Avantasia – interview met Tobias Sammet (vocals, bass, keys)
Tobias Sammet: “‘Avalon’ is a song that is very escape-like. It is a song that was born from a travel to Cornwall. ”
‘In your mind you can always be free’. Dat is een spreuk of gezegde dat zeker van toepassing is op Avantasia’s mastermind Tobias Sammet. We lieten deze eloquente artiest dan ook meer dan een uur aan het woord over de inspiratiebronnen voor het tiende studioalbum ‘Here Be Dragons’ en diens weelderige songs. Tobi maakte daarbij van zijn hart geen moordkuil en nam ons tijdens dit gesprek – net als op het album – naar de meest verscheidene plekken op aarde of in onze gedachten.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 6 maart 2025
Are you doing fine at the moment?
Yes, perfectly, a lot going on I have to say, the promotion and preparing all the things for the album, I mean, everything has become much more detailed, while twenty years ago you were writing an album and then you were waiting for a couple of interviews and you were going on tour. Nowadays you have social media and everything, so many different details to be taken care of and it is like I am in remote control right now with the record company, but in a good way. I am really happy, they are doing a good job.
When started your interest to write new material for ‘Here Be Dragons’?
I cannot really say, because I always write. I am writing music and creating songs, scribbling down a few lines and the vocal or lyrical ideas, it is just like writing diary. I always do that. Maybe I am going to sit, not tonight, maybe tomorrow night, it can happen anytime. I can sit at the piano, start playing something and record it and put it in my drawer and it will be something that will show up on the next album or the album after the next album, that’s always possible. The conscious decision I think, to start working on music… subconsciously on some point during life, I think: ‘oh, there’s going to be a new album. Maybe I should start and dive a little deeper into it and see what I have’. It comes together, it is a subconscious process, it is not necessary because I need to do it, because you have to do it, with external forces or influences, it is something you feel. I have never done anything else in my life. I think it is time and I think that happened probably two years ago, something like that. Then you disappear longer in your studio. I usually visit my studio now and then, but when you are really starting, that is when the twelve hours shifts and the sun already rises when you are still there, working on stuff. That something happened somewhere in 2023. I could have delivered the album much sooner. I had the songs more or less finished early 2024, but still I kept changing things and adding new things and doing little things, because I knew I had the time – at that time I did not have a record deal, I knew that before. Of course the interest was there, we had been talking to record labels four years, but it was getting more and more clear that Napalm was the right label and when we signed with them in Autumn, it was clear I had to deliver then pretty soon and then of course it gets a little bit stressful in the end, but there was no real rush. Maybe because at some point I really had to put my stuff together and finish it.
That can be a positive vibe too, because if I still have one week to do something, I mostly do something else until it is high time…
Absolutely and then when it is the real thing, when the record company starts to give you calls and say ‘hey Tobi, if we don’t have it by the end of the week, it may be difficult to get it pressed in time’, that is when I decide to do a call to the mastering engineer and tell him to get it finished. Because you can spend four month wondering whether you are going have one decibel more or less and if you are going to have slightly more bass and slightly more less, you don’t even hear one week later anymore, but when you are in the middle of a process you can spend an eternity doing that and at some point the record label has to deliver it. The funny thing is, in six weeks, when I am going to listen to the definitive versions, I am not going to hear differences anymore. You are just too nerdy about it when you are in the middle of doing it.
An example of wanting to have it perfect…
I think at my age now, I have got rid of the idea of making things perfect, because I will always give the best and I do it with emotion, and sometimes it is a compromise. If you make the guitars louder, the keyboards will suffer. If you make the keyboards louder, the guitars will suffer. Everything has to be balanced and there is not always a right or wrong. So what I do is I follow my heart and I got away from the idea of being able to deliver perfection. I got away from that idea, I want people to hear that it is a human being. Artificial intelligence strives for perfection maybe, you can put in some numbers and you can expect it to be the perfect algorithm and the perfect thing for your target audience, machines can do that, but in the end it is going to be so soulless. Instead of being into artificial intelligence, I am into human stupidity (laughs).
