Hansi Kürsch: “I find that some bands try to get into the Blind Guardian direction but our diversity is so big it is really hard to capture that”

Last week I had the chance to interview some of my favourite vocalists in metal, the mighty Hansi Kürsch from Blind Guardian and the Demons & Wizards frontman. We talked about his two new albums, the recent third Demons & Wizards album and the first Blind Guardian Twilight Orchestra records, that was released a couple of months ago. Here we go!

Hello Mario.

Hi Hansi, how are you?

I’m good, how are you?

Fine, waiting for you.

Sorry for the delay, it’s one of this things…

Don’t worry, we all have so many things to do.

That is very true, we all have things to do. Busy weeks, I have to say I haven’t stop for the last 24 months. It was continuously working on Blind Guardian stuff and Demons & Wizards. It’s either being creative or being on the road, or doing interviews.

As always, I suppose!

Yes, as always, but it was more than usual! Whenever I’m working with Blind Guardian, there are spots where I still have a sort of privacy where I can really have more pleasant adventures and now… nothing! It’s just about music and business.

All the time working!

Yeah, all the time working! Which is not completely true, the little time I have I spent it on vacation with my wife. It’s fun to be on vacation or on the road again, but for me it’s more business than usual.

Well, you’ve worked so much on the last months, so many records on the last months.

So many records, with Demons & Wizards, with Blind Guardian. It’s too much but who stops for a good cause? I am not complaining.

So, well, let’s talk about the new Demons & Wizards album which it’s supposed to be released tomorrow if I’m not wrong.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

It is a very solid album. I’ve already listened to it four or five times and it’s growing stronger on me.

That’s quite my impression as well! And I expected that to be the case because it is not as overloaded as a Blind Guardian album, for example.

Absolutely.

You enjoyed it since the first time but there’s still a lot to discover!

I think that “III” is an evolution from the very first two Demons & Wizards albums. It’s like, totally not coming to an end, but it’s the right evolution of this project.

I would agree again. The first albums are really strong. The first album has been done twenty years ago and Touched By The Crimson King fifteen years ago and of course, we have developed ourselves as persons. But that develop cannot define the progression we have made musically because I think it’s the perfect plan now, we have the right mixture of what is my character and what is Jon’s character and we bring some new elements. Some of the has been available on the first two Demons & Wizards albums already but not on Blind Guardian and Iced Earth albums, but we intensified them. Somehow, we managed to bring them more to the point I would say.

I totally aggree. It’s something that probably you’ve heard before on Blind Guardian or Iced Earth albums but it’s more intense. I would say it’s the perfect evolution of both projects and also de Demons & Wizards albums that you’ve released before.

I consider it a very strong album, so does Jon. I am very confident that the many people who is going to listen to it would feel the same. There are a lot of different songs. I mean, you have to discover a lot but on the other hand they explain themselves very easily. It’s not like you have to be a studied musician or you have the feeling that we are pretending to be something, it’s very natural exposure of Jon and I.

I think it’s not a very difficult album to enter to. If you listen to Diabolic, the first song, it’s the perfect mixture of music and lyrics, the atmosphere as well. I love it.

Thank you very much. I just pick up on the atmosphere, it’s a very important point for this album. It’s very atmoshperic. Maybe Diabolic is the perfect example because it has three different sections. Well, the first and the third sections are similar. I am involved in the third section with the vocals which makes a big difference, but in every section we have climaxes and it’s all built up into one direction so the song never loses the intensity and I think the listener would be very attentive from whatever it’s the initial part of the listening until the very end. And I would go so far that is my impression at the moment.

Once you’re listening to the whole album, even though is a long album – about sixty minutes – you will make that experience with every song. To me personally, Children Of Cain is the big point of the album so that has been set up naturally but in a very smart way.

Yeah, I would say that my favourite one is Wolves In Winter.

Really?!

Yes, it’s pretty dark. It’s the perfect song on the album.

I like the song a lot but I’ve never been connected to it so much as I am with other songs. That is one of the reasons why I passed the lyrics for Wolves In Winter to Jon, because he feels more releated to this song. I was running out of time because I had to do the singing, doing the lyrics while we were doing the shows in Europe. I felt that it would be a relief if Jon did the lyrics for this one anyway but he also was closer to this song that I’ve been. My ideal songs on this album would be Invincible, Children Of Cain, Diabolic and Midas Disease. These are the ones that attracts me the most, but this would be different on every person.

