Blasting-Zone recently conducted interview with Hansi Kürsch, Blind Guardian frontman about his band and his music.

Here is the script:

Blasting-Zone: What can you tell us about the new record?

Hansi Kürsch: “…I think it's a very nice balance of the elements of old Blind Guardian and new elements that you probably would not expect to hear on a Blind Guardian album. It still contains the development and it goes the same direction as A Night At The Opera, but on the other hand, it's more defined than A Night At The Opera. I would say it's more comprehensible for the listener.”

Blasting-Zone: What separates the old elements from the new?

Hansi: “The old elements can be clearly defined as Power Metal or Speed Metal. The new elements…they have the same power and the same intensity, but they contain a more Rock-ish attitude or a more modern attitude in terms of using different grooves that you would not normally hear on a Blind Guardian album or any Power Metal album. The sound is also more modernized and that separates us a little from the other Power Metal bands that are more based on '80's and '90's stuff. We also include '70's stuff as well as relatively modern stuff as well, so some of the stuff has a very small Metal touch as well.”

Blasting-Zone: Overall, how have your fans reacted to the changes? Do you feel it's been more positive than negative?

Hansi: “It has been very positive. Of course you may loose a few fans anytime you come up with something new, but since we always try to develop and progress our style, it's one of the risks that we take. There's hardly anything that you can do about it. For every old fan that we've lost, for which I apologize for, of course, we've won new fans that really appreciate what we are doing nowadays. You cannot please everyone. That's how we look at it. When we create new songs…they come from our inner selves. You try not to do too much thinking when songwriting so what comes out is natural…”

Blasting-Zone: I would imagine it's hard to try and please everyone at the same time…

Hansi: “…If you stick to your guns, you will be crucified and if you do something new, you will be crucified as well. As an artist, you will always be crucified. It is impossible to do the same album twice in the same quality, ya know? Even if you try to copy yourself, you loose a little bit of the spirit. If we tried to make an album like Imaginations again, it would turn out to be a disaster. At first, some people would enjoy it, but the majority of the people would start to think ‘…oh, what's this? We've had this before…' We do not go that direction. It's absolutely not our way. But at the same time, we do not want to deny the old qualities and roots that we've had because they are a very essential part of our music. As much as it is possible, we'd like to keep them in. We still consider ourselves a Power Metal or a Speed Metal band.”

Blasting-Zone: I guess I've never really considered Blind Guardian a Speed Metal band…

Hansi: “Well, we did Speed Metal in the very early beginning. But if I listen to a song like “The Edge” for example, I can still hear some Speed Metal in there. But you are right…it is more Power Metal than anything else.”

Blasting-Zone: What inspired the title A Twist In The Myth?

Hansi: “On one hand, it's based on the lyrics which are about prophets that you may know or are known to the listener. But I made a change to the plot, so I thought A Twist In The Myth fit that very well. It contains a lot of the elements I'm talking about. Music wise…whenever you make up your mind what the albums sounds like…you will be proven wrong the very next moment, for nothing is really what it seems to be. That made me think of A Twist In The Myth again, so I suggested we use that as the title.”

Blasting-Zone: What prompted the group to release the Fly single so far in advance?

Hansi: “Basically, the album had been scheduled for release in April or May of 2006. But after we finished the mixing of the single, I got ill and we had to postpone the album release. After speaking to the record company, we decided to stick with the release date, but use it for the single. It wasn't a marketing thing or anything like that. It was just a logical way for us to keep the date that we had set up and give people what they had probably expected from the album.”

Blasting-Zone: In hindsight, did the songwriting process for A Twist In The Myth differ from the sessions for previous records?

Hansi: “It has been pretty much the same, but this time, in comparison to A Night At the Opera, André and I got together before the songwriting… We decided, unlike A Night At The Opera, that the lead vocals should be a main priority. On A Night At The Opera, it had been the orchestration and the vocal layers that had been more significant than the regular vocals. To make A Twist In The Myth and easier to comprehend album, we decided that this should be featured in each and every song. In order to achieve that, everyone in the band was supposed to minimize their activity down to the essentials of each instrument. We felt that would make a more enjoyable album for the listener.

Blasting-Zone: Do you think some people found the sound on A Night At The Opera to be too complex?

Hansi: “Yeah, we heard about that from many people, but it's still a minority. It's the kind of criticism that I can understand, therefore we tried to avoid that this time. The mistake we made with A Night At The Opera was that we didn't one hundred percent define the songs before we got into the studio. During this songwriting period, we defined everything so heavily that when we did hit the studio, everyone had a pretty good picture of what they were supposed to do.”

