METAL HELL: What can you tell us about A Twist In The Myth? Did you approach this any differently?

ANDRE OLBRICH: Yes it was a little bit different. This time we did demo tapes for all the songs & we cross checked everything with Charlie Bauerfeind before we entered the studio. The studio itself was in much better condition than during Night At The Opera when it was just built. We had no technical problems & on the song structures almost every note was clear before we started with the recordings & that made the recordings themselves very relaxed. I think it was the most relaxed production we ever did. We only concentrated on the performance & getting the best possible performance out of the songs. We are really satisfied with the sound of the production and the feeling the songs have, so it went quite well.

MH: Do you think having a relaxed atmosphere had an effect on the outcome of it?

AO: Yes, I think it sounds more compact & more- groovy on some songs & more straight- forward. The better the production is, the less progressive the songs sound, even if they have a very complex structure. That was one of the mistakes we made on the Night At The Opera album, that the production featured those progressive elements too much. That’s why some things were very demanding on that album but on the new one it’s more relaxed. It’s got an easier flow & it appears to be straighter, even if it’s still very complex music.

MH: On this album how much of your solos were mapped out & how many were improvised?

AO: I always map out everything because I’m not a good session musician. I don’t want to depend on the mood because I change very much on a daily basis, so it’s better for me to prepare things so I can always be able to bring high results in the studio when I have to. We cannot lose time if I say okay I’m sorry but I have a headache & I don’t feel like improvising now. With the production it tends to keep running and I like to be prepared. That gives me a more safe feeling & then I play better in the end.

MH: Do you usually take home rhythm tracks to write solos to?

AO: I have a little studio where I do the songwriting & I compose the rhythm parts & everything there & then once a song is done I will send in the solo. But I do this at home in a relaxed atmosphere. When I feel that I have the right mood to create it I will turn on the machine and see what comes out.

MH: Do you write solos according to what notes are in the underlying chord progressions?

AO: I don’t know much about this to tell you the truth. I don’t like to write music that is too mind- orientated. I like to play from the stomach & to express the feelings I have at that moment.  I try to bring in as much feeling as possible in a solo. I’m not into scales & modes. What comes out is what naturally comes out and then I work it out a little bit and arrange it.

MH: Do you think some guitar players get too scale oriented?

AO: Every guitar player has his own ways to work out things. It’s okay if somebody is getting it done with scales. You can create great things with them but I’m just not used to it.  I learned in a different way. I find my ideas in a different way. I would say it’s better to not go with any rules. You should do what you feel like, however you feel most comfortable to express yourself.

MH: When you play live do you keep solos exactly like they were recorded?

AO: No, not exactly, I try to go for the most important melody & I have to cut out all the voices that are playing along. In the end I always find a way to play it very straight. Even if the solo on the album sounds like different parts, it sounds like one flow when I play it live.  An album production is one side & live is the other side. I don’t want to sound exactly like on the album. I think live it has to have a different charm.

MH: On the complex songs, do you decide beforehand where an acoustic part should be?

AO: I basically start to find parts with some new ideas & once I have 3 or 4 parts that have a certain flow I try to build it up around the structure. The process is not the same. It always changes a little bit. Sometimes I even start at the end of the song & build it from the other way around. Sometimes I start with guitar, sometimes I start programming the drums, it’s completely free, I don’t have any rules or any favorite ways to write. Sometimes I have a rhythm-based idea and sometimes I have a more melodic idea so it depends. The main influence on the development is Hansi’s feedback on what he thinks about the parts & what ideas he has with the vocal. Then we see how to build it up and what direction we should continue in.

MH: Do you find that sometimes the best songs are the ones that come together the fastest?

AO: Sometimes we write a song & it only takes 2 weeks and it is the best song on the album. That can happen but for example “And Then There Was Silence” took almost 6 months. It is a very awesome song so it depends on the style of the song because some styles are more time demanding & some are not. If you go for a straight basic fast song you can maybe write it more quickly than an epic song that has more details in it to work out so I couldn’t say. There’s not a rule, if you spend more time it doesn’t mean the song becomes better. It can be that you work for 6 months on a song & in the end it is still crap & you come up with ideas on some days & it’s awesome.