Many people like the classic songs like Children Of Cain, Timeless Spirit or Midas Disease and are those, as you mentioned, that are pretty much into Diabolic because whatever I can say about the album, Diabolic is the hardest, the heaviest song on the album.

Totally. And about the lyrics, where do you receive influencies or where do you base your lyrics on? Books, movies, other stuff?

First we work on the music itself. It’s the case with Blind Guardian and also the case in Demons & Wizards. There are instrumental arrangements which I pick up and the I do the vocal melodies, and once this two things come together then I usually have an idea which direction to go for the song. Like Children Of Cain, I went for a free style short story which I composed a few months ago, or some years ago I would say and it’s about a dystopian society called the children of Cain and the people, the society, in this fictive universe lives according to the love of Cain, which means that the killing of a brother an established tool to become a grown up member of the society, it is basically the only chance to become a grown up. While this is an accepted tool, it is not accepted to kill more one of your brothers. The guy in my story is going to kill this whole generation because he considers himself to be the reincarnation of Cain and by that he wants to get to the next level of human progression, and obviously this is not accepted by the society.

There is quite lot of songs at least that I wrote about what is wrong and what is right and how to touch it, how much it depends on the perspective you are having like in Diabolic, were we are going back to Lucifer who is expecting a tool with mighty hell eyes who approach the seventh gate of hell. Once they join force, they decide to start war against heaven, because they feel they are not treated right, they are questioning the way or direction heaven has taken. They are not doing anything wrong, they are just questioning but questioning is not allowed in heaven. Is it OK that they have been banished? That is the question. Who is the real bad guy?

Yeah, I know what you mean. It is a difficult question.

Yeah, it is a difficult question but it is connected to nowadays life and to everyone along this planet experiences, you are force to do judgements but you don’t have the tools to do so, everyone tries to manipulate you which is what Midas Disease is about. Midas is about a TV witcher who is constantly manipulating people and he always succeeds, whatever he is going to accomplish. He is constantly causing a bad effect on people, obviously, but they’re still buying whatever he says. I’m amazed by mass manipulation as well, it is a different topic for me on Demons & Wizards stuff. If it comes to stories,

I’ve been ispired by Brandon Sanderson’s “The Stormlight Archive” and I’ve also been inspired by Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” which are reflected on the lyrics in Final Warning. Invincible, Universal Truth and New Dawn are all connected to Philip Pullman‘s storytelling. Jon, on the other hand, wents more into a spiritual and philosophical direction in Wolves And Winter which is sort of a werewolf story and it is basically about accepting the beast in yourself.

Like accepting ourselves as we are all animals and we also have an animal instinct.

Yeah, we all have an animal instinct and choosing a natural way of using it, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s an overall topic on this album, the supernatural abilities we are having. We are not natural as species anymore. I mean, we are almost divine but in most cases in a negative way. But of course we have positive aspects and they are also reflected on this album, like on Invincible and Universal Truth, which have a positive vibe and it is also reflected on the lyrics. Universal Truth is about what we are able to accomplish if we stay together and if we believe in love and also if we find the right people we can rely on. Many people considers this album to be the darkest Demons & Wizards album which lyrically I would aggree, musically I would say is similar to the very first, which is also very dark, and some people say it’s even darker. For Jon‘s Iced Earth I’m not sure, for Blind Guardian I would say yes, for me it would be the darkest album along with the first Demons & Wizard album.

Fine. And after releasing the album, what comes next? Are you going on tour?

Well, I don’t see that anymore because we’ve spent the whole year 2019 touring with Demons & Wizards and both of us have to go back to the main bands. We have missions, they are waiting for us! I got back of the US tour and releasing the album, and I’m working on new songs and Bling Guardian is ready to start producing a new album. For 2020 or 2021 I’m completely occupied on Blind Guardian I would say Jon as well on Iced Earth new material. Maybe they got later into the studio because they are faster on the studio than we are and I would guess that he would be on the road as well on the second half on 2021. So if we intend to do shows with Demons & Wizards again then, this may be either in the middle of 2021, but if it’s not the case, we would have to wait until 2022 or 2023.

Okay. No problem, I’m willing for a new Blind Guardian as well!

Yeah! You can expect that on the beginning on 2021. I think that the production would keep us busy until november-december this year and then it’s just a question when is the company going to release the album. The material has been written and we did some preproduction already. It is progressive stuff, it is very interesting stuff, very surprising.

