Intervista Blind Guardian (Marcus Siepen and André Olbrich) english version

Marcus Siepen

After three months since the release of the new album what do you think of the reaction of the fans? How was it compared to you expectations? How did the crowd reacted to the new songs live?

I think that the reactions have been very very positive from the internet, talking with friends of mine, whatever, everybody loved the album.
Concerning the reaction of the people in the shows, we are playing 4 new songs at the moment and there’s a 5^th one in the pipeline that we haven’t played yet, the reactions have been very positive and the nice thing is that usually when we play new songs the reaction toward them is less enthusiastic compared to the older ones, then on the following tours they became classics and the reaction is the same.
It’s kind of different this time because the reactions are pretty equal toward new and old songs which is pretty great for us because we were not betting on this because we know it’s not really easy listening music, it is pretty complex stuff – but that’s how we like it – but people seems to be getting along with it pretty good and also the songs that we are playing at the moment they translate pretty well in the live situation because obviously we have to rearrange them as there are just two guitar players on stage while in the studio we can record whatever it takes but it’s working very very well this time and, yeah, we’re very happy with it.

Reading some reviews I saw that some criticized the choice in the mixing of having the guitars and drums with a volume a bit lower than the orchestra; I thought that this could be following the idea (specially with songs like At The edge of Time and Grand Parade) of songs as pieces of classical music where every element has the same importance in the overall outcome, does this makes any sense or am I wrong? Is it something you planned or is it the way the songs naturally developed?

You are 100% right; people have to see that, at least with some of those songs, you can’t really compare them to regular metal songs because there’s so much going on with those songs and you can’t put all the tracks at the same volume all the time, you have to see, for example, in this part the drums and guitars are the leading instrument so they can be up and the orchestra goes down, then in the next part the orchestra takes over the lead, so the orchestra has to go up and the guitars have to go down: whatever un push up, something else has to go down, otherwise it doesn’t work.
That’s something that some people doesn’t seem to understand, they want drums and guitars at the peak all the time and it just can’t work like that, that only leads to the…I think they call this the “loudness war” where everything is distorted already.

Like the last Metallica’s album…

Yeah, that to me sounds like shit, sorry; of course it’s a matter of tastes, I’m not criticizing Metallica, they have to do whatever they feel like doing, but that’s not what we want.
We want dynamics and we are featuring whatever has to be featured in whatever part, if this means that the guitars are not up there all the time, yeah, that’s the result, but that’s exactly what we were aiming at; if people don’t like it, well, lay it on us because this is exactly what we wanted to have [laughs]

Nuclear Blast got the fans used to many different editions for every release; many of them, especially on the internet, complained about the fact the in the standard edition the concept is mutilated since there aren’t two songs that are on the limited edition. Unfortunately it’s not the first time that this happens and other bands and albums met this fate. What is your point of view on this and how did you live the choice of cutting, limiting the concept behind Beyond the Red Mirror?

It’s not that we meant to limit anything; the thing is that, yes, there are quite a lot of different editions…I mean, I’m a collector myself, I’m still a metal fan, a music fan, I collect most of the times special editions that comes with special DVDs, CDs, whatever; I personally wouldn’t buy the same album like three times, but to me the important thing is that if you want to release the same album in different editions, at least put them out all at the same time so that the people have the choice from day one.
What I hate is if a band put out an album in regular version, then one month later they release it with five more tracks, then one month later they release a version with a live cd…that always smells like a ripoff to me because they know that people will say “oh no, I wanted this one” so they’ll buy it again, so the main thing for me is, if you want to do different editions at least announce them at the same time, put them out at the same time, so that the people can choose.
If someone says “I want the cheaper standard version, it’s ok for me, I don’t care for the bonus tracks” they can choose this way; for me, my favourite edition is the big artwork one, not only because of the extra track, but also because of the whole drawings, the package and everything.

In your continuous search for new solutions and of an evolution of your sound you introduced dystopic, futuristic elements, almost industrial in a way, like in The Ninth Wave (as the drums starts) or in the beginning of Sacred Mind; if I well remember you all are fans of Star Wars, do you think you may write a song about it in the future or is it too far from the Blind Guardian imaginary and usual topics?

actually I’m open for everything concerning topic, if it’s a good story why not write about it?
Star Wars would be no holy grail that we can’t touch for me, if Hansi wants to sing about anything related to the Star Wars’ universe that’s fine for me.
I don’t like restrictions in general and that’s the general overall attitude that we have: if we feel like doing something we will do it and we don’t care if someone says that we can’t; we don’t care, if we like it we’ll go for it.
We just put out this album so there are absolutely no plans or thought on how the next one might sounds, we’ll have to wait and see [laughs]

That was my next question: can you foresee your next step, your next evolution?

