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The
name of Helloween is etched across the brain of every power metal fan
the world over. This legendary band have been together for over 20
years and are still going stronger than ever before. With their
latest release 'Gambling With The Devil' they've surpassed even the
mighty release 'The Legacy', a feat no one could have expected to be
possible.
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Today
we catch up with guitarist Sascha Gerstner to find out how
things are progressing in preparation for their forthcoming
tour.
MM
- How are you feeling right now and how are things going with
the promotion of the new album?
Sascha
– We’re in rehearsals right now and we’re looking forward
to the tour which starts on November 16th. We’ve
been getting some great feedback from the promotion tour that
we’ve been doing in support of the new album and now we’re
pretty confident we’re doing things right and we’re in a
good mood to rehearse.
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MM
- The album is released today and from the reviews I’ve seen the
response from the media has been very favourable. Have you had a
chance to see any reviews yet?
Sascha – It’s been very cool,
everywhere the reviews have been really cool. Andy’s just
returned from Japan today where he was doing a promotion tour there and
we’ve just charted there in second position so that’s pretty cool.
MM
– Have the band had a chance to consider what songs will feature on
the setlist for the new tour?
Sascha – We’ve been working on the
songs from the new album and a lot of older stuff as well. We also
have an idea for something special in the back of our minds but I’m
not sure which songs we’ll have in the final setlist.
MM – You normally do
quite a long set, sometimes two hours or more?
Sascha – Yes it’s just so difficult
for a band who have been so long in the business to pick the songs.
Sometimes it’s difficult because you know there are certain songs the
fans will expect to hear and sometimes you have to play all those songs,
but it’s difficult because if we always did that we’d end up playing
three hours of songs. Some of the songs on the earlier albums are
maybe 30 or 40 minutes long so there’s no way the band could say play
one of those songs in their set.
MM – Yes, I’ve noticed the
longest track on this new album is just under seven minutes long, so
these new songs are perhaps not quite as epic as some of the songs off
previous albums?
Sascha – Yes
although we do have a few songs on it that have that epic feel about
them. ‘The
Bells Of The 7 Hells’, ‘Fallen To Pieces’ and even ‘The
Saints’ all have that kind of epic feel about them. I wouldn’t
even say this album is stronger than the others, but we have a lot of
strong songs on this album that don’t need to be 40 minutes long.
They can still feel like an epic song without being that long.
MM
– ‘Kill It’ is a really heavy track, especially one to
open the album up with.
Sascha
– Well that’s just how we’re feeling right now.
‘Kill It’ sounds huge and even Dani and his amazing
drumming, he’s always coming up with great ideas and so we
wanted the bigger drum sound on this song. He’s a very
powerful drummer with a powerful beat.
MM
- A couple of my particular favourite tracks from the new album
have to be the single ‘As Long As I Fall’ and the song
‘Heaven Tells No Lies’. I also really like the three
track poem, ‘The Bells Of The 7 Hells’, ‘Fallen To
Pieces’ and ‘I.M.E.’, overall that's a great concept to
come up with for the album. What was the idea behind that,
putting these three particular tracks together?
Sascha - Basically
we’re a real band now, although the whole line-up is pretty
new, we just got together for the last tour, I think when we
were rehearsing in the studio is was just something we decided
to do and it really works. Everything is pretty much happy
with the band right now, everything is feeling really good in
the band and everyone is getting along really well.
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MM - The band have had a
very turmoiled history with band members coming and going. Do you
feel you’re in a more settled period as the band?
Sascha – Yes, totally. I
remember when I first joined the band in 2003, everything was a little
messed up and we needed to find a new drummer as well. Right now
we keep things going together, we do things together and we know each
other very well. It’s like if you’re never together and you
never rehearse together that isn’t so good. It feels like now we’re
a real band. We also had Charlie Bauerfeind on production, he had
an overview and is really talented. Helloween can be a bit chaotic
and laid back but he kept it all together and never missed a thing. He
had his own idea how a Helloween album should
sound as well and so he was a big influence on
how the album sounds.
MM - ‘The Keeper Of The
Seven Keys - The Legacy’ Tour saw the band take in 93 shows in 34
countries, was this a gruelling schedule and would you consider doing it
again?
Sascha - The guys
from the record company came up with this idea of doing another
‘Keeper’ album but we didn’t want to call it that until we had it
mixed. We had this whole pressure on us but the album was fun and
even that pressure felt really good and kept us going.
MM – ‘The Legacy’
album itself was absolutely phenomenal and to follow that up with this
new album, I personally feel this is even better than ‘The Legacy’
album.
Sascha – On the
last album and the last tour we just found out that it’s not such a
bad thing to keep having new band members, especially if you’re a band
like Helloween who have been going for over 20 years. It’s like
having a breath of fresh air. Right now we have very good drive.
Dani and me are like the youngest in the band and we’re coming up with
new ideas and we can help the older band members get inspired. We
are what people imagine a good band should be.
MM - The band had not been
long off the road when you went into the studio to record the new album
and now you’re about to head back out on the road again. Do you
ever find it hard going and a bit long scheduled or is that what you
like to do and always be busy all the time?