Surprising, huh?

Very, very surprising! I would never have imagined we would have gone this direction. It is less orchestration than, for example, we had on Beyond The Red Mirror but it is a very progressive album.

I really love Beyond The Red Mirror even though I’m more into the older stuff. Well, my favourite album is Tales From The Twilight World and that era, but, I think that if I had to choose the sound of a new album I would prefer a Nightfall-ish stuff more than the heavier albums. That is why I loved Beyond The Red Mirror, it has the perfect combination of old stuff and the orchestration in the Nightfall era.

Yeah, I really love it. What can I say! I would not release either an album for Demons & Wizards or Blind Guardian which I don’t like. You create something which defines and explains an succeed very easily to people and sometimes it defines succeed almost easy to you as a creator, but the public may receive a completely different than I would have expected. Of course, there are at least two Blind Guardian eras, from Battalions to Somewhere or Imaginations and from Nightfall In Middle-Earth to Beyond The Red Mirror or Legacy Of The Dark Lands. I think this era has also come to an and now with the orchestral album.

We never deny our roots, with every album you would have a little of Tales From The Twilight World, a little of Imaginations From The Other Side, a little more of Beyond The Red Mirror, but it is everything connected always with regard to Blind Guardian, which amazes me so much, especially on the sound we are working on the moment. That stuff has never done before. You will indicate it as Blind Guardian afterwords, but we’ve never done anything like that before. There is the challenging thing on one end and also the entertaining thing to me when it comes to Blind Guardian.

There is almost something else and there are almost magical universes on each of every album, and we just take the challenge and put our soul on it. Any of the albums that we have done has been greatest because we’ve never played the safety cards. I would not have the recipe to write an album like Somewhere Far Beyond again, even if I wanted to. They are all individual songs and they came naturally, that is the most important thing in Blind Guardian whatevere we are doing. It just comes out as an expression, what we feel at the moment.

Yeah, I think that every album belongs to a certain year or an era. It is difficult to repeat something within the mixed Blind Guardian discography.

I’m sometimes surprised especially when mainstream media says that Tales From The Twilight World is the same as At The Edge Of Time and I’m like “OK. Either I had a big misunderstanding or the guy who wrote the review hasn’t listened to it“.

Well, they are completely different.

Yeah, there are so many differences between them I cannot even describe it. I just can thank for being part of them.

I remember that, maybe I’m wrong, Beyond The Red Mirror it’s a sequel to Imaginations From The Other Side or the story beyond Imaginations….

Yeah, it was just from the ways the song developed, there wasn’t no real redline in the songwriting in Imaginations From The Other Side nor Beyond The Red Mirror, but the way the songs developed was similiar, and this is when I came out with the idea to go back and connect the stories. In Imaginations From The Other Side we have three songs which are connected to the story in Beyond The Red Mirror like Born In A Mourning Hall, Bright Eyes and And The Story Ends. It is the basic storey, the prequel to Beyond The Red Mirror, but I was thinking about it and connecting the universes, bringing the epic and everything was story-related, at different a level of course, but the sense was like what we had back in the days. There are similarities, but in the musical way it’s more the free spirit the two albums really reveal, and both are very intense.

I prefer them to be different. Having two identical albums like some bands are used to do nowadays, has no

I also find that some bands trying to get into the Blind Guardian direction but they are losing them very quickly. The diversity in Blind Guardian is so big it is really hard to capture that. Even if you just go for an album like Tales From The Twilight World, which is a easy album, there are like three different styles involved already. It was really an album of that era and this is how we expected that. Whenever some band tries to do it, they basically fail.

The best you can do is have your own models and try to think what they were doing but then in an artist perspective, you have to come up with your own vision and follow your direction. There is nothing wrong with hearing how are your idols, it is a natural thing. If you start you’re still enthusiastic you can do easilly one or two good albums and they would sound like “Helloween” or “Blind Guardian” but you have to liberate yourself after that. I think that we managed to do that earlier in our career.

I would also say that Follow The Blind is one of my favourite albums ever as well. It is very different, it’s very speed, thrashy, I would say a lot of adjectives… But it’s always categorizing a band like Blind Guardian as power metal. Well, it’s power metal but it’s also a lot of things. What do you think?

Yeah. I mean, back then our definition was speed metal. That’s what we called ourselves. What we tried even though was to liberate ourselves from the first album, which was somehow connected to bands like maybe Helloween. If you listen back to it, you have to say “there is hardly anything in common“.