Yeah, I can, there will be a live album, we are recording every single show, so… [laughs]
As for the next regular studio album we don’t write while we are on the road, we wait until the tour is done – which will be sometime next year – and only then we’ll think about new songs.

Thanks to the internet which easily allows to interact with the fans it’s growing the practice of the “official bootlegs”; since in this tour you are recording every show for a live album, have you considered the idea to release those recordings in the future?

I have to say we have never thought about this; we are recording everything because obviously we want as much material as possible to choose from for the next live album.
We might do something in digital format; I remember when we did “Live” back in 2003 originally it was supposed to be a triple cd and in the end Virgin said that they couldn’t do it so we had to cut one cd and we put that one online on our web page and you could download it for free.
It was some outtakes of songs that we really fucked up for whatever reason and they were really funny to listen to, so we thought “well, we got this collection and we put it online so that people can download it for free”.
For now we will for sure not publish those recording because of course we want to put them together for a live album; I don’t know, we might do something like this, maybe a selection…I don’t know.
I seriously doubt we would put them all online, I listened to a few of those “official bootlegs” and some of them doesn’t really sound good, if you have a shitty night…we are all human beings, we have nights when we are brilliant and night when we are not exactly brilliant, do we really have to release those recordings?
If I feel I played like shit on any given night I don’t want it to be released, so I prefer to listen to things and choose what is better to release to everyone and what to leave in the closet.
Not that I play like shit.
Never.
[laughs]

Over the last few years many bands have been doing tours playing in full some classical albums, or with special setlists (for example only old songs), often with old band members as guests; have you ever though to do something like that, maybe with Thomen as guest?

First of all I don’t like the concept of bands playing full albums, because for me a gig is all about the elements of surprise, I don’t want to know what is going to be played in advance, I don’t like it.
For example I’ve been to an Orphaned Land gig last year where they played the whole Mabool album, but they didn’t played it from the beginning to the end, they played all song but in between there were new songs…that was fine, but a band coming on stage playing the first song from whatever album and going on til the end is boring in my opinion, that’s my concept of gigs.
People has been asking if we might play Nightfall completely at some point, of course there’s the possibility but I don’t really see it happening at the moment and definitely don’t see it in a tour context, if we’ll ever do something it will be in some special occasion, maybe Blind Guardian Open Air, but we have no plan for something like this.

Almost exactly 11 years ago with a post on your website you announced the end of the “Circle of Bards”; today a lot has changed from a technological point of view as well as in the band, have you ever thought to reform a fan club?

The problem that we had back then is the same we would have today: we don’t have time to take care of it personally because we are on the road, we are in the studio, whatever, and you can’t run something like this while you are on the road.
Back then we had to rely on friends of the band who volunteered to do the things and the way they handled it sometimes wasn’t the way it was supposed to be handled and we were not really happy with it so that’s why we shut it down at some point and I see the same problem today, we can’t run it ourselves because we are too busy running the band and we would have to rely on other people which might not be always the best thing.
I know that there are many different fan clubs in the world that are not the “official Blind Guardian fan club” but they are doing a pretty good job and obviously it’s great for us and we fully support this but I don’t see anything official coming, at least in the near future.

You all started to play together when you were very young and thoughtless; today, 27 years after the release of Battalion of Fear, you all have families, sons and daughters: do you find harder to go on tour today compared to when you started or, maybe also thanks to technological advances (such as Skype), you don’t feel much the difference?

It’s a bit of both: when we toured for Battalions of Fear it was something like 9 days on the road so it wasn’t really hard, none of us had kids back then, we had girlfriends and there were no marriages; today we’re on the road for the next 18 months so, yes, of course it is hard, we all have kids, we all are married and we miss them.
This being separated from our families definitely makes it difficult, on the other hand technology made it much easier to stay in touch: you can make video calls, everybody has a cell phone today; I remember the tours we did in the ‘90s, before everybody had a cell phone, there were waiting lines for everybody to call home and you had to be pretty quick because there were lots of other people waiting to call.
So technology made it much easier, but still it’s hard because you miss your family.

Talking about technological advances a novelty, compared to 20 years ago, which had a huge impact on the music industry is the file sharing.
Recently Dave Grohl said that the problem isn’t new: once people used to duplicate tapes, but then they went to gigs and sung by heart all the lyrics.
Today this isn’t changed, Foo Fighters sell less albums but play in sold-out arenas; do you think this is true just to big bands like them? What is your personal opinion on file sharing?

