Avantasia have been at the forefront of bombastic metal/rock opera for many years. It has forged its name as a one of a kind super-project, with many legendary names contributing to their sound. Releasing their 8th studio album Moonglow on February 15th, there is no sign of slowing down, with many of Avantasia’s favourite artists returning and bringing in more featured artists that haven’t participated before. This is not all Aussie fans have to look forward to, however, as you are bringing the travelling wonder-show to Sydney and Melbourne in May this year.
Metal-Roos: Thank you so much for giving me your time today…
Thank you for being interested in what I have to say!
M-R: When sitting down to begin working on a new Avantasia project, how does it usually start? Where do you begin? How does the writing process progress? Has this process evolved for Avantasia?
Everything begins very naturally. It just starts with me letting out music that I carry around with me. Of course that sounds very theoretical but it’s a simple as that. If you want to find an analogy about it for everyday life, I think it’s like a when you’re sitting in the car and you’re talking to yourself about stuff that you need to sort out… everybody knows what I’m talking about… I do it musically. I just sit at the piano, I have ideas, I have melodies in me, it’s my life, it’s my catharsis, it’s all like my therapy. I constantly record these little ideas. I also want to express myself lyrically; to me art is about expressing what you want to get off your chest, particularly with this new album. After I came home from the Ghostlights tour, although it wasn’t too long – it was only about 40 something shows – but still, I was shocked because my pace had been lethal, 17 albums and 10 world tours in 20 years.
I thought, ‘ok, what am I going to do next?’ Then what scared me was everyone else knew exactly what I was going to do next. My record company knew, my bandmates knew, the music industry knew, my fans… everyone had a clear idea of what I was supposed to do next. So, I said ‘OK, I’m going to hit the emergency brake, I’m not going to do anything, I’m just going to build a studio, and find myself a hobby. I might go play golf or build model trains’, so I built a studio in my basement. I played music for myself. I thought it might be a solo album, but then I realised ‘No, it sounds like an Avantasia project’ and maybe Avantasia is a solo project in a way, just a very flamboyant solo project with a lot of treasured guests, in its essence it’s a solo thing. I had all these ideas that sounded like Avantasia and a little later I had the idea to do something personal. I had some personal lyrical ideas and as I said music is about getting things off your chest and also writing poetry. So, I had the idea of letting things out and at the same time. I wanted to create an imaginative world and I’ve been inspired by a lot of Gothic novels – it’s always a topic of interest to me. The worlds of Victorian Revival writers of the Gothic novel, like, Edgar Allan Poe or William Somerset Maugham. I tried to tie those two worlds together, bring them together, have my own personal feelings built on a frame inspired by those Victorian Writers.
I came up with the concept, with this fantastic, fictional world of a homunculus, a creature, that is thrown into a world where it doesn’t find any attachment to its environment. Therefore, it wants to escape. It turns to the dark to find shelter and be invisible because it cannot cope with the reality of The Bold and the Beautiful. That to me was a perfect topic to write about my personal life, about my personal feelings, about my expectations that, especially in the music industry, you’re bound to fail… so yeah that’s kind of how it all came together in this case.
M-R: You keep mentioning the ‘main character’ as a creature or an entity and not a human, is there a specific reason for this? Is it to help keep the story rooted in pure fantasy?
Well, you know, I don’t name it in the story. It’s not defined as being a creature or a homunculus. To me it’s just a great way of expressing something that cannot really identify what it is. It’s just the estrangement of the whole creature. It’s expressed in it being a homunculus. But it doesn’t have to be, it can be human being, it can be whatever you need it to be. I just tickled the imagination of the listener with that, and I didn’t want to define it for myself either.
M-R: You have brought in some new featured artists for Moonglow. How do you choose the guest artists? Do you write certain parts with specific artists that you want for the project in mind or, do you decide after the songs are written?
All of that! hahaha
Some things, some singers I’ve worked with before, you know, Geoff Tate or Jorn Lande, Michael Kiske or Eric Martin, even Ronnie Atkins… I write with those people in the back of my head. Sometimes they would get a part that wasn’t written specifically for them. But in general, those people are really great for my inspiration. When I write a song for Bob Catley, I knew from the very beginning that this is going to be a Bob Catley song. Of course, sometimes, you write a song with somebody in mind or a type of voice in mind, but then it turns out that person isn’t available for what you have in mind. Then you have to sing it yourself. That was the case with Mystery of the Blood Red Rose on the previous album Ghostlights, we wrote it with Meatloaf in mind!
Sometimes I write something like The Raven Child for example… I didn’t know Hansi Kursch of Blind Guardian would sing that song. I thought it should be a female vocalist. It sounded to me like it should be a woman singing that intro of the song. But then I thought, ‘no, that would be too obvious’ you know, a Celtic song with a Celtic woman singing. It was too obvious. So, I thought, ‘which man could sing that song’? I thought of Hansi Kursch, so I asked him. We know each other well. I rung him up and asked him to see if he could imagine singing that song. He liked it and ended up singing in another song as well.
Sometimes, it’s also the case where you write a song with a certain type of voice, but you don’t know who it belongs too, which happened with the Moonglow song. That wasn’t particularly written for Candice Night. It was written with a voice in my mind and I found out that voice that I had in my mind. After the song was written I found out, that’s the voice of Candice Night. My own record collection is the pool of potential candidates.
