This tour we have had many more fans showing up than the last one. The record sales are going well and we can see that things are going upwards for Blind Guardian. This gives us the chance to go forward to the next level. On the first tour the audience was about half hardcore fans and the other half were people who were more or less checking out the band. This time only Blind Guardian die hard fans are coming out. Everyone is singing the songs, everybody all the way to the last row knows the songs and are singing them when we play. That is almost like European circumstances so I think we have already done something here in the US. We have a very strong fan base and we will try to continue building it up by releasing good records and playing good shows.

The next size of the theaters here in the US is around five thousand. That is a little too big of a step to go right now. You can’t double or triple the size of the venues from one trip to the next unless you have a number one single or videos that are always being played on MTV. How we grew as a band in Europe over the last twenty years was by going step by step. We didn’t “get big” with hit singles or big videos we did it by touring and good records. The steps were much smaller . I guess when we come back we will play the same venues but if we sell out a tour then it is already a great success. We will regulate this by the time until the next tour, if we see that we have a good resonance then we will come earlier.

The fans would kick our asses if we didn’t play the classics. We have so many songs that are demanded by the fans and we can’t even play all those classics only about half of them. I think it would be really unfair to only play material from the new album and leave all the good old songs out. We try to find a good balance and play the best two or three songs from each album.

It gets along quite well. What the fans choose as the best songs usually end up being our favorite songs as well so there’s no big difference.

The thing is that we have worked for fifteen, eighteen years with a major company. With a major company you always have the problem that they only can do decisions for their territory and for the rest of the countries matters are handled by a sister company like Virgin England, Virgin Germany, or Virgin Spain. You sign a worldwide contract but you don’t have any guarantee that you will be released in Spain for example. That was one of the problems with why we were never released in the States because we were signed with Virgin Worldwide and Caroline I think it was (distribution company) never released us here. If you are on an independent label like Nuclear Blast, which is perhaps one of the best independent labels for this music, you do the decisions in Germany with the record company and then the album is released everywhere. They say it is released in Spain, or in the States, or wherever, not a sister company. That is our goal, we want to be released everywhere and not being able to was disgusting for us.

I try to play the old material almost like I know it from the records. That’s the way they are in my head and my heart as I remember the songs. I’ve heard the songs a thousand times from the cds so when I play I stick close to the album versions. There’s of course some new breaks and new elements in there but it’s almost like if Thomen was playing [on the old songs].

It’s quite different from normal life and quite exciting. The guys told me before that it would be very exhausting and I have to agree with them on that (laughs). Every time you have a good bed to sleep in it’s necessary, it’s necessary for survival.

We have World Of Warcraft actually that we play a lot. I think it’s a good mixture of playing WoW and a lot of sightseeing. If we are in countries like the States we are going out for sightseeing all the time. Checking out the cities and getting some nice pictures while walking around and meeting people is great, really awesome.

A Night At The Opera was a concept to do an epic album. A song like And Then There Was Silence is the masterpiece of that album. The fans still vote this song as one of the best songs in Blind Guardian history. So I think that [the production] can’t be too bad. Some other songs may be produced in a different way, they aren’t that epic from the songwriting but now they have the same kind of sounds and that was maybe not that good. But ok, that’s what we thought at the time was the best to do and we did it like that and the result was a very good album. With A Twist In The Myth there was never the concept to do an epic album again. In the beginning we decided on this and wanted something new. With the rock elements I think we found something new. There’s some straighter songs and those songs didn’t need a production with so many choirs and so many orchestrated big guitars or whatever so maybe that’s why the new album feels so fresh and powerful.

It has affected us in a way that of course the market is much harder. Everybody has this same problem with the downloading situation. Bands don’t earn that much money so you are limited, you cannot do whatever is possible like in the eighties when the bands really had the money to spend I don’t know how much in the production process to get whatever they needed. Here’s just one example. We could not afford a real orchestra so far in our career. Maybe some things would sound better if they weren’t synthesizers but there wasn’t enough money to [use a real orchestra]. If a third of the people that download music illegally didn’t maybe we could afford to do this someday.

There’s different ways of working. If you get along with this kind of exchange then it’s ok you can be creative in every way you just need to find your way. Every band has their own system and their own concept on how to create music. In the end I think it’s more important to bring out what you need from yourself. The communication between the musicians is the second part of the step in my opinion.

I would say that we are about eighty percent done and maybe need a couple of months of songwriting to complete it. Production wise we tried out things but we are still searching for the final production setup. We will do more test runs in the future and when we know exactly which way to go we will start the producing. I would say right after the tour we will accomplish it and then the album could be released in 2008.

We never plan things like that you know? You have to see how the songs come out then if they are connected in a musical way then you can say that there is a chance to do a concept album. If the songs are all completely different from one another than a concept album wouldn’t make any sense. We really need the music first, we have no plans or things like that it just comes out.

I start when the touring process is completely done. During a tour I don’t think about writing songs because in my own personal way, only crap comes out. That’s because I don’t feel well, I’m exhausted, and basically just not in the mood to write songs. I need to be relaxed, at home, and then when I feel that I am in a good mood I start writing and working on songs.

Well after the orchestral release I see ourselves writing songs for the next METAL album! Then I see ourselves on the next tour, season six or seven of this, I don’t know how many seasons are we on now, eight? (laughs) So there you go we’ll be on season nine of the Blind Guardian cycle.

I certainly hope so. I will come up with my own ideas and see what the guys say about ‘em!