That is better, otherwise it becomes so sterile and programmed…
Absolutely. I think a lot of what we get here these days or what we have got throughout history has its flaws. I just listened to a Kansas record on new speakers that I just bought and I found out there is a real weird frequency and some distorted noise, something that isn’t really matching there, but it was wonderful. Still it was a great song! It was a great record. I don’t know who’s on ‘Carry On My Wayward Son’, but still I thought, in retrospect – there might be some wrong notes on some Iron Maiden records: I love it! AI would eliminate those parts, but I rather listen to the wrong notes of Iron Maiden than listening to the right notes of AI. That’s what I am into as a fan, you can call me old fashioned, I don’t care.
The first song and video ‘Creepshow’ is so catchy! It comes over as a kind of introduction for the celebration…
Absolutely and I wanted that. The song came together very naturally, as usual when I write. I don’t think too much about it, I just let things happen and then I see where I’ve come up with, that is my intuition driving me in a way. The basics of the song are quite a couple years old and I thought this song sounds a bit like – it’s got a playful side of mine in there – In the beginning I thought it would be a great Edguy track, because it is very playful, but I thought at the same time it is a bit sinister and has some tongue in cheeks and some playful darkness and I thought: ‘why should I label things as Edguy or Avantasia, I cannot do that because it is all my song-writing. That is the way I am. Why would I not allow that tongue in cheek grin of mine into the music of Avantasia? I thought there’s no rules, there’s no boundaries, why would I put up those rules for myself and limit myself with it? I am the government of Avantasia, I am the King or the main man, whatever you call it… I determine what it’s going to be like and there are no rules, it is my world and nobody can prevent me from doing what I believe in. And that is why I thought ‘okay I am going to prove that this is an Avantasia tune and I think I completely succeeded. Of course we got a little bit of negative comments for it because people expected a 12 minute song with fast double speed drums and all these power metal elements as the first single and how can I dare to offend all these gatekeepers with a rock anthem? (laughs) but I love it and it is always great, a bit controversial to some true metal fans, but there is nothing wrong with controversy, I am in heavy metal, I am not in the government. I don’t have to play by the rules or fulfil expectations, I want to keep it exciting for myself with a bit of controversy, that’s always good promotion.
Then we have the real long epic of the album: title track ‘Here Be Dragons’ with Geoff Tate… What about this song and cooperation?
Geoff is a real good friend and an Avantasia family member and a lovely person. I don’t have to explain that he is a very influential vocalist, also for me, but not just for me, I believe he has been singing classical vocals in heavy metal. I have been influenced to some extent by Geoff Tate, because he is one of the great originals and he still has a voice of gold. It was for me out of the question to have him on the record. We have been on tour together in 2024 and before that a few times and so I knew that I wanted to have Geoff on that track. The initial idea again goes back to 2018 or something like that, 2019 maybe, but it was just a very basic idea and then I put it in the drawer again. By then it was just an intro, a verse and a chorus and then I think it’s got a life on its own. It dragged me along, redirecting the whole song and it became longer and longer. I broke a couple of rules with that song, especially that the second chorus is completely different to the first chorus, which is very unusual and if you play by the book of rules in – I would say – commercial music, you wouldn’t do that, but I wanted to do it. I had the idea to do something really different which would only slightly remind you of the first chorus. So anyway, the song got longer and longer and so it became this epic and it was relatively early in the writing process that I knew Geoff had to sing on that one, because I had the guitars in mind on the verse. They are a bit the soundscape of the verse. I mean, it is classic metal or classic hardrock. It is a bit in the vein of Queensrÿche, duellish chords and stuff like that, and even though the song does not sound as Queensrÿche at all, I still think that it was screaming Geoff. Sometimes you have a feeling for that and that is why I asked Geoff. The song could already have been on the former album, because I think it was nearly finished by the time we released ‘Moonflower Society’, but we had already so many songs for ‘Moonflower’ and also we already had a very long epic with ‘Arabesque’. I did not want to have two lengthy songs on one record.
In the beginning Queensrÿche’s music was called progressive metal…
Yeah absolutely. They were progressive, in the true sense of the word. Today when we say ‘progressive’, people think of drummers who cannot count to four and who play all over the place. Nobody can follow the beat or the melody of the song, that was progressive fifty years ago, but then in 1985 that was as progressive as it can be because it had a completely different approach of structuring a song. It is not very commercial, that is true art, like Rush I would say.