We were different on Batallions Of Fear already but on Follow The Blind, because of the reviews that made us “the new Helloween“, we went on a different direction. We were so interested in all these american metal like Hallow’s Eve, Holy Terror, Testament, that stuff. You have to combine that in your style so people would come and see that we are not a Helloween copy and we are not going in the same direction. We liberated ourselves at that point and thanks to it we became very open minded and we became an aggressive band, we always had a little more attitude than other bands.

The only band german band doing speed, heavy, power and progressive from the beginning would be Rage. That connects us more to bands like Kreator or Sodom. Both then Rage and Blind Guardian built that genre and established that style, more progressive.

Yeah, the band is constantly evolving. You’ve been working together for more than thirty five years and you cannot be doing the same for such a long time.

The are other bands like, let’s say AC/DC for example. They’ve been together for such a long time. They changed the music a little bit but their style it’s their style. There is nothing wrong with it and there is also a direction to be taken, but we chose a different direction. That’s it.

Okay. Let’s move on to Legacy Of The Dark Lands which was released in november. How does the idea of this album came about?

We started working on some of the songs in the Nightfall In Middle-Earth era. Short after that, two of them have been already accomplished, in a composive way: This Storm and Dark Clouds Rising. This were the first two songs and basically, of course, the orchestration has grown over the years. Of course, we’ve fixed things, but the basic idea were quite the same when you are listening to the album. So the songs have depeloped technically but with regard to the original rules we’ve kept almost everything as it was intended to be.

There is also the reason why we did not include any metal into it. Ever since we did this two songs, which were composed on the computer – on keyboards – I did my vocals as I always do and both André and I felt that it had a very nice mixture so we thought that we would develop a whole album like this whenever we have the time and the abilities, we did not expected that to be twenty years or more than twenty years. But we knew that this would be a long project still it was far longer than we expected. Over the years, with the eras we were scratching – A Twist In The Myth and A Night At The Opera – we composed songs into the classical direction and always reserved this songs for Legacy Of The Dark Lands and once we had a whole album together, which is something quite unusual, we developed a different story together with Markus Heitz.

The album took a lot of time in the making with regard to the production: the vocals, the mixing and the production almost took two years. Before that, we have recorded the orchestra already over the ten years ever since At The Edge Of Time. Basically it turned out exactly as designed, as it was intended to be and we are very proud of it. When we were asked about the album, I always said “Imagine Nightfall In Middle-Earth without the band, the metal band” and this is what we delivered in 2020. To say so it’s the second part of Nightfall In Middle-Earth with another topic, with another story.

I feel as thrilled as I was with Nightfall In Middle-Earth, I consider it the best album I’ve ever worked on and Legacy Of The Dark Lands naturally would be the second best. History would tell if it has the same quality than Nightfall does. It was pure fan doing it, I loved it a lot and that can be related on the Demons & Wizards album, I think. many of the qualities are really related on Legacy Of The Dark Lands and so my expectations for the next Blind Guardian album of course are very high. Both André and I have learned a lot in a good condition, that makes us very optimistic for the next Blind Guardian as well.

And how does your fans received the Twilight’s Orchestra Legacy Of The Dark Lands album?

Basically the same as any Blind Guardian album since A Night At The Opera. A majority of fans were embracing it because it’s different and it’s not what they expected. This people are praising the album but of course people would have the expectation that we would go back to the Imaginations From The Other Side era. The Blind Guardian fans would need some time but they should allow this album to grow on them, this is what has happened with Legacy Of The Dark Lands.

We’ve reached 90% of our fans to be a fan of this album. It might not be the most spectacular album for a fan who is into Somewhere Far Beyond but it’s still an enjoyable album. For the ones who loved Beyond The Red Mirror or At The Edge Of Time it is another good album. What we are working on at the moment is the live performance for this one. We would not be album to present it until 2022.

Wow!

It’s a lot of preparation. We are also talking to stage companies because we do not have to perform it ourselves, it can be performed by other people as well. That’s the beauty of this thing. We have composed more songs into that direction but they would not be used for Blind Guardian, we’ll keep that again until we have another complete album to do a second one. It will not be another twenty years but don’t expect that to be released within the next five or six years because we have so many plans with Blind Guardian.

Alright. How many people were involved all over the years in Legacy Of The Dark Lands?

