March 24th, 2011 - What was and what will be

Hansi posted last week a long message on the official website to tell us about group projects for the coming months. Nothing new in either, the orchestral project isn't before 2012, a new Demons & Wizards is envisaged, etc ...

Another year, another message. Here, as promised a little while ago, the ultimate report about what we were dealing with the past few months and what to expect for the upcoming year.

I assume everyone reading these lines has had a chance to discover At The Edge Of Time and hopefully still enjoys it as much as we do. The very positive feedback we have gotten worldwide is of course a strong motivation for us. As said at other places before, we consider this album as the perfect connection between new and old. It contains a little bit of everything but still has a strong musical thread running throughout and offers us many options for our next projects.

It is no surprise when I tell you that the next journey will certainly lead us into an even more classical direction. There will be a few more trips to Prague necessary to finalize all orchestral recordings for our classical project but all things must come to an end eventually. The result of the stuff we have already recorded keeps me in a very good and optimistic mood, even though I consider the wait until the project's completion very painful. Charlie [Bauerfeind] and I nonetheless will start working on the first vocal recordings during the next days. Since we will be interrupted by quite a lot of upcoming shows I would be happy if I were to find myself in a position to finish the first five songs vocalwise before the year is over. It is challenging stuff for everyone. One fine day, all of a sudden, when no one expects it, I will announce its completion. Certainly not within the next twelve months, but one very, very fine day.

From one long-term project to another. As we had time to share some serious moments with each other during the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise (somewhere on the oceans of time) Jon [Schaffer; Iced Earth & Sons Of Liberty] and I had finally found the chance to put our minds together for a possible next Demons & Wizards album. We cheerfully simultaneously announced our wish to start working on it as quickly as possible. Although time is an issue for both of us we nonetheless decided to start songwriting together during the European summer festival season when Jon will be in Europe for Iced Earth performances. During that season we will use every possible moment to complete as much material as possible. To guarantee a good-mood-songwriting feeling I have already saved some good bottles of red wine and a smaller amount of Johnny Walker black label in our studio. Things are still in the mist but we are about to recognize structures of a busy future.

As for the people who have bought the limited edition and may have started wondering about the promised additional stuff on the connected media page I can, one more time, promise that your waiting will soon be over and all your doubts about the value of having such questionable access will be erased. We have several things we are about to accomplish during the next days. Once finished we will make an official announcement telling you when the material will be available for download.

Apart from having worked on some remixes of the new stuff we obviously were able to catch a lot of impressions from our time on the road during the last months. Touring in all these European and Northern American venues was a definite blast and we cannot wait to hit the next countries and cities fairly soon. As we recorded most of the shows we have played so far, I can tell you that there have been a number of outstanding magic moments. I mostly was impressed by the great response the new stuff has gotten. Even when we toured in the early nineties it usually took one round to establish new material. But that is not the case with any of the new ones we played. They immediately got very significant responses each night. Another approval for their quality, I dare to say. Of course, we will try to come up with more new songs for the shows we are going to play during the next months. Since we have some time to waste until then we have decided to work on even more songs to be performed for these shows. I will keep it a secret which songs we are working on ... though it won't be many, I have to confess. Yes, I know how to spoil a story. It's one of my best qualities - apart from looking cool while sitting on a chair.

Enjoy life.

Hansi