How are you doing?
Fine, a lot of interviews and some time in mid October the touring starts, at least for Europe. We are now already preparing the tour, Sascha and me and then we go to Karlsruhe and have band rehearsals without the singers, just to get the set list right. We just had a segment of band rehearsal with the drummer and everything live and the next days we will do that again here in Berlin. On the 24^th of July we go back to Karlsruhe which is in the South of Germany near Köln.

Up to the new album now, called ‘Giants & Monsters’. Let us start with the songs you have written…
Argh… my tracks! I have two on this album, ‘Savior Of The World’ and ‘Under The Moonlight’. ‘Under The Moonlight’ is talking about deeds and things that might bridge and enlighten people, what happens in the backrooms of their parties and secret stuff. They also take substances and then they feel good and stuff, then they do strange things, on the next day they cannot look themselves into the eye anymore sometimes, there is not a pinch of dignity left and the chorus is: “under the moonlight, dreams sometimes come true and I want to know things from you the same way”. So you got nothing to do with all these things people do, because rejected or you don’t care or you don’t want anything to do with it. A kind of positive vibe and I always thought if Graham Bonnet would have sung that song, it could have been on the ‘Down To Earth’ album of Rainbow, like a missing song that is not on there. A little delayed, but it has got that vibe. I just envisioned that single to be in a quiet way in a seventies vibe which I prefer anyways. It is very difficult to get modern things out of me.

I still remember I bought ‘Down To Earth’ and I was a bit disappointed, because it was really coming down to earth, less epic…
It was very commercial.

And the magic of Dio was gone…
And I remember in 1978 when ‘Long Live Rock ‘n Roll’ came out, it wasn’t heavy for my taste. The guitars were not distorted enough and it wasn’t aggressive enough for me. So I went to all my friends and I said ‘yeah, it is maybe okay, but it is too commercial, it is too soft, it is not sounding heavy enough’. And with ‘Down To Earth’ I was in the record store and they played it. It was new and I went there because I had heard there may be a new Rainbow album and people said ‘yeah, but something is different’. So I came to the store and I listened to the songs they were playing there for maybe 15 minutes or something and I thought: ‘it must be good, I just have to listen to it for two weeks and then you understood’ and so I bought it, put it on my record player and listened, listened, listened… and it became magic. Sometimes if you play the full record, afterwards things can happen that you did not recognize with the first spins.

Depending on the mood you are in, it can be a different experience…
Yeah there is a strange magic about that album. Personally I think it is one of the best Blackmore ever did, Rainbow ever did with Graham Bonnet as partner. I didn’t even know he was singing in The Marbles before, he was the guy who did ‘Only One Woman’. Recently I got myself a new record player and I found a Marbles collection album or a regular album, their first… it was in a second hand store, and I bought it.

I can imagine, comparable with finding a best of the Zombies…
Or ‘Rock Me Baby’, that original album of David Cassidy. You should have a look at the musicians in the liner notes. Famous studio musicians he has, only the best, crazy… I only knew one song which was amazing, that is basically what I knew and all the Partridge Family sucks, I don’t like so well. I cannot pinpoint things so well, but there are probably very good things. I also like Shaun Cassidy (chuckles). He too had amazing producers! Well, talking about records and ‘Down To Earth’ and Rainbow and My new tracks… ‘Savior Of The World’ now. If there is something high in reality and somewhere, you may complain about the state of things and maybe you wish someone took like a flaming sword and put things back to order, without killing anyone of course. It does happen somewhere, in some dimension.

There are many references to God and maybe religion or spirituality on the record, in ‘Hand Of God’ even literally…
Saying the name of God, one can apply different measures of feeling about the situation. No one can go about it politically, but you can go by it mentally or with info, or one can do like a blog and criticise things, one can take a flaming sword, one can run to Russia and see what’s going to happen. Whatever, each has its own responsibility what he or she can do best, right?

What does it have to do with the references to God?
Everyone can be god, if one is relying on its positive things and powers and abilities. Sometimes people don’t really think so much about the powers they could possibly have. They go like ‘oh I am so useless, I am so sad, I am so depressed, I cannot do anything and where do we start, it is so difficult’, that’s a matter of your own oneself and how you deal with your weaknesses or your strengths and the way it goes. I mean, to canalize things. Could be doing something good and not always complaining and feeling poor and weak. Just try, little things make a difference. Or when you meet with like-minded people, then you can complain about things all day or you come to a good conclusion that you better carry on for the best of mankind until someone says ‘this group of people has amazing ideas, that should be followed or this should be tried or whatever. It is a democratic process, right? And actually you have people who are against your ideas and so that is taking time.

The first song ‘Giants On The Run’ already surprised me in a positive sense. It has some twists and turns you don’t really expect from Helloween…
It is another positive opener and it is kind of like a Deris/Hansen composition. The way Deris had done the track, it was already more or less finished, but Kai Hansen felt that he had some parts to add. So that is kind of interesting, there is some collaboration that never officially took place. You get some real Kai Hansen parts planted into the track and surely when he is singing the parts himself. It is making things interesting. That is why it has been chosen as the first opening track. Lots of variety, lots of clean parts. I know all the tracks that are there, but for some I don’t have loads of info, because I never talked with the composer and how it came about or what his intentions are with the tracks, so it may happen that I have to assume things if you ask me details. I listened to everything and have been involved in recording parts, but I did not actually read all the lyrics I must admit.