Former HELLOWEEN Singer Embraces His Past

Greece's Solid Rock recently conducted an interview with former HELLOWEEN singer Michael Kiske. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Solid Rock: [Kiske's new solo album] "Past In Different Ways" includes songs that you wrote and sang in the past with HELLOWEEN, only that they are under a different arrangement [acoustic and stripped down] now and only one brand new song is included. What was the motivation for such a release?

Michael Kiske: It was Serafino's idea from Frontiers Records. I didn't come up with that idea first, to be honest with you, and I wasn't really sure about it. But when I started thinking about it, I couldn't find a reason why I shouldn't do it. And the fact that I have some problems with the heavy metal music scene and some personal problems with a particular person in the band, it doesn't mean that I have to hate or reject my own music. And I don't hate the music I did with HELLOWEEN so I thought it wasn't a bad idea to create a new album that could sound good as well.

Solid Rock: Do you think that there will be people/fans who will disapprove this release due to the fact that you have said in the past that you don't want to deal with your past anymore? And how important is people's opinion for you?

Michael Kiske: If you listen to what everybody's got to say and all this gossip, you will go crazy. The metal music scene, and I mean the people in it, it's all like "black or white." There are people who make things up and people who like to promote emptiness and these people think that everything that goes with that emptiness is good and everything that is against it is bad. If you disagree with something in metal, then you can only sing like love songs or something, that's what they think. The fact that I had a problem with HELLOWEEN and especially with [guitarist Michael] Weikath it doesn't mean that I hate or reject my past. With a release like my new record "Past In Different Ways", I have to talk about past anyway. But I have to completely free myself from this gossip: they can think what they want anyway. In metal it's like that; if they like music, it's true music, if they don't like it, it's false music. You know, for example, if someone grows up in Texas, America, and his parents listen to country music and he grew up with country music and he really loves country music, and then suddenly his grandfather dies and he writes a true, personal song about his pain, that's true music. Of course, I am not saying that metal is false, what I am saying is that true or false music doesn't have to do with the style if music.

Read the entire interview from Solid Rock.