Interview

AVANTASIA (2016 - English Version) - Tobias Sammet (Vocals & Songwriting)

Our workaholic Tobias Sammet is about to release the new AVANTASIA chapter, “Ghostlights”. Tobias called me to tell me the secrets of that new record. Still very talkative, we tried to do our best, we only had a few time, so… Let’s go!

SBM: Hello Tobias how are you?


Tobias: Ho very fine thank you!

The release of the latest AVANTASIA chapter is approaching; the album is finally finished, so how long have you been working on this record from the writing to the mastering?

I don’t know exactly but I would say, more or less, fifteen months. I started in autumn last year, so yeah it should be something like fifteen months. I know I should not say that because everybody thinks I’m a workaholic, and I’m a very well structured person with a very tight schedule and everything, and right know it’s true I have a tight schedule, but I haven’t been working fifteen months nonstop.
The creative process of an album usually is pretty much you do what you have to do during the day and then at 7 o’clock after dinner you have a song idea and then you disappear for three or four hours in the basement and the home studio and start composing something. So I haven’t been working sixteen hours a day for fifteen months, I’m a very lazy person I have to say. (Laugh)

Let’s say you’re a lazy workaholic. And you’re very punctual because in our latest interview you told me that the next AVANTASIA album should be there in three years. And “Ghostlights” is there just in time! (Laugh)

(Laugh) Yeah! But again it was not a plan; of course you have a rough idea of when things could possibly happen. But I don’t have a studied plan, I don’t plan ahead. I think making plans is very nerdy; life is what happens to you while you’re making plans. I simply let things happen and I didn’t expected to be really at that time now, it’s a coincidence I would rather say. (Laugh)

But what a nice one! It really seems to be the following of “The Mystery of Time”, with this agnostic scientist. Can you tell us a little bit more about this chapter?

Yes it’s the continuation of the journey of the scientist who is confronted to a circle of other scientists who wants to manipulate people’s perception of time. And of course the scientist in the first part of the story “The Mystery of Time”, has defined the setting of the story, the environment, the mood, the feeling of the story. And now the scientist has the feeling that something is trying to keep the individual away from taking the time to think about what really matters in life. And this is not like a novel anymore.
This new chapter is consisting in twelve individual pictures, twelve stations, and twelve key moments of the journey of the protagonist. A key moment that opens his eyes and sometimes reflects encounters with certain ideas, certain spiritual ways of thinking, moments that give him ideas of what’s going on, and these twelve songs reflect this kind of moment.
These twelve important stations that make him ask questions about the terrifying event that falls upon society and about our existence and spirituality, and it also deals with skills that we may have forgotten about, call it “second sight” or just being sensitive to things beyond materialist.
It’s a beautiful story, a beautiful picture that creates a certain mood and at the same time you can just take each individual song and it makes sense on its own. It’s an interesting conversation between yourself and the protagonist, with his insight, his subconscient. Or maybe is he just phrasing thoughts and encounters with certain ways of thinking, encounters with real characters, encounters with characters he doesn’t know if they’re real or not.
It’s very hard to describe but the story makes a beautiful sense and it’s very important to me and I try to create a heaven of silence, thinking and considering beautiful things that don’t make sense economically or cannot be put with numbers, it’s about things that happen between all those moments in our lives that are happening because it’s a result of the past pace of our society. It’s really hard to phrase it but I want to cherish and embrace silence, time for real quality things, and I wanted to write something that reflects the opposite of the sheer cold effectiveness that is forced upon us.
I think I managed to do that, even if you don’t want to follow the story you can just take one song and beside having a beautiful lyric, with beautiful pictures being painted, a beautiful environment and an a beautiful enchanting setting you’ll have something for each song because each song can stands on his own. And that was important to me; I didn’t want to create a story where the protagonist is running through the forest; and in the second song arrives at the castle, and on the third song he leaves the castle, and in the fourth song he goes back to the castle because he’s forgotten something (Laugh). I didn’t want a story like that I didn’t want to write a chronological fairytale about the seven dwarves running through the forest (Laugh).