I cannot say. You have to keep in mind that we started working on this along the regular album. I’m not talking about any preparation in 2009 or 2010. Over the ten years, whenever we worked on Beyond The Red Mirror or At The Edge Of Time, in the back we were also working on this album already. And we also have people involved who came in and also left the project or became less important in the project. If we consider all the orchestral musicians maybe 200 people. I cannot say, it’s a lot.

Let’s move on to the older stuff. Tales From The Twilight World turns 30 this year, is there any plan to rescue some of the forgotten songs in the album like Traveler In Time or Lost In The Twilight World for the next shows?

We will not play until 2021, so the anniversary is history but we are working on it. Actually, we have three anniversaries, At The Edge Of Time turns 10, Tales From The Twilight World turns 30 and Imaginations From The Other Side turns 25. We would do a lot of Imaginations because we are working on re-issue stuff and we are intending to do a small thing with Tales From The Twilight World but it has not been fixed yet and we keep it with At The Edge Of Time because to Blind Guardian this is still a fresh album.

Yeah, I think that one of the song that must be in the setlist would be A Voice In The Dark, it is one of my favourite ones.

Oh! Yeah, we did that when the album was released in 2010 or 2011, it was a difficult one to perform but yeah, we would take that back. The dilema with Blind Guardian is always to find the good mixture because after all this years we have so many albums and, of course, the die hard fans need to be pleased as well as the fan who likes the new stuff so it’s a minimum amount for each of every album and heave at least five classical ones which we barelly can leave it out like Mirror, Mirror, Valhalla or The Bard’s Song. It’s a risk not to play that and people are disappointed if they are not played.

As you said, we might be able to add a few more but we have to decide which songs apart from this classical ones can be involved. And there’s also a question of difficulty. We started working on The Curse Of Feanor recently, that was released five years ago, and The Holy Grail that was involved at the end of the Beyond The Red Mirror tour. This songs need to be developed in a live situation before they are really settled and be considered them to be on the same level that the classical ones. I also have to consider the intensity of the songs as well. A Voice In The Dark is a very intense song and I need to get the freedom of a ballad or whatever afterwards.

Yeah, a moment of relax after such an intense song.

Totally, to relax. It’s always nice to play an album like Imaginations From The Other Side but I went for the way I did it in Denmark when we did the recordings I would do like three of four shows and afterwards I would need a lot of rest.

Well, the next question was related to it. Which songs are the most difficult for you to play live?

Of course some of the ones we haven’t played so far. Battlefields is one which I would like to play, we’ve tried that on the rehearsals for two, three or four weeks but the result was disappointing. That is totally one of the most difficults. (Hansi tries to remember at this point) Straight Through The Mirror!

From A Twist In The Myth?

Yeah! I’m gonna check that, give me a second! (laughs) It’s a bit embarassing but I have really no idea how is this song called now!

(we both laught) No worries, Hansi!

Connecting to the internet at the moment! (Hansi jokes about the internet connection in Germany)

The internet connection here is rubbish as well!

I don’t think it’s worse! I’ve been a couple of times in your country and actually your internet is better than ours! (laughs) It’s a shame I have to use the internet to look for that song! Yeah, it is the song Straight Through The Mirror, that is so difficult. So is Lionheart, the song right after, and many of the songs in A Night At The Opera are difficult to. All the other stuff is very doable.

Yeah, I think that Ride Into Obsession is also a very good song to be played live.

Ride Into Obsession is also a good one for the next tour! We did it a couple of times, it’s not an easy one that needs a lot of preparation from the band side and for my vocal side as well but that would be a very nice one!

And what is your favourite Blind Guardian song?

Totally old-school. My favourite one is Time Stands Still (At The Iron Hill).

That’s a very good one!

Yeah, it is a good one and it contains everything I would expect from Blind Guardian. It contains everything which you can listen to on Legacy Of The Dark Lands and that tells you something. This song is twenty two years old and it’s still has the oldie elements in Blind Guardian but also has the essential Blind Guardian even though it is also a commercial song.

Well Hansi, that would be everything for today!

My wife is waiting. I get some pasta and a glass of red wine.

I didn’t expected that to last for that long!

Don’t worry, I had the time and it was great talking to you. I hope we catch up again once we’re on the road with Blind Guardian or when we are doing the next commercial with Blind Guardian.

Thanks Hansi, it’s been a real pleasure.

Have a good night, Dr X.!