BLIND GUARDIAN: More European Festival Appearances Announced

German power metallers BLIND GUARDIAN have scheduled the following festival appearances:

Jun. 20 - Zaragoza, Spain - Metalway Festival
Jun. 26 - Dessel, Belgium - Graspop Metal Meeting
Jun. 27 - Balingen, Germany - Bang Your Head
Jun. 28 - Milan, Italy - Gods Of Metal
Jul. 02 - Kavarna, Bulgaria - Kaliakra Rock Fest
Jul. 04 - Tolmin, Slovakia - Metal Camp
Jul. 11 - Vizovice, Czech Republic - Masters Of Rock
Jul. 27 - Athens, Greece - Rocking Athens Festival
Aug. 15 - Derbyshire, UK - Bloodstock Festival
Aug. 30 - Vieira do Minho, Portugal - Festival da Ilha do Ermal
Sep. 12 - Plock, Poland - Plock Festival

In a recent interview with Metalpaths, BLIND GUARDIAN guitarist André Olbrich stated about the band's forthcoming album, "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 . . . 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."

Regarding the forthcoming album's musical direction, Olbrich said, "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."