BLIND GUARDIAN Guitarist Discusses Upcoming Studio Album

Karagiannidis Panagiotis of Metalpaths recently conducted an interview with André Olbrich, lead guitarist of the German power metal band BLIND GUARDIAN. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metalpaths: So what are your activities in this period of time, what are your latest news?

Olbrich: Well, the latest news is that we started the songwriting one year ago and we have almost seven songs ready so far. We have already recorded two songs last year and now, for since like two months, we are recording four more. The drums are ready already so we started the guitar work now and I think that we will be recording the whole summer. In between, though, we are going to play in some really big festivals in Europe so we are rehearsing again, focused on some songs we didn't play so far. After the summer activities, we want to do another break for songwriting and write some more songs for the album which is planned for 2010.

Metalpaths: So the new album will be out in 2010 ?

Olbrich: Yes, we hope so. It will be out on the end of 2010, that's for sure. But we hope we can manage to accomplish everything in the first half of 2010.

Metalpaths: What can we expect from the music? On what music paths are you going to move on this album?

Olbrich: We have already released one song that is called "Sacred" for a computer game that is called "Sacred II"…

Metalpaths: Yes, Hansi [Kürsch, vocals] posted a message on your website which says that the last album will be a 100% BLIND GUARDIAN release and also that "Sacred" is the new song that will be the music definition of the new album. Do you think that this song will be the highlight of the album?

Olbrich: No, it's not the highlight, for sure not. It's a good song that I like very much but so far we have already three or four songs which are maybe a little bit better. All songs have their own characteristics; you can't really compare them. It's a real BLIND GUARDIAN album, we have a mixture of songs and so far right now we just finished a song which is very fast, a speed metal song from the old qualities but with new techniques. It's my favorite song. For me, it's a masterpiece so far and we have another power metal song that it's really brilliant and reminds me the style of the "Nightfall" album very much; it's a little bit different but very good as well. We also have a very nice ballad but it's not finally a real ballad; it will be hard in the end! So we have a real good mixture so far. It's working very good between Hansi and me right now because we have a new system that we can exchange our ideas every day over the Internet, we don't need to meet each other. In the last songwriting process from the "A Twist In The Myth" we met like once a week and now we can exchange our ideas, like, every day, we have a much better and faster feedback, so we can react better our ideas and I think that this makes the songs really better.

Metalpaths: Have you already decided who will be the producer of the new album?

Olbrich: Yes, we are the producers; we have the last word, our own, and technical-wise, our advisor is Charlie Bauerfeind again. We are really satisfied with how he is trying to bring out what we want. He is not trying to bring in his own color, he just tries to engineer our ideas and that's what we like, because we don't need to be produced in a classical way, we really know what we want. So we go this way again and if you listen to the song "Sacred" you maybe get an idea from the sound of the album, because this is the sound we are driving so far. We really like the drum sound and the guitars as well so that's basically how the new album will sound.

Read the entire interview at www.metalpaths.com.