M-R: How much creative freedom do you allow these artists for their parts? Does it vary?
Well, when I write, I write things very definite. I have vocal lines in mind and I know what I want to have. But, and this is the big difference from being a dictator, I’m not an idiot, when you work with people with such experience, such discographies and history, when they suggest something you should listen. Most of these people have way more experience than me. For example, when I did the Scarecrow, the first time I worked with Jorn Lande. Jorn is always in the studio, we work together. I gave him the vocal lines and he said ‘Tobi, I don’t sing like that’ in this Norwegian accent, which was really funny. He said ‘I don’t sing like that, I sing differently’. Then he did something completely different and it was great! Things like that can happen, I’m open to that. Otherwise, I may as well just hire a robot, which doesn’t really make sense. It’s not very practical to hire a robot to sing on a heavy metal record…hahaha I want to work with personalities and these people are way too experienced to be wasted as marionettes.
M-R: You also produced the album with Sascha Paeth. It seems to be a monolithic undertaking with so many layers and melodies all co-existing. Can you tell me what the most challenging thing to do is when performing the producers’ role?
I don’t really perceive anything as really challenging. Wait that sounded very cocky, hahaha. The thing is, there’s never really any difficulty because, if something doesn’t turn out the way I thought we re-work it. Of course, it’s a challenge to make a song that, on the way to be finished, it turns out to be not as effective in passages as you envisioned when it was just in your mind. When you have a song in your mind or a certain passage, you also have the impact of that song or passage to you as a listener to think about before it’s completed on the record.
When you complete it, you do all the things that you need to do so it sounds like what you have in mind. If it turns out like something completely different which doesn’t satisfy you. Then it’s a challenge to adjust things, tear it apart to find out what the core of the problem is or what’s in there that doesn’t work, what you have to adjust and what you have to change.
Other than that, of course schedules, there’s always a challenge with schedules, because most of the people involved have very busy careers themselves. Actually, the most challenging thing is trying to get everybody available for the tour. That’s why the Avantasia tour is just two months long, because everyone has their own career. That’s pretty much the most challenging thing about in Avantasia.
M-R: You have decided to include a cover on the album for the first time in Maniac, what drove this decision? It definitely made an impact on the album…
It wasn’t always intended, so to say, it was just for pure joy. I like the song. I’ve always liked that song, I told Sascha ‘let’s do a cover version of it’ and Sascha said ‘oh my god no, it’s been done to death, too many times already’. So, I said ‘I don’t do it for commercial reasons, I don’t do it to get approval or acclaim, I just wanted to do it because I wanted to hear it! I like it! Let’s do it! We can afford to produce a track and not use it at all, we have that luxury’. So, I won and he agreed. We did it and it turned out to be great! But not like an Avantasia track, so, I said ‘ok, so it’s not quite a typical Avantasia track, but, if we ask Eric Martin as a duet partner then it sounds like an Avantasia song’. Also, what was so great about that song, the album’s full of long songs. I don’t want to say it’s difficult to access, but there’s like four songs that are quite long. There’s a lot of sophisticated material on the album, so, I thought ‘a four-minute rock song, straight forward, with a great anthemic melody, a song that’s a little bit up-tempo, that you can sing along to even before you’ve heard it for the first time’. It’s something to counter balance the most sophisticated material on the album. That’s when I said ‘ok, it doesn’t belong to the concept, but let’s use it on the album because it sounds like Avantasia and it’s a great song’. Of course, we knew we would get some flak for it, you know, there’s some people saying it ruins the listening experience of the album…What the f***! Press the stop button before it starts! No problem! hahaha
M-R: So, getting to the upcoming Moonglow tour, it has taken twenty years to get over here! Are you and the ensemble of Avantasia as excited as we are that you’re finally coming?
Absolutely! Everybody in the band are, most of the people in the band have not been to Australia before. I’m in a fortunate position, I’ve been given the chance to tour there. I think, three times now and it’s always been amazing. I know it’s not arenas…when we (Edguy) come, we usually play clubs. This time it’s going to be theatres. I know everything is a little bit smaller, it’s not the metal scene of Helsinki or Madrid, I know that. I’m still very proud to play there and that some of my people, the Avantasia tribe, get the chance to tour Australia for the first time. It’s a great thing and everyone’s extremely excited.
I’m not gonna strip down the show down at all, we’re going to play all the songs that we play on the European tours. We’re gonna play for 3 hours, we’re gonna have Geoff Tate and Bob Catley, Jorn Lande, Ronnie Atkins, Eric Martin of Mr Big, Herbie Langhans, Oli Hartmann and Sascha Paeth, you name it! We’re all gonna be there!
M-R: Sounds amazing! Cannot wait to see you in Sydney!
Thank you very much in your interest and for your support! Spread the word! See you in May.
AVANTASIA AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
Sunday, May 12: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Event Page: Avantasia ‘Moonglow’ World Tour – Sydney
Tuesday, May 14: The Forum, Melbourne
Event Page: facebook.com/events/2286343104774099
Tickets on sale now via: www.avantasia.net
