. When Hansi decided to stop playing bass, he wanted to always have the option to play bass again. If we take Oliver as a permanent member, and Hansi comes next week and says, “You know, I would like to play bass again,” there will be a problem. (everybody laughs) Moreover, it’s difficult enough to come to an agreement among four members sometimes, and involving the fifth member would just make things more complicated.

And now the final question. What kind of response for the new CD do you expect? Do you think it will be accepted immediately, or will it take the fans a few years to understand it, just like it happened with “A Night At The Opera”?

I think it will be accepted much earlier than “A Night At The Opera”, because the music is much more basic. “A Night At The Opera” was complicated, it was definitely no easy listening music. We knew this, but we wanted that album to be exactly like it was. The new album is much easier to get into, there’s not as much happening in the songs, they are straighter, not as complicated. Actually I think people will get along with it immediately, and the people that have already heard the album say, “Yeah, a great album!” And that’s of course what we would like to hear! (laughs)

Special thanks to Alexei “KIDd” Kuzovlev (Irond Records) for arranging this interview

Interview by Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Natalie “Lynx” Khorina
Questions also composed by Blindman
August 8, 2006
11 окт 2006

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