So as you wanted to paint different pictures, we finally have different songs, some elements have be taken to the “Metal Opera”, we’re also very close to the Scarecrow trilogy, so is it something you also wanted to do, “painting” twelve different musical pictures?

It was not on conscious decision I have to say, it was just happening like that. I’ve done seventeen studio albums, not counting the EPs, with Edguy and Avantasia, and if you want to go on and take something from what you’re doing and enjoy what you’re doing, you have to keep it exciting and that’s why I never try to put limits on what I do. Of course there are natural limits because I would never do a jazz record or a punk record because I simply don’t like this kind of music personally.
But of course I’ve always allowed different influences into my music because it reflects my personal listening behavior and my personal favorite music: I love world music, I love India, Blackmore’s Night and Era. And I also love Meatloaf, as you can hear when you’re listening the first track on the album. And I also love Iron Maiden, Helloween, Magnum and Bon Jovi and it’s all these kinds of music that I embrace and I just never try to be too narrow-minded when it comes to creating music because I want to do it thirty or forty more years hopefully, and you can only be so creative when you don’t put limits on what you’re doing.
I never made a conscious decision to make this colored album because it reflects the different moods of the protagonist or something. No, all the songs I wrote, I wrote them because I thought they were great and they fit into the story, a beautiful story and we must not forget that the album is 70 minutes long and this is really long for an album. I hate albums that are that long because to me a perfect album lasts between 40 and 55 minutes… 45 to 55 minutes is the perfect length for an album and this one is 70 minutes long.
But for me it was important not to throw one song of the album because I love them all so much, and I thought “It would not cost more money to the people so I’m going to release them all”. And you can only do that if you have certain diversity on the album and that’s why I’m happy to be not so narrow-minded.

It’s true that the album is very long but when you listen to it you don’t think “God it’s so long”. No, music flows naturally.

Oh thank you! But it wouldn’t have been that way if I would have done twelve songs like “The Metal Opera” for example. I really love “The Metal Opera” very much, it’s a great album but all the songs have a lot of similarities and some people say “Oh it’s a great flow and it’s great!” with a good unity and it’s true because the songs are so similar. But if you do 70 minutes of it, I think you’ll have troubles.
It’s great that the new album is the way it is, and still I think it has a very good flow in it and all the songs belong there and they all sound like they belong there.

As you said you listen to a lot of music, most of the guests are from the rock-metal spheres. But have you ever thought about bringing artists that are not from that universe? I don’t know guys like Bono, Matthew Bellamy, Billy Idol?

You know there are no limitations and of course I considered bringing other people, but I’ve never made a distinction between heavy metal singers, rock singers, pop singers. A good singer is a good singer and being it like an actor as Alice Cooper, on the new album someone like Dee Snider, being a blues singer like Robert Mason who can sing like a heavy metal singer, he’s very good and he has nothing to do with the metal world. I knew him on the second Lynch Mob album and he’s more a blues rock singer.
I asked Meatloaf to be a part of it and Meatloaf is not exactly a heavy metal singer. You know I don’t really care about how the style of somebody is called. The only question is does it makes the album better, does it add something.

You’re talking about Meatloaf, and sure the influence is obvious on “Mystery of the Blood Red Rose” and could be heard on “A Restless Heart and Obsidian Skies”. You asked him to be a part of that chapter but he doesn’t appear on the record. What happened?

Well the management didn’t want to do it. His management, not mine. I don’t have one actually (Laugh). Maybe there was a chance he would do it, the record company contacted his management and it looked good and suddenly they changed their mind. They listen to the track and said “Oh it’s a great song but we want to do a whole album instead so we don’t have time for that”. Somehow it didn’t fit their plans and that was ok, but I have this great song that I’ve written with Meatloaf in the back of my mind and I thought “What am I gonna do?” and I said “What the fuck! I’m gonna sing it myself!” I released it as if it was a song that was supposed to be sung by me, but it’s so close to Meatloaf, it sounds like Avantasia doubtlessly, but it’s so close to Meatloaf that I have to explain the story, that this is a rip off of Meatloaf (Laugh).