Then we go to the speed metal of ‘The Moorlands At Twilight’. That is a title which makes me fall in reveries…
That is funny. That song wasn’t meant to be typical power metal. I started to write the begin melody on guitar, that’s what I came up with and then I wrote that beginning, that intro part, and to me it sounded a little bit like Rainbow or Yngwie Malmsteen or something really neoclassical but with a sinister atmosphere and then again the song took me completely in its own direction. It is a song that folds within the – I would say – power metal spectrum, but it is still very unusual how it is built up. I have to say that power metal is usually a kind of music – power metal fans excuse me for saying that, but I truly believe it – that it is usually very sleek and very neat and very structured. It is not wild. Power metal is not wild. Nobody, except for a power metal fan, would consider power metal to be wild. To the contrary, it is usually very polished and very thin. Everything is like painting by numbers, where it belongs and stay within the box please and this song is very, very different to that. It is wild, it is rampant, like the other speed metal songs we have on this record, they are rampant, they break out of that box, also the structure of the song is like the almost cartoonish breakdown part in the pre-chorus. It is very, very unusual and I wanted to do it like that. It has also almost a little operatic feel, but more cartoonish, like dance of the vampires, yet it is very eerie in the lyrics. I didn’t have Michael Kiske in mind from the beginning, but once the song was finished I thought it was in his range. It may be a typical Helloween tune, but I thought of Michael Kiske because that is the kind of vocals he is unbeatable at. So I asked Michi and we are working friends now for 25 a 26 years and so I called him up and said: ‘hey Michi, it is that time of the year again. Avantasia. You’re in?’ and he said ‘yes, of course, count me in’. A family member! (laughs)
Also a kind of darker and sinister song is ‘The Witch’ I guess…
Yes, I love that track. It is a mid-tempo anthem. It is eerie, it is dark. It started out almost a little bit like industrial in the very beginning. The first feeling I had, was: ‘oh this has some Rammstein feel.’ It is very robotic, that was the intro, but then the song took me on a completely different area and that’s always exciting. It is like you never really know, I approached this record like I just do it and I don’t think about what may come out, I let it take me on a journey just like it is going to take the listeners on a journey and I don’t know where the journey ends or where it is going to lead me to, but it is exciting. It is adventure. There may be dragons, wherever I go, but yeah bring on the dragons, let me go to a place that has not been explored by myself before and ‘The Witch’ became this – it is a bit unusual in the verse, it has some weird twists and turns and the atmosphere is very, very gothic and dark, but still I wanted to hear Tommy Karevik from Kamelot. He was on tour with us in 2024, so I asked him: ‘Tommy would you like to sing on a record too?’ and he said: ‘yes, let me hear what you have in mind’ and I sent the song to him and it is funny, because I thought it was quite unusual for Avantasia and he said: ‘It is so great, it is typical Avantasia’ and so he did it and he sang it and out came a very unique hymnic song I would say. It is a very good song and it is going to be a single, because I believe it is very accessible and still it is not run off the mill.
What about ‘Phantasmagoria’?
It is the oldest track on the record. The song, the music of it, was written in 2012 for the ‘Mystery Of Time’ album, but it didn’t make it to the ‘Mystery Of Time’ album, so I put it in the drawer. I did not have a lyric back then. It was just the music, it was on demo and I put it in the drawer. I always had this song, I always wanted this song to be released, but I always had enough new material and I thought ‘I’d rather going to write something new’, because you always have a feeling ‘oh it is old’, but that does not make the song worse, it is a great song, so this time I said: ‘okay I have to get back to this song now’. I got back to it and I re-polished it a little bit, we changed things and we rerecorded the whole thing. It was wonderful. I wrote the lyric, it is about the classic phantasmagoria theatres of the 18th century, but also a little bit about those haunted ghost shows of the early 20th century. The great magicians that put up shows to entertain people as if they were evoking demons and ghosts and the death and pretty funny, because it speaks of something different on a different level. It speaks on something you surround yourself with certain pictures and influences and ideas and you may know that it is just a show, it is just entertainment and still… if you surround yourself with too much negativity or whatever you surround yourself with, it will have an effect on you, even subconscious and there is a saying: ‘if you look into the abyss for too long, the abyss is going to stare back to you’ and that’s what happens when you surround yourself… I mean, I am not a political musician, but if you take a look at what’s going on in social media, on the internet, in the news, everywhere… we are being surrounded by negativity. The algorithms are based on rewarding negativity, rewarding disagreement, rewarding dividing and hate… and that is why the more we surround us with that, the more we are going to be showing of that and the deeper we all are going to be drown in it and even though when you are a strong human being and you know it is all bullshit, it definitely does something to you and that is what I was referring to. I put it in a different day and age, I wrote a fantastic tale about those old phantasmagoria shows, about the ghosts, being only mock ghosts but coming to life and eventually really haunting you and that is what is going on in our world today I think.
