HELLOWEEN Guitarist On Influencing New Bands Like DRAGONFORCE

Jeff Pizek of DailyHerald.com recently conducted an interview with HELLOWEEN guitarist Michael Weikath. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

DailyHerald.com: Longtime HELLOWEEN ideals like keeping one's spirits high, having a social conscience and opposing evil are all present within the "Gambling With the Devil" theme.

Weikath: The album title was pretty clear way beforehand, it was conceived during the tour before. Then when we started songwriting, we could work on the correlation of things. Andi (Deris, vocals) has a different view about what this "gambling with the devil" stuff is all about, what it means for your daily life, and basically everyone in the band has a different opinion of what the phrase could mean. I just thought about what happens on the good side and what can happen on the bad side if you lose the game with the devil. This can happen if everything runs fine, if you win, or this is what can happen if things go wrong.

DailyHerald.com: How do you feel about younger bands playing in your old style?

Weikath: I think it's great, because they continue doing something so we don't have to. What they play, I think they're going to be sick of it in at least four years. They're going to tell you stories about how they thought it would be cool to play some slower grooves. It's the same thing METALLICA and other bands have said. They come up with these excuses like, "Yeah, my friends told me I sound good if I sing lower." If you're out on tour and you play stuff like DRAGONFORCE does for two, three, four years ... actually, I'm surprised that they're still doing it, so they must be kind of crazy (laughs). We got sick of it a lot earlier. On the other hand, the fans expect you to do that stuff because you invented it. You came up with it, and then later on you complain about your own concepts? That's a no-go. You have to do what you came up with and you have to do it good, that's just being professional. We just took the luxury to widen the horizons that we have in order to survive, because you can't possibly do anything like DRAGONFORCE does when you're 55 years old. I'm pretty happy that we are in a good situation. We can play this, we can play that and people don't mind.

DailyHerald.com: How do you feel when Kai [Hansen, former HELLOWEEN member and frontman of support act GAMMA RAY] plays a few songs with HELLOWEEN at the end of every night?

Weikath: Right then, time stops and something else takes over. On one hand, it's not so special after all, because we had that a million times before, back when we were together in one band. On the other hand, it's happening now, and some kind of magic emerges in that moment for the fans. We sense it on stage, too, but we're kind of cynical guys, we don't pay much attention to that. We're just hanging out. We're having a good time.

Read the entire interview at DailyHerald.com.