Sascha –
Sometimes I do think it would be great to have a bit of time in between.
With the last album we didn’t have very much time because we’d only
just done ‘The Legacy’ album and the promotion tour, then we went
out on tour. Right after that we did some live cd’s then we went
back home and we had to write songs for the next album. It was
more a case of let’s move on and make this new album. We wanted
to make it even better than the last and take that step forward.
There was a lot of pressure and there wasn’t much time. What we
actually did was we hooked up our internet server and basically everyone
rehearsed through it. Everyone was sitting at home. Andy has
his own studio, I have my own studio and Markus as well. So
everyone started coming up with these riffs and licks and everything and
we just downloaded each others ideas and we were jamming to tracks.
It was pretty cool but we had to do it that way because there simply
wasn’t enough time.
MM – So do you find
these advances in new technology are helping bands such as yourselves
these days?
Sascha –
Totally. We are very much a technical band. We’re all big
computer fans and we’re all sitting with our textbooks and sharing
stuff. When we go into the studio we're always working with those
things, it allows the other guys to play around with things. It
saves a lot of time because it means you don’t have to hang around.
It’s good that you can just go on the net and share the ideas and
files that you’ve come up with, with the others in the band at any
time you want. It might be in the middle of the night when you
decide you want to compose and now you can. It’s all pretty
cool.
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MM
- Going back to your own recording and mixing studio G-Tracks,
how is that going? I believe it has a ceiling that can be
raised or lowered? That sounds amazing, I’ve never heard
of that concept before!
Sascha
– Yes it does. It’s very cool actually because you can
change the acoustic set up simply by moving the ceiling.
You can make the room much bigger to make a much bigger sound on
say the drums, or much smaller for when you are recording
guitars for example. Then I just like to have the room
that little bit smaller.
It’s
a pretty good feature though and it feels so good. It was
just like a hobby when it first started because I just wanted a
place to play in. I originally just wanted a space where I
could record my own stuff but it’s grown from there. Right
now Charlie Bauerfeind is doing a lot of stuff in there.
Even Biff Byford recorded a single there once.
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MM - Talking of Biff, how
did he become involved in doing the intro for the new album?
Sascha –
We’ve known Biff for a long time now. I’ve personally known
Biff from when I was working in Freedom Call and did a European tour.
We didn’t have anyone to do the intro to the new album because
originally we had this old poet guy who was going to do it for us, but
then he got cancer and we did not want to disturb his therapy, so we had
to come up with someone else and we thought Biff would be great to do
that.
MM - Why did the band
decide to release the first single ‘As Long As I Fall’ as a download
only track?
Sascha – Well
you could say it was the idea of the record company. I’m not too
much into the music system, but basically it was the idea of the record
company and they even choose the song as well. MM
– Did the band not have any choice in what song was chosen? Sascha
– Yes we had maybe three or four ideas on what song we’d like to
introduce the album by as a single, but it was the record company who
chose which particular song to release as the single.
MM – Going back to the
industry itself, is there anything you could like to see change, either
from a musician or fan point of view?
Sascha – Well
I remember when I was a kid and we still had LP’s. You had the
LP and the picture on the album cover, you felt it was something of real
value. Nowadays people just don’t hold that same value to music,
they maybe download it and then that’s it. They might never get
to see the cover or to feel it.
There’s still money out there with the record companies for people
like Mariah Carey but there’s not much money for smaller bands to tour
and stuff, which is pretty weird. That’s the reason why a lot of
bands go out on tour because it’s the only way we can make any money.
I was talking to a fan a while ago and he actually told me that it
wasn’t really pirating having our album out there because it was
promoting us. That’s bullshit you know! People just
don’t understand how much money it costs to go into a recording studio
and make a good album. They also don’t like to spend money if
they can get it for free. I don’t understand that attitude and I
don’t think many people truly value music any more. They think
it’s normal to have everything these days, but this is not helping the
smaller bands who are out there trying to make music. That’s why
we do so many live shows now, because that seems to be one of the few
things that people do still value, a good show.
MM – We went down to see
Helloween last year on the tour and the merchandise sold out within 20
minutes.
Sascha –
That’s pretty cool but that’s not how it is everywhere.
Sometimes the other bands have bigger and better merchandise than we
have. They have cups and a lot of different stuff, every bullshit
you can get they have there. Then you don’t sell any t-shirts
there. Sometimes when you are playing gigs in Asia and you’re
playing in front of maybe 20,000 or 30,000 people, you might have
everyone in the crowd singing along to all the songs but you have to
wonder where are all the record sales? Of course some people
can’t afford to buy the new album, but most people simply think
pirating is ok and it’s not.
MM - Sascha we'd like to
thank you for taking the time out to chat with us today and would like
to ask if you have any final messages for all your fans out there?
Sascha – Thanks. We’re all
looking forward to touring with Gamma Ray and to seeing all our fans
again.
MM – Well having already heard and reviewed the new album elsewhere
on this site I can confirm it truly is an amazing album. I for one
can't wait to hear it played live when the band hit London again in
January next year. |