I didn’t make the connection, but it makes sense…
Yeah and that’s what I really want to do and still do, I don’t want Avantasia to be a band based on contemporary issues and stuff and politics, I still want it to be… of course I have to get rid of things that I have on my chest – but I want to wrap it up in fantastic tales and tell fantastic fairytales and stories and when the song was done, I did not actually had an idea what Ronnie Atkins would think of it. It was just very high vocal-wise and so I asked him if he could try it out and feels comfortable with it and that was on the last tour in Hungary in a hotel. I gave the song to him and he had to check if it was right in his range. Ronnie just sang the song in the public area of a hotel. That was really funny, the other people were just looking like ‘what’s going on there?’ Finally he said that he was going to do it and it fits in his range. The whole hotel knew it was in his range (chuckles).
The next song ‘Bring On The Night’ is a sad one, because it seems to be a tribute for the late Tony Clarkin of Magnum…
It is. Of course everybody was heartbroken about the sad passing of the late Tony Clarkin. I did not try to pay tribute to him, it was just for me a big hole, I am almost as old as this band and now it doesn’t exist anymore. It was always there for me, the band. The music of Magnum was always there for me and you could always count on a new Magnum album coming out. Now you realize that nothing is forever in life and it was very, very painful, hurtful and it was one day in Summer during the World Cup, I was watching football and I had the feeling that I had to play piano, during football, which had never happened. So I got up to the piano and started playing and within five minutes the song – at least the intro, the verse, the pre-chorus and chorus – without five minutes they were there. Not the lyrics, just the music. I knew immediately ‘this is a tribute to Magnum’ I knew it when it was there and I finished watching the game, went to my studio and wrote the whole piece in a few hours and I knew Bob Catley would sing it and I knew it was a heartfelt tribute to Magnum – within the Avantasia scope of course – and also I thought about having an orchestra on the song, but I thought ‘no, let me do what Magnum would have done’, let me pay tribute to my instruments and my inspiration and Magnum would have used keyboards. I was checking which keyboards Magnum used, I mean, on ‘A Storyteller’s Night’, ‘Vigilante’, ‘Wings Of Heaven’ and I was getting this sound on these keyboards and I was doing that sound to be a little closer to the original, to the band I loved so much. Bob loved the song.
I recently reviewed Magnum live and I just wrote the same, that they have been there almost my whole life…
I think they broke up in the early nineties, but that was for disagreements or business reasons or whatever, so I knew if they wanted to, they would come back and everybody was in a good place, but now it was forever and that is something that meant a lot to me. They have never been pretentious, they have never been the biggest band in the world. To the contrary, they have been quite underground in many places of the world, but it does not change their position for me. I think there is no band in the world – except for Kiss and AC/DC maybe – in my earlier days that has given me such intense and beautiful moments as Magnum.
Then we go to the heavy metal of ‘Unleash The Kraken’, you sing it yourself. What is Kraken?
