BLIND GUARDIAN Guitarist: 'We Always Try To Go One Step Further With Our Music'

Jimmy Christ of TrueCultHeavyMetal.com recently conducted an interview with vocalist Hansi Kürsch and guitarist André Olbrich of German power metallers BLIND GUARDIAN. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

TrueCultHeavyMetal.com: How are you feeling about the new album ["At The Edge Of Time"]?

Hansi: "We did some good promotional stuff, we've spoken to a lot of people so far and everyone has been very positive in getting back to us. We've had a very good feeling from the beginning of the songwriting period, which started with 'Sacred', the song for the computer game 'Sacred 2: Fallen Angel' and from that moment on we were constantly working on this stuff, and it developed in a very natural way so we never had the impression it could go wrong with that one. At the very end we just succeeded in producing something how we wanted it to sound."

TrueCultHeavyMetal.com: How long did it take?

Hansi: "It's difficult to say exactly, it took us like twelve months up to the production and then another six-to-twelve months after the production where the songwriting continues, so something like eighteen to 24 months."

TrueCultHeavyMetal.com: Do you worry that's a long time? Fans are able to access new music and change their tastes so quickly now.

Hansi: "You're right about that, it becomes more and more obvious. Still, we have a lot of very loyal and very dedicated fans who don't care too much about that issue. But there's no doubt that people are changing their minds quicker and moving to the next thing, but I think we're still in a safe haven because metal fans are slightly different and ever since, I don't know, [1995's] 'Imaginations From The Other Side', three or four years for touring and producing and composing an album is more or less the regular term we need. As long as you can come up with quality and provide something people would probably not expect, possibly even above their expactations, then you don't have to be afraid about that."

André Olbrich (guitar): "We always try, of course, to go one step further with our music, so we try to maybe catch, kind of, the zeitgeist, so that's important too. If you look now at what other bands do, the whole scene is going down, not just the metal scene but across the music industry, all sales went down. The bands don't have that much money anymore, and production on albums released in the last year has been really terrible sometimes, so they saved the money there, while we did the opposite. We provided an album which provided the best sound we have had on an album, so maybe this is another good point."

TrueCultHeavyMetal.com: Do you ever worry about the future?

Hansi: "No, that's not how we relate to the whole thing. We do have strong markets where we are more or less mainstream successful, we have the upcoming markets and, of course, there are the decreasing markets, but all in all we consider our music to be a long-term event for people. It was never that any of our albums sold for the first three months and just stopped selling, even [1998's] 'Nightfall In Middle Earth' and 'Imaginations...', they all keep selling in decent amounts so we've never really thought about that. But you have to be aware that there's a change and rearrange some things, as André mentioned, we do not save the money to have to a weaker production, but you spread your activities; you try to be more active in terms of merchandising, you try to be more active in terms of playing live, and all that keeps us in a very good situation, so it's not the biggest consideration, how to survive, and there's no question of going back to regular jobs."

André: "When we tour, there's always more people, on this last tour we're even going onto bigger venues."

Read the entire interview from TrueCultHeavyMetal.com.