There are few names in the world of heavy metal music that carry such reverence as Blind Guardian - a band, which in the course of more than 30 years has constantly set the standard by which technical and melodic proficiency can be defined.
Currently touring the world on the back of their latest epic release, Beyond The Red Mirror, guitarist, songwriter and co-founding member Andre Olbrich took time out to speak about the songwriting process and his life’s passion.
Blind Guardian was formed by Olbrich and singer Hansi Kursch in Krefeld, Germany in 1985. The band released several demos in the lead up to its 1988 debut album, Battalions of Fear, which showcased a disposition towards speed and complex fretwork.
Over the years, and with each subsequent album, the band has constantly redefined itself, adding new elements of complexity to its sound, up to the current work, which while boasting nods to its past, is beautifully futuristic thanks to its seamless fusion of cinematic metal with orchestral and choral arrangements.
‘‘We try of course to find new ideas and to improve somehow otherwise it would be boring for us always doing the same thing,’’ said Olbrich of the latest work. ‘‘We really work hard on ideas and we found some nice parts and worked it out and it’s what’s come out in the end.’’
Sounds simple, but the actual process is anything but.
‘‘We work two years on an album including production, sometimes even a little bit more,’’ Olbrich said. ‘‘I think the last one [At The Edge Of Time] was maybe two-and-a-half-years to put everything together, because we cannot do any songwriting during the tour. Only when the tour is done and we are at home in a calm situation can we really focus and concentrate.
‘‘So we started immediately after the tour, collecting ideas. We start with every album on zero. We don’t want to look backwards, we only try to look forward.
‘‘I like to work with orchestras very much and I saw that there was lots of room to improve, so that’s why I grabbed this and tried to work this out better. We started with the song At The Edge Of Time. This was a really challenging one because we did it a different way in terms of production. We thought it would be a good idea to let the orchestra play first to have an even better fusion with the orchestra. That turned out to be very complicated because we knew that the orchestra would change the timing - and we wanted to have more dynamics - but they also changed tuning.
‘‘It was really challenging for us because I had to tune my guitar for almost every part to get along with the orchestra. In the end I think we reached a new level of fusion with the orchestra and that’s what we wanted to happen with this album. I think it brings this more epic style.’’
Olbrich serves as the band’s lead composer. He agreed with the notion that modern Blind Guardian compositions were much more than merely collections of linked riffs and rhythms.
‘‘We are thinking in the songwriting process how to combine everything and how to do this fusion, because an orchestra needs to breathe,’’ he said. ‘‘You need to leave lots of space for the orchestra to live and breathe and if you don’t think about this at the beginning of the song and only when you have done a complete song and put an orchestra on top it will never work like this. You really have to bring it into the songwriting from the beginning and that’s what we did. You have to think more like a conductor in a way and that’s why it’s maybe a little bit more tricky than the rest of the songs.’’
Considering how much time goes into the crafting of material and its recording, its no surprise to hear Olbrich admit to perfectionist tendencies.
‘‘Hansi and me, we are very very picky,’’ he said. ‘‘We start sorting out things that we are not in love with immediately. Let’s say we have three parts in a song and the fourth part is not really getting where we want, we throw it away immediately.
‘‘You can say that we probably wrote three times as much material as we needed in the end to have the perfect thing. I think that 60 per cent we throw away and what we put in the trash will stay in the trash. We only try to keep the best parts and we always look for the perfect flow ... the dynamics and build something up from the beginning of the song to the end of the song.
‘‘It’s like a movie. We do a soundtrack to a movie in that, you never want to lose the interest of the listener. We want you to follow Hansi and Hansi will lead you in the story with his vocals. But even musically, you should always feel these dynamics and this flow. With this we are very picky.’’
Of course creating the perfect song is one thing, but translating the music to the stage is another.
‘‘It is a lot of work, and of course we are only six people in the live performance but we are used to transforming our songs for the stage,’’ Olbrich said. ‘‘We did this in the past with a song like And Then There Was Silence. Even the old stuff, like Imaginations was difficult for us when it was new.
‘‘Nowadays we have our ways to really focus on the main melodies. My philosophy of music is that a good song will always remain a good song and it doesn’t matter how it is played. Even if I play it on one acoustic guitar it should be good otherwise the song is crap, so we do pretty well on stage and of course we have lots of preparation time. This time we prepared the songs and rehearsed for three months before we went on stage.’’
Olbrich said the current tour was two months in and the band had already played around 36 shows.
‘‘We are thrilled. The venues are full every night,’’ he said. ‘‘The people sing all of the songs with us, even the new stuff, which was always a problem with the other albums. We’re having awesome singalongs. Prophecies is one of the highlights when we play it. We are very satisfied.’’
Olbrich said the band was recording each of its shows and had plans of releasing a new live album following the tour.
‘‘We record every show because we want to put something very nice together and only keep the highlights of the nights, when the band has special moments,’’ he said. ‘‘We can keep these special moments and put these on an album.’’
On Saturday, June 20, Olbrich and the band will play at The Hi-Fi in Sydney, a far smaller venue than the European festival stages, of which the band has become a regular headlining act.
‘‘I like them both,’’ Olbrich said. ‘‘A festival of course, if you’re playing Wacken and you have 70,000 people singing The Bard’s Song, it gives you goosebumps that’s for sure, but the intimacy is very important as well, because then you really feel the same thing that your fans feel.
‘‘The singing is more intense and you get this feedback that you need, the energy that we keep in our hearts to go on after we come home. It is really important to get this energy. In the clubs I think it is much more intense and I really like this intimate feeling.’’
In the course of a 30 year career Olbrich says he has seen many changes, personally and professionally.
‘‘I think in the earlier days we were a little bit more focused on doing parties - heavy metal and rock n roll parties and whatever. Playing music and the band was cool, but we were not so focused on the detail,’’ he said. ‘‘Now of course, you calm down a little bit and the focus is really on the music and yeah, we grew with our techniques and we grew with our instruments, so it’s all a learning process and after 30 years and after you did so many songs in the past and you did so many mistakes in the past you really have the ways to do it in an better way and we try to improve.’’
An aspect of the band that has remained rock solid, is its ability to remain one step outside the pack and not cave in to any trends.
‘‘We try to keep out own style working and not look too much around to what other people think is trendy,’’ Olbrich said. ‘‘If we were to follow trends we would be dead right now I think because trends come and leave very fast.
‘‘We always try to deliver our music and to progress our own music. We are not in the centre of the scene, we are somewhere outstanding, running next to the scene doing our own thing and I think that’s pretty good and I think people appreciate that we are so different and that we are really providing something else. We like to do things different anyway because that’s how we are and how we like to do our music.
‘‘It sounds quite crazy, but we really were very focused when we started. We wanted to be big and famous and we wanted to survive forever. Unfortunately we didn’t become so famous like we dreamed of, but it’s still okay, it’s working good. But we had clear visions then.
‘‘Hansi and me, when we met for the first time in 85 we were really complete metalheads, we were living heavy metal every day and it was the only thing that we wanted to do. It was a passion and that passion is still there. I mean that’s what keeps Hansi and me running. We have this passion for metal music and we want to live this life with the music and it’s interesting because it changes every season - a season we call one album and one tour ... but it’s still so interesting to be part of this. So yeah, we had visions then and we still have visions now.’’
Tickets for Blind Guardian’s Sydney show are available now through www.metalobsession.net or www.thehifi.com.au