This song is a very aggressive song, because Kraken is like an octopus, a giant squid or whatever you call it, but it stands for something else. It is not a song about people going to the sea, it is more about reaching out into your own mind and into your own spiritual world and your subconscious mind and invoking a force that makes you cold. The song was born out of anger. I was angry about something or someone. I can be really angry. If I am treated unfair, when I have to deal with idiots and they are many in this world, I can be very angry. I don’t beat people out and I don’t show my anger, I try to channel it, because I believe that it is the greatest thing in the world. I felt like that in the beginning of my career when people were bulling me when I was a kid. I would not bully them back, I would not pay eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, I just took their disagreement and their hate towards me or any disapproval of what I was, I don’t know, and I tried to do something with it. And it was cold, I mean, my revenge was getting stronger, My revenge was trying to turn something very ugly into something beautiful for myself and that is the power of self-conditioning. It was like rocket fuel for my own goals, the disapproval of the others. That song is exactly what it is about, it is like a séance, an inner evoking of some real powerful unholy creature and that creature is faith in yourself. It is a song about self-conditioning, but also wrapped up in a beautiful allegory I believe and that is ‘Unleash The Kraken’, unleashed that ghost and on a different level. It was a guitar song, it was a real heavy guitar song and as everybody knows, a kraken has eight arms and I thought there is no better creature to refer to than a kraken when I think of Sascha Paeth playing guitar on that song. He plays really wild and extravagant stuff, this song is so powerful, it has almost some thrash elements and it is very angry and in a way still very uplifting. What I like about the song is that it could be of Destruction, it could have been on hellfire club in a way, but at the same time it is so detailed and playful and rowdy and technically demanding that it has this kind of Mr. Big kind of playfulness. So the song is a really weird thing, but I think something that we have never done in Avantasia. Isn’t that beautiful? I have written twenty albums now and I am 47 years old and still I am doing things that surprise me. Usually it is quite a big risk, when you have done twenty albums – Angus Young started to copy himself after album number 3 – but it is really rare that you do something new. You can do it on purpose and force it and then the most of them come up with very noisy avant-garde that nobody wants to hear, including themselves. Nobody is getting benefit from that, but if you are actually playing music as a selfi, like I do, of course you will do things of yourself, you will do things that you have in your DNA, and you will do songs that you have done in a different version before – that is normal – come on, after 20 albums there is only a certain amount of songs that you can write in a certain type of music, but at least I have the perception of that, I am very surprised that I am still discovering new things from time to time and that is very evident on this new album and especially in songs like ‘Unleash The Kraken’.
I applaud that, I like the song very much…
I like it as well, as I said, it is one of the songs which is wild, it is rowdy, it is forceful, but it is very consolidating and in the chorus powerful but peaceful. It is still a good spirited song, not angry or with hate. The choirs are dark, but still they are conciliating atmosphere. The overall song is positive, but born from some very negative feeling and that is a beautiful thing, that is actually what this whole self-conditioning process is all about. Taking something very negative and making it work in your favour and in the end something very dark is turning into something that animates light and I think that is what I did with the song.
In this way composing and writing is also a catharsis for you…
Absolutely and it does not harm anybody. For me, in my stories, the light always prevails.
Then we go to the folky touch, because the song with female vocals ‘Avalon’ is rather folky…
It has some Celtic elements, definitely. Again, this song was not planned to be sung by Adrienne Cowan. I did not have anyone particular in mind. I wrote this song and I was singing it to myself and I thought there was some element missing. There should be some more dimension to it. So I reached out for Adrienne whom I have known for five, six years and she has been on tour with us many times and she is a wonderful singer. When she is on stage she does songs from anybody, from Michael Kiske, from anything. She is a wonder of the world and has a very great stage presence, so I asked her to try to sing that song maybe. And she did. I actually got it back and exactly that was missing. I like ‘Avalon’. ‘Avalon’ is a song that is very escape-like. It is a song that was born from a travel to Cornwall. I was standing at the coast and I was watching the atmosphere. It was surreal, because there was the sun behind me, green fields behind me and I was standing at the shoreline on rocks and the sea. It was foggy down there. You could see the sea, but the coastline was foggy and the fog came falling from the coast and you could see those waves of fog, crawling as if someone had a fog machine that was giving the fog a direction. It was crawling up over the edge and it was a real surreal atmosphere. I had a camera with me, I took a picture right on the spot and it is in the booklet of the album, so people can even feel the atmosphere. It was absolutely amazing and to me I just thought ‘Avalon’… That moment was so intense that it got stuck in my head and when I was back home I wrote the lyrics for the song. I think England is a magical place. It is a place where, I always call this ‘ghosts of inspiration’. They are the creatures and the ghosts and people may not believe in ghosts, but my inspiration is brought to me. What comes to my mind in situations like that, those are the ghosts that I know and they are ghosts. I don’t know how they look like and they are not mean, but sometimes it is like magic. Out of nowhere, Something happens and a minute before the thought of that song has not even entered my mind and all of a sudden something happens and it is there! That is the kind of magic I believe in.