Yeah but a great one! Very convincing with an Avantasia touch. And you said on your website that 40 hours were needed to record the choirs. Why did it take so long?

Well there’s so much going on that you don’t realize that there are a lot layers in the vocals, there’s a lot of things going on in the background that we wanted to make sure that the arrangements in the choirs don’t distract from the main theme and the lead voice. So we wanted something to wrap around the lead voice but not distract from it.
And that was really tricky because the song is full of choirs but you don’t realize it because they are so well placed. Only if you would mute them, took them away and listen to it again, something would be really missing, a real big piece of the magic would be gone if you would remove the choirs. But when you have them on you don’t really realize that there’s so much going on, there’s a ton of choirs, different layers of choirs, and they’re even placed in different parts in the mix. Some are a little more on the left side, some are a little more on the right side or to the middle.
If you’re sitting in front of two speakers you would realize it and if you’re listening through headphones as well, they’re coming from different directions.
And it’s also funny that we had to put the guitars a little bit to the left side; that was very old school I have to say; and the main part of the choirs a little bit to the right side so they would not interfere with each other. That was more like rocket science to mix that song, and the funny thing is now listening to the final result you say “Yeah it’s a cool song, it’s a great song… Good backing vocals” but you don’t realize how much thoughts have been put into placing the choirs so they could generate the maximum effect.

I suppose I’ll have to try with good high speakers to hear it because it seems to be a really meticulous work (Laugh)

Yeah but you should try it with headphones. Not earphones but proper headphones so they don’t compress the sound too much. I recommend that to everybody… And I have to say that now: everybody’s using these little in-ear plugs that compress the sound so hard… You should spend, let’s say, a hundred euro for headphones for whatever kind of music you’re listening to, it’s a great mastering, you put it on your ears and it would be like listening to a totally new album, and that’s something I highly recommend to everybody.
Sometimes when I see people in the subway with their little white earphones, those Apple things in their ears I go “Oh Jesus Christ!! Hypocrisy! Sacrilege!” (Laugh)

Ok so I promise I will get real headphones and listen to the album again! There’re great things in there, I really love Marco Hietala and it’s a real pleasure to have him on the record. But the most exciting thing is Jorn’s return. He does a perfect job on the long masterpiece “Let the Storm Descend Upon You”, and you seem to be really more comfortable with these long tracks.

You know I have some difficulties to cut myself short, as you can hear when I’m talking (Laugh). Seriously, I just love telling tales and I love journeys, music that brings you into different worlds and a long track is not necessarily better than a short track; because you can listen to a two and half minute track that is amazing and I know a lot of long tracks that are not so amazing. I think it’s a very strange belief, especially in heavy metal: the longer the better. It’s not the case; if you have a bad song and make it long it will just be more suffering (Laugh).
But if it’s really well structured, you have different possibilities to build tension. Of course you have to have patient listeners, and I think you have that in heavy metal, and the whole album concept is about patience and about slowing down. On long tracks, if the listener has the patience, you can tell the story itself, you don’t have to follow those stupid music industry rules, like “Don’t bore us, bring us to the chorus”. Yes I know, for some songs it’s great, on “Livin’ on a Prayer” you can hear the chorus after one minute and that’s ok, no problem, it’s a great track. But it’s good to break these kinds of rules as well and with long tracks you can do that beautifully, “Let the Storm Descend Upon You” has this tension in the beginning so exaggerated, so extroverted, so long. It pretty much breaking all the rules of songwriting because there is an intro that starts very slowly, and then you build up the tension and then now you say “Please stop” but no! We wait a little longer and you have to find the right moment to explode to the next part, that’s so hard. Some bands just do the same part over and over again, that doesn’t make things any better. We just try to build it up, build it up and then explode to the next part and there’s another intro coming; Sasha was saying like “Oh do you really want to do that? Maybe we should cut it.” No, that’s exactly the way. Because for some reasons you can’t explain it, it’s a subconscious thing. And when I listen to the song I think that this is the way it has to be.