Blasting-Zone: I'm assuming you normally try to avoid writing songs after you've began the production and recording process…

Hansi:“…Of course there's always a little bit that you have to accomplish, but it has…been far more than what had regularly been the case. When we did A Twist In The Myth, we accomplished good amount of the songs during pre-production, so…everybody knew what the songs should sound like. There were only like one or two songs left where there were minor things to cover during the production. And we also accomplished one song this one never had during the production. …(With A Night At The Opera), the structure of the songs had been accomplished. André and I came up with the whole songs as usual. But we both had slightly different ideas about the songs and that was just the beginning because when we got into the studio, it became obvious that everyone in the band and the producer Charlie Bauerfeind had a different idea of what the final idea was supposed to be. We tried to fix it, but due to the complexity of the songs…it became a complex album even though that wasn't planned in the beginning.”

Blasting-Zone: Have you ever found I awkward or difficult to convey the complexity of your music within a live setting?

Hansi:“Yes, we always do (laughs). But the point is, we separate songwriting and production from the live appearance. What we do during the songwriting and especially the recording of the album…we try to make the final output on the album as gigantic and as pleasant for us as possible. When we have finished the album, we of course have to try and figure out how to translate these songs into live versions. The, of course, the problems start. But in moist cases, we have been able to find ways to work through. Sometimes you have to make compromises, but in most cases I think we have built up the ability to draw the essential out of the son even though we we're able to translate everything.”

Blasting-Zone: Has the level of success you've been able to achieve with Blind Guardian changed you as a person or affected your personal life?

Hansi: “Yes…because you are more away from home than you used to be. Apart from that, I still hand around the same people. The circle of friends gets smaller because you need to pay a certain amount of attention to some people and you need some time. Of course then you just limit that to the most important people in your life. …I think we've pretty much stayed the same, ya know? We have been together in the band for so long. We are in the privileged position to have grown up together. That made it easy as well. Being friends also helped as well.”

Read the whole interview here

Recently, Bass Player conducted the interview with Iron Maiden bassist, Steve Harris. Parts of interview are followed:

Bass Player : Does this record [ "A Matter of Life and Death" ] sound different compared to your last few?

Steve : Definitely. We returned to my old bass sound. With the last couple of albums — especially with three guitarists — we had to step back from having that wiry bass tone. We were recently mixing some old live stuff and I realized, Well, that's my sound. Plus, it fits with what we're doing musically now, where we're more clearly influenced by progressive rock.

Bass Player : The new record sounds slower than your last.

Steve : Yeah, we slowed songs down to make them sound heavier. But getting Nicko to play slower isn't the easiest thing in the world. Sometimes we have to rein him back a little! [Laughs.]

Bass Player : Who were the players you most admired when you were young?

Steve : Loads of them. I'm more into songs than players, but I'd say John Entwistle [ THE WHO ], Chris Squire [ YES ], Martin Turner [ WISHBONE ASH ], Rinus Garritsen [ GOLDEN EARRING ], and Andy Fraser [ FREE ]. Those guys are all very different, and I picked up little bits and pieces from all of them. I didn't try to sound like them; I just wanted to play the songs I liked.

Bass Player : What kinds of music do you listen to?

Steve : I grew up loving the big, cinematic sound of progressive rock. I think you can hear that influence more than ever on this new record. Still, I consciously keep away from listening to music when I'm writing or recording, because I don't want any subliminal stuff to seep in. I find it's better just to keep away. It can pull you in a direction you might not want to go. Once the record is done, I can go out and listen again.

Bass Player : Tell me a little about the writing process for this record.

Steve : Normally we allow ourselves three weeks for writing and three weeks for rehearsal, but this time we had everything prepared in about a week-and-a-half. We track live, so we did a lot of rehearsing before we went in. Since we worked on one song at a time, we were able to pin down the parts really well.

Bass Player : Are you always in writing mode?

Steve : I get ideas at various times and just put things down whenever. I find it quite traumatic when we actually get into a writing period. There's just so much pressure to come up with good stuff. These days I get more input from the rest of the guys, which is great. The tunes then go in different directions, so it's good all around.

Bass Player : What do you need in order to write?

Steve : Just a place where I can have peace and quiet. I write all of it on bass—usually acoustic bass guitar. Then we all get together and write acoustically—the old fashioned way, I suppose. If someone's got a basic idea, I'll come up with a vocal or guitar melody.

Bass Player : What are some of the things you've learned about putting on great live shows?

Steve : We like to hit people quite hard and fast in the first few songs. That also gives more leeway for the soundman to get things in order. You can't play anything big and dramatic first. Plus, it just feels good to do that. You can just go on and go crazy, get the adrenaline going.

Bass Player : What are some of the things IRON MAIDEN did right as a business?

Steve : We got the right manager — that's for sure. And we don't listen to many outside people. It's not that we think we know it all — we just go with our gut. I've learned that when we've listened to other people, it's been wrong. You listen to too many outside people and you start to get confused.

If you've got a strong focus on what you're doing, people will go, "Right — let's do it." If you start second-guessing things, people are going to wonder what's going on. That kind of fear filters through to everybody involved. People feed on positive thinking, not indecision. Sure, you make some mistakes that way, but being stubborn isn't such a bad thing sometimes. It gives you a directness, and I like that. There's no messin' around.

Read the whole interview here