                                

MH: When you do under-take an epic song do you set out for it to be that way right away?

AO: It takes shape in the songwriting. When we found that the flow of the first minute was so awesome we didn’t want to change it & then we had the first chorus part it was so late in the song that we already saw that with this song if we want to bring in the chorus 3 times it will not be a short song. That was clear from the beginning. We said okay let’s just go on with how long we can keep up the interest in the melodies, Then you build it up to the climax in the end & don’t lose the interest before. Somehow the song, in our point of view became better & better so it wasn’t necessary to end it abruptly. We said let’s go on & when it’s finished it’s finished & it was 12 minutes then. It just came out naturally. It was not planned & was not a concept from the beginning. It just came up in the songwriting.

MH: Do you ever feel like stripping it down more or do you enjoy the grandiose stuff?

AO: We still enjoy the epic sound but we reduced the sound because we felt with the Night At The Opera album we reached the highest level of that epic style. We wanted to do something else with the new album, so we reduced the orchestral guitar arrangements & tried to go back to basics & bring in the rhythm guitar in a better way & to have straighter songs that focus more on the main vocal melody. I think we did quite well on the new album. Some are more rock-ish; “Another Stranger Me” for example is a really un-typical Blind Guardian song. It’s so straight & so groovy. We didn’t do this style before & it’s not epic in any way. We went to this direction, because we said we don’t want to copy ourselves. There’s no need to do the same album or the concept of an album twice. We were in the search for a new sound so this time it was the concept to be more back to basics & to play around with the dynamics like we did with “Fly” and to bring in some innovative elements like in “The Edge” for example.  There’ are some sounds with very hard rhythm guitars. For me this is how thrash music can sound today. You will always find the traditional Blind Guardian elements, but in a balance with some new elements. I think the new albums sounds like no other album we’ve done before. That was the main goal we had with this album.

MH: Do you see the Imaginations DVD as the end of one chapter & this as the beginning to another?

AO: No, it was not planned like this. We did the DVD because it was the right opportunity to film a show where we had the perfect conditions & it was our own festival. It was planned & organized by our fans. So for the first time in our career we had the perfect conditions to film a DVD & to have it in the quality we wanted to have it. We are happy about this DVD but it was not like a chapter or a cut in our career. What we are doing now is the logical step since Nightfall at the Night At The Opera, so there’s no break in between.

MH: Do you think progressing too much can be a bad thing for metal bands?

AO: If you change your sound 100% then of course it is very hard for the fans. That could bring the starters of the band down. On the other hand I can understand bands that do this because sometimes you have the feeling to do something new & different.  Because you are bored of what you are doing for 10 or 20 years.  I would never judge about this step.  In our case we always try to find a balance. We want changes but we don’t want too many changes. We always want it so you can recognize Blind Guardian’s music & that you can find those trademarks of Blind Guardian. But you should still be surprised by new elements & new ideas we have.

 We don’t want to stand still & we don’t want to copy ourselves. The time is going on & we think it is important that you adjust to the times & that you improve your sound through the sound that is possible in the time you create your music.

MH: Have there ever been bands that you liked who changed so much that you didn’t like it?

AO: Yes, there are some very famous ones, but I don’t want to name them now. Of course with some of my favorite bands, I like the older albums better but I would never judge them because I can understand perfectly how they felt & what the reason was for them to change so much. I don’t think that bands change for commercial aspects that way. I think it is that they do this for their own creativity & maybe there was no possibility to go on the same way. Maybe if they had to play the same sound again & again they would have split up completely or stopped playing music. Maybe that was the only way for them to exist longer.

MH: How many new songs are planned for the new tour?

AO: We rehearsed 6 songs off the new album & we will play maybe 3 or 4 each evening.  We will bring them in by the mood of whatever we like to play. We want to change the set list every evening. We rehearsed 30 songs all-together, lots of classics off each album. Hansi will come up with the set list every evening & we see what we’re playing then.  It keeps some better interests for all the musicians that there are some changes. That’s a challenge every evening then.

MH: Which songs are the biggest challenge live?