Next we go to the heavy metal attack of ‘Against The Wind’ with the H.E.A.T. singer…
Also a heavy metal track and the inspiration was coming to me in England again, however a different coast. It was not a rocky atmosphere, it was more a calm and serene atmosphere and it was a bank with a river where the river was flowing into the ocean. I was standing there and I was in a hotel there. I saw it at night and I saw it at day, the whole atmosphere and that gave inspiration to me to write the song, with that idea in the back of my head. Still the song has a very important theme to me, because at that time I was reflecting a lot on what I’ve been given from life and how I approach life and again, how much headwind we have to face every now and then in our lives and how everyone wants you to be what they want you to be, but nobody really cares. I mean, they will call you an egoist if you don’t do what they want, but nobody seems to be less egoistical because they all expect you to do what they want and that is not my approach. As long as you don’t hurt anyone, leave me fuckin’ alone and let me do what I want to do. I do it for myself, I do it for the people I love; I do it for the things I love. I want to spend my limited time on this planet doing the things I love and quite frankly, with 33 years of experience in the music business, I can honestly say that being honest and follow your heart and giving people the most precious thing you can give them, honesty, I think with that experience I can say that it was always the right decision. I don’t want to make the kind of music that someone else wants to buy, I don’t need to bride people, I don’t need to make music I don’t like, just to get your money. No! I do what I love and I am very thankful that I have so many fans who like that approach, appreciate that approach and I appreciate their support. But there will always be naysayers, there will always be people who claim to know better what’s good for you. All they just want to say is I know what’s best for me. I do what I want, that’s what I wanted to say. That is what the song ‘Against The Wind’ is about. It is just about going your way, no matter if it is against the grain, against the wind, no matter if people shoot arrows at you, no matter if people open your vicer, put on your armour and then head towards the wind and do your thing and for me I hope that it will encourage anyone else in this world. Life is too short to wonder what others want from you, do what you feel. That is what the song is about and again, I think it is a very beautiful song. Kenny Leckremo did a very, very good rendition of the song, because the thing is, I had sung the whole song and it is a very demanding song, because it is a power metal song on one hand, but again it has elements that are very unusual for power metal. Musicians will probably agree with me, they will defend it, the way certain things in the chorus are phrased away, the feeling of the vocal lines in the chorus, they are not power metal, they are more inspired maybe by bands like Journey. This is done with a power metal voice. It is quite high and quite theatrical. The groove of the vocals and the feeling it has some Steve Perry vibe or even Sam Cooke. I had sung the song, but I wanted more diversity in it and I needed someone who understands both of these worlds. The soulful feeling of Journey, but with a powerful voice and the high range to sing those demanding and challenging vocal lines in a power metal way. So I asked Kenny, because Kenny understands both of these kinds of music. His voice is very juvenile, his voice is very strong, he is young, he is in his best years as a vocalist, and still he has that old school feeling. He understands what I meant for the song, so I asked him. When he sang it, I was proven right. It was amazing!
We end up with a kind of soft moment, a ballad like song ‘Everybody’s Here Until The End’ and I also like the way you play piano in it…
Yes, it is very simple, very simplistic. I am not a virtuoso on piano. I can play piano, but I am not exactly trained. I play something I can sing along to. That’s what I can really do, but I cannot play virtuose things on the piano. I had a feeling that the album was very wild. I thought that I needed something big and peaceful and calm and epic at the same time, but still something a bit slower to finish the album. To make peace with the rest of the world after such a rollercoaster ride and to bring everything down a little bit in a grand finale. I did not have a song, so I sat down on the piano and started to play and I wrote it in a very short time. I wanted to sing it by myself because it is a dedication to my father who passed away twelve years ago. I wanted to sing it by myself, but in the end I thought ‘I have written it by myself, that’s good enough for a tribute’. I wanted somebody else to take some of the vocals there and I thought who could be that, and I was looking for somebody who could sing very deep and full of emotion. Everybody in heavy metal is always striving for higher and higher, I was trying to find someone who could sing deep and soulful. I talked to Sascha about it and I don’t know if it was me or him who came up with Roy Khan. I was wondering if he was still around doing things, but why hasn’t he been in Avantasia before, so I asked him and he was in for it. There s something really funny about this song, because it is a mix of Queen and also Savatage, also a bit of Slade. I think there is a bit of that good old Slade quality in there, but the funny thing is that the first time when I got Roy singing the song, I thought ‘this sounds like Robbie Williams’ and he sings the second verse, I swear it haha. I would have believed it. It was so super versatile. I have always said: ‘Roy is a pop singer in a heavy metal band’ with Conception and Kamelot. Roy has always been a pop singer, but I mean it in a good way, nothing bad about it, but he is so different.