I know what he is talking about and to a certain degree he is right, I agree, to a certain degree he is wrong.
Music has always been copied, that’s absolutely correct, back in the days we had tapes and we duplicated them; the problem is that the attitude of the listeners changed completely: back then when somebody gave me a tape copy of whatever album and I loved it I went back to town the following morning and bought it.
First of all I’ve always been a collector, I wanted the original, I wanted to support the band and obviously the quality of the tape copy was shit compared to the original.
This is what today has changed: with digital copies you don’t lose anything in the sound, so you get an exact copy of the original but you don’t get the booklet, the artwork, for people who listen to music only on their phones anyway and they don’t give a fuck about album’s covers or anything else and the problem, as I said, is that the attitude towards music changed completely.
Back then music was something sacred to me; when my favourite band released a new album I went I town a month before to ask if they already had it and I kept coming back every single day until they finally had it and then you couldn’t see me for a week because I listened to the album all day long.
Today kids exchange hard disks with hundreds of albums and they don’t even have the time to listen to all that stuff.
I’ve seen a discussion on the internet where some people were talking about streaming services and somebody was saying that they are not good because the artists don’t get paid well – which is absolutely true – and somebody else said that the more you listen to a song the more the artist get paid – which, again, is true but to get as much money as you get with a single album sold a track has to be listened like 6000 times, I think – and somebody else said “I don’t listen to a song more often then 5-6 times” and that’s it: if you don’t listen to your favourite song more than 5 times in your life something is wrong, your attitude towards music is way different than mine.
Coming back to the gigs thing, Foo Fighters plays in huge stadiums, but there’s only a handful of bands that do it; there’s this saying that bands don’t make money from music but they make it with gigs and merchandise and that’s not really true.
We have a huge stage production and we have a lot of costs every single day and I see a lot of young bands that don’t even get booked, they can’t even play gigs.
With merch many venues charge a fee to everything we sell, up to 50% sometimes, and as soon as you sell a shirt you lose money; so you double the price, and the fans will call you ripoff, so it’s not that easy, you know?
All those downloads definitely affect the whole scene, you can’t really compare with back then because there’s no quality differences between copies and original albums so people don’t feel the need to spend money on it.

You have been in Blind Guardian, and in the music industry, for the most of your life: do you think that this changed you view of other bands as a fan? Do you buy many records, follow new bands and go to many gigs or the one you play are enough for you?

I do; yes, I work in music, that’s my job, but it never changed my passion.
I love music, I love all kind of bands and for me there’s only two kind of music: the one that I like and the one that I don’t like.
When I find some music I like, doesn’t matter if it’s metal, rock, pop, classical, whatever, I want to have the cd, I want to go to the gigs and I still do this, many many times: whenever a band that I want to see comes to town I go there and I’m in the front, I’m not sitting somewhere in the back, we go straight to the first row if possible, we have a good time, that never changed.

André Olbrich

The concept of Beyond the Red Mirror is the first one completely written by you (as NIME was based on Tolkien and IFTOS wasn’t a proper concept), have you found it more challenging or is the same business as usual?

I liked it better to have our own creation because you can make it even more unique and more fitting to the music; Hansi, when he started to write the concept, we had already 6 songs ready, so he knew how the music was feeling and what emotions that music was creating, so he could write part of the story in the directions that the emotions would fit so it has an even a stronger impact if the concept and the music fit better

In Prophecies’ pre-chorus there’s a part identical to the beginning of Control The Divine, why did you do this choice?

I don’t think so, I mean, I haven’t listened to Control The Divine for a long time but I don’t remember them being the same.
If you go like a butcher and you take pieces of 3-4 seconds I could bring you thousands of examples of every band; there are only seven musical notes and if you go for short times like this there are a millions examples of similar parts.

You are going to work on the famous orchestral album this coming summer; considering that it is the first summer following the release of Beyond the Red Mirror it’s a huge decision.
Do you now want to work on it until it’s finished and you can release it, or will you continue to work on it between “normal” studio album and tours?

So far it was really like this and we could only spend time when we really had time and at a certain point we always had to freeze it because we had to work with Blind Guardian because Blind Guardian has priority of course, but now it looks like we are on tour until the end of this year and at the beginning of 2016 we can continue with the recordings; it all depends on the conditions of Hansi’s voice because if it is too much worn out from the touring he needs a break  because we want only first quality voice recordings on the album, and recovering a voice can take up to 2-3 months so we really have to wait to see how is his voice and start the recordings when we think it’s the right time.
Musical-wise we only need to record 3-4 more songs and then we need Hansi’s recordings, so it’s a lot of work for him but we hope to finish everything in 2016, even the mixing if everything works and then we are aiming to release it in 2017.
If everything works out well we are also thinking of a live situation because many many fans are asking us how we will tour with this and of course I can understand that this is important, so we are thinking about this, how to go on tour with an orchestra.
First of all it’s almost impossible because it wouldn’t sound good in metal venues because they are not built for orchestras; we should plan something specific for an orchestra, and probably the best solution could be another Blind Guardian Festival.
That’s an idea, we are not working on this right now, maybe we’ll work on it on 2016 and see what we can do.

Interview by:
Davide Sciaky