AO: For me right now it’s the new songs because you need to work them out & see how the fans react. Sometimes you need to adjust little things & you can improve them. There’s still space to improve them for live playing because you need the experience yourself. For the old songs I know how to play them & we’ve done them hundreds of times so you just play it like always. That’s not a challenge for me as a musician, but with the new songs it’s interesting how they change in the first tour.

MH: Are there plans for another large stage production?

AO: Yes, we tried to build it up on the experience we did with the live DVD. We have an amazing live show with us. This time we’re working with projections for the first time. We had pictures & projections fitting our songs created specially for the tour.  It will be something very special I think.

MH: Does there exist much unreleased material from over the years?

AO: No, it’s not that much because when we are not satisfied with something, that we say is too weak to get on the album, we throw out the parts we don’t like. We have tons of parts that we throw out but no un-finished songs.  There was a song or 2 that Marcus & Thomen started, but since Thomen is not in the band anymore we will not use that material. There is maybe 1 or 2 un-finished songs from Hansi & I but it would be only a third of the song. It would not be a complete song.

 “Ace Frehley Is The Reason Why I Started Playing Guitar”

MH: Which guitar players had the biggest influence on your style?

AO: I was always a big fan of Eddie Van Halen.  I liked Marty Freidman in Megadeth a lot & Steve Vai & Brian May. I’m a big Queen fan. Richie Blackmore, I’m still a big Deep Purple fan. There’s so many but you could say it’s mainly the rock guitar players of the 70’s that I like. All the guitar players who were necessary in creating metal music. All those guys who invented the heavy sounds are my big idols.

MH: They all sounded different then. If you heard Brian May or Ace Frehley you knew who it was right away.

AO: Ace Frehley was my hero since I was 10 years old. Ace Frehley was the reason why I started playing guitar. I was such a KISS fan.

MH: What’s your favorite KISS record?

AO: My favorite KISS record was maybe Love Gun because it was my first KISS album. Hotter Than Hell is awesome. Destroyer is awesome. I like them all. A good combination of the best songs is on Double Platinum I think. I listen to that album over & over again.

MH: It’s amazing how quickly those 1st 8 albums came out. All within 4 years.

AO: Yes, they were so amazingly creative.

MH: Ace also had a style that people thought they could reach, without being too technical.

AO: He has such a feeling & he always played the right solo in the right song. It was just perfect. You couldn’t do it better.

MH: His solo album from 1978 is a classic too.

AO: Yes, the Ace solo album is so cool. They are great songs.

MH: Will there be a video from this album?

AO: Yes, we produced a video of the song “Another Stranger Me”. We produced it in Serbia with a very good video team. It came out great. It’s actually our best video, which was not too hard to accomplish because I don’t like our old videos. It has a nice story & it is almost like a psycho horror movie. Some pictures are as scary as in the movie The Ring. It is really cool. Fans should give it a try.

MH: How long will the band be touring this time around?

AO: All together it will be about 1 year.  We will do all of Europe, after that we come to North America & play ‘till mid December, then we will probably do Asia & then go back to Europe. In April the festival season will start & we will do some very big festivals in Europe. For example we will headline the Wacken Open Air next year. After this we have plans to work on our orchestral album, which is almost done from the songwriting. We will start producing & recording that right after the tour.

MH: There’s an all-orchestral album in the works?

AO: Yes, it’s an album we wrote it completely in an orchestral style & Hansi is singing to it in a musical way. It’s interesting & very unique because it’s Blind Guardian music played in an orchestral style, but slightly different because it’s not just metal songs played with an orchestra. It is orchestral music written by metal heads, that’s the difference & it comes out great. I’m curious how the production will come out, with something so different.

MH: Do you see similarities in metal music & classical?

AO: Yeah, you can build up those heroic musical structures of epical music with an orchestra very well. I think orchestral and metal music fits very well together.

MH: Lastly any messages for the readers of Metal Hell?

AO: Yeah, I can’t wait to come back to the states in November & play the tour over here. The last experience we had was amazing. If the people like the new album it will be a great party we will have here together. I can’t wait to come over & play. Thank you for the nice interview. It was a pleasure.