It is a pity that he does not sing in Kamelot anymore…
I don’t think so. I think he left Kamelot, but I think Tommy is the best thing that could have happened to Kamelot. Tommy is so unusual and so different as well. I really think that Kamelot could not have found a better singer after Roy left than Tommy and Tommy had been singing with Seventh Wonder, that was a completely different ballgame. He was a great singer. I knew Tommy even before he was in Kamelot, because I think he was at Sascha’s place and they did something together and I met him. I ran into him, we had dinner together, that was ten a fifteen years ago, I don’t remember exactly, a long time ago at least. I like Tommy. I think he is the best thing that could have happened to Kamelot. He is technically doing stuff that I’d never pull off. He is a very good singer. I mean, today you see many people in challenge shows that can have the technical abilities. They have so much control over their voice, they can do little tricks with their voice. Everybody sounds like Mariah Carey these days, but most of them have no identity. And Tommy has all these abilities to do those things with his voice, better than anybody else I know in the metal world, but he still sounds like Tommy. He does not sound like a wanna be Mariah Carey, he still sounds like Tommy Karevik and nobody sounds like that.
What are the plans for 2025?
Well, you know, doing the tour in March in Europe and then doing a world tour later this year. I don’t plan too much, because life is what happens to you when you are making plans. I know everybody thinks that I am very organized and very structured and have this ten years plan, but I don’t have. Whenever you have plans, it gives you pressure and at this time in my life, I am 47 years old, I don’t need pressure anymore. I deserve, after so much I have done, after so many things I’ve had to do, I enjoy just taking it easy and doing the little EU tour. It’s going to be great shows. It is going to be an arena tour, it is going to be demanding because it is almost three hours or something like that, that we are going to play every night. It is a full stage production, the biggest production we have ever done. It is based on the last festival show, but it’s going to be even bigger. So we have quite a lot to do and also after the Spring doing this world tour later this year, but apart from that, I don’t know. Some things are going to happen, I am going to let life surprise me, hopefully in a good way.
That is the same for everybody…
Exactly and if you make so many plans, you are going to be disappointed, so I just take it as it comes.
Life always changes, the business changes. What struck you the most and how do feel with this evolution?
I can answer that, as I said most of it before. We have to accept that life is full of changes and life is an ongoing process and everybody… like me, I am sometimes very sad that the old days are over, but the thing is, yesterday will always be over. It is a constant change. We don’t live in the past and we often romanticize the past. We have crazy times in our world. Certainly it is not easy to process the amount of information we are being given, especially in the day and age of social media and the internet, I think it has really brought us to a point that is above what we can cope with, because there is too much information and I think that was better in the past. It was slower, but the world situation itself…? We say now ‘everything has been better’, it was not! In the eighties people were afraid of the whole mankind dying from HIV. We had Chernobyl, we had a war in Yugoslavia, we had terror attacks here in Germany by an underground terror organization, there have been terror attacks in the conflict in Ireland, there have been terror attacks in Basque country and Spain by ETA. There have always been huge challenges. In the eighties everybody was afraid of somebody hitting the button, the Cold War… I don’t want to say that it is not a demanding time, but I refuse to paint everything in black and live in yesterday. I refuse to do that, because I focus – or try to focus – on what I have control about, which is my life, my environment, my heart, my music, my fans, my musical world Avantasia, the sacred ground, my family… when I get up in the morning, sometimes the sun shines but there is always something to get up for. There is always something to look forward to and my life isn’t getting better watching the news seven times a day and that is why I don’t do it. I can’t change things, I am not responsible for saving the world; but I have a feeling that it has always been challenging. Ask the people. Ask a red-haired lady in the 16th century how much better it was back then. They were burnt. Not all red haired ladies, but there was also a 30 years war in Europe, it was devastating, there was pestilence and there were pandemics. There have always been pandemics, catastrophes, mean wars… Germany started one of the meanest wars in the last couple of hundreds years, but I don’t want to take the blame for that personally, but there have always been difficult and terrible situations. So I think compared to what a lot of our grandfathers had to go through, what we are dealing with is not that bad! It could be better, but it could always be worse.