Well I’m glad you didn’t change a thing! This is one of the best songs, with “Master of the Pendulum” which is shorter but with a very entertaining refrain. Marco Hietala is one of the new guests with Dee Snider etc… If you have to pick one, which one did you want the most? Tricky question!

Oh I cannot pick one because it would not be fair… If I would just ask one person to join Avantasia, it would not be Avantasia anymore. That’s a very diplomatic answer isn’t it? (Laugh)

Yeah really well done! (Laugh)

No seriously it would not be fair, and I’m seriously very happy to everybody on the album. If I would just say now “Oh I just love this singer or this singer” that would not be fair. As I said it’s the diversity of the album that makes the album what it is.

Yeah I understand that, it makes sense. Among these guest, one is sadly missing, Mister Dickinson. Have you tried again this time? (Laugh)

(Laugh) It wouldn’t be an Avantasia album if I wouldn’t have tried to have Bruce Dickinson. So yeah I tried again of course but this time I really thought there was a realistic chance because our British department is very close with the Iron Maiden office, so there is a good relationship between our camp and the Maiden camp.
The thing was that this time I asked, it was considered and then Bruce got his diagnosis and then it was out of question, I just wished him the very best, prayed for him and that’s it. You don’t ask again after that, and I’m very happy he recovered, really happy that they are around, doing a world tour, I hope it’s going to be successful and I wish them all the very best. It was not the question “Do I want Bruce Dickinson or not”, I just wanted him to be happy with what he’s doing and focus on what’s important for him and I cannot expect him to do any guest project after something like that.

Yeah that was the one thing to do. But who knows, maybe on the next album?! (Laugh)

Well I don’t know what will happen after that record, but if I do another one, of course I will probably ask again! (Laugh)

Talking about Bruce, have you heard the latest Iron Maiden album? Could it give you some inspiration?

Well it’s too late to inspire me because the “Ghostlights” album was already done…

Yeah I suppose but maybe for an upcoming album?

To be honest I haven’t taken the time to give a proper listen, I only listened to the first disc. I bought it the day it was released, the limited edition, because I’m an Iron Maiden fan and a collector and I have a huge respect for this band for doing things their way.
I listened to the first disc and I don’t remember much of it right now, but I thought it was very unique and very brave. They do things the Iron Maiden way and they don’t give a shit about even putting 85 minutes of material spread out of two discs, that’s really a brave move but they are fuckin’ Iron Maiden, they’ll be platinum whatever they do. And that’s what makes Iron Maiden a huge band: they don’t give a shit.
I will listen to the album as soon as my promotional campaign is over and that I have a little more time. I was so busy with the Avantasia album that I didn’t listen much music at all, not even in the car.

Yeah you’ll have a few months before the upcoming tour. By the way, some shows are already sold out. How do you live this increasing success of Avantasia on the road?

Hum I love it! (Laugh) I’m very thankful and I’m really looking forward to do this tour, the previous one was a success and we just try to push it even further with a lot of people on stage. Now we have the biggest line-up ever with Ronnie Atkins, Jorn Lande, Bob Catley, Michael Kiske, Eric Martin from Mr Big will be around, Amanda, Oli, me etc…
It will be a huge line up and we will play other three hours, and we always play our hearts out every night and that’s why I think it’s great that people come to see us because I think people sense that Avantasia is very unique, it’s not just a project where a lot people come together because they want to make a lot of money. I think people can sense that what we do on stage is magic; we have proven it so many times and everybody on stage, not just in front of it, but on stage: everybody is really appreciating every minute of it because, I have to say it, we all know that most likely the same line up won’t be on one stage together.
It’s not like touring with a proper band where you can say “Ok see you on the next tour”. With Avantasia we never know when we’ll do it again. Maybe in five years, you never know. Maybe Unisonic will be on tour so Michael cannot come, maybe Magnum will be on tour and Bob won’t join. That’s why everybody embraces every minute of this.

I’m looking forward to see you on tour. We have to conclude because you have a tight schedule so thank you very much Tobi for the call. Wish you the best!

Thank you very much Nicolas. Take care and have a very nice week.

Take care! Bye!
 
Critique : SBM
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