Edguy
In The Realm Of Baba Yaga

19.04.2014

Tobias Sammet’s wild imagination has already taken us to a lot of different places. We’ve been aboard a falling plane, we’ve been hiding from a sheriff in Sherwood Forest, we’re even going to space now! But the vocalist and the mastermind of two successful projects, Edguy and Avantasia, has another great surprise for those of his fans who speak Russian. Tobias is inviting us to The Realms of Baba Yaga, the very eerie crone all of us remember because of Gerogy Millyar’s shining talent. It’s a Russian fairytale being told with the German accent and it is easy enough to listen to it; the only thing you have to do is to buy Edguy’s new album “Space Police: Defenders of the Crown”. However, we decided not to wait for the official release date and got Tobias on the phone to find out which path led him to the Russian witch’s hut, why a power metal band would cover a rap song and how space policemen cope with an extraterrestrial monster.

Hi Tobias, how are you?

Great! I’m doing promotion for the album that most people that have heard it think is amazing and that’s like running through open doors. So I’m a happy person. Plus the weather is really great in Germany now.

Yeah, I’ve heard, you recorded just another best heavy metal alum ever, didn’t you?

Yes, every year we do that! It’s amazing, what a talent! (everybody laughs)

So, tell me something about it. Will it be heavier that the previous one?

I think it’s the heaviest album we’ve ever done. It has a lot of double bass passages and… I think, the album is even like “Tinnitus Sanctus” (2008), really heavy, but it’s a different kind of heaviness that we have with this album. It’s a little more up-tempo, it’s a little more traditional metal. After doing a couple of interviews I’ve heard some people who listened to the album said that it’s a back-to-the-roots album. I never really thought about going back to the roots. What I can say feeling-wise is that the album has the positive aspects of the “Hellfire Club” album (2004) but at the same time it’s… we got rid of the cheese in a way. (laughs) You know, there was something I didn’t like about the sound of “Hellfire Club” album so much because it was very bleary and indirect. And I think the new album is very, very direct, it has the benefits of the experience of a band that has been doing this for 22 years. It sounds like no album we have ever done before but at the same time it’s got a little bit of the mood of albums like “Rocket Ride” (2006) and “Hellfire Club” and also albums like “Mandrake” (2001), but also it’s got the rough edge of albums like “Tinnitus Sanctus”. It’s hard to describe, everybody should check it out. (laughs)

Are there any power metal elements, too?

It depends on what… (interrupts himself) Of course I know what you think the power metal is. (everybody laughs) Yes, there are. I think, “Defenders of the Crown” or “Sabre & Torch” or “Shadow Eaters” or even “Space Police” and “Love Tyger”, all those songs could have been on a power metal record. But I never really understood the term “power metal” because to me it’s a very artificial term. “Power metal” implies that only power metal is entitled to be powerful! I really don’t understand the determination - “heavy metal”, “power metal”, “speed metal”… When I started playing music or listening to music those terms didn’t even exist, I think. There was just “crap music” or “great music”. (laughs) And I think this is a “great music” album. (laughs)

Yeah, obviously. Ok, are there any songs with that sort of funny lyrics you are famous for?

Again, it depends on what you consider funny. I mean, there are songs like “Love Tyger” which have tongue-in-cheek lyrics, in a way, but they are very straight-forward. You can definitely smile but I think they are very clever lyrics at the same time. So it’s not a really goofy album and we don’t have goofy elements in there. We do have tongue-in-cheek elements that will make you grim, will make you smile, but if you listen to those songs twice, three times, four times, and you go through the lyrics you will discover a really deep meaning between the lines. I think this album is perfectly balancing on the edge between seriousness and sharp cynical tongue-in-cheek elements. It’s never really falling to the goofy side. Never. And that’s something I really like, you know. You should never really go too far with humor. I know, we’ve done that a few times in the past but we’ve never really had the intention of being considered a humorous or a joke band. My heroes in the music industry have always been bands like Twisted Sister, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Queen, the bands who took the quality of their music really seriously but who never took themselves and the music circus itself too seriously. I think it is very important. You should never really become so goofy that you forget about the quality of what you’re charging people for. It should be a very, very serious matter to deliver quality but you should never think that you are too important yourself and we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

What is this creature on the album cover?

I don’t know exactly what it is. It was a painter from Colorado who was painting it. I think it’s probably a very, very mean space monster and we have a very, very cool space cop who is very brave, a hotshot space cop with moustache and a space police badge on his helmet, who really… ahh… I don’t know, what he is exactly doing to the monster but at least he is showing the monster that it should better not cross the certain line because otherwise he would have to become really mean to the monster. The really funny thing is that in the song “Space Police” the space police are the bad guys. The good guys are the astronauts who want to go to space to explore the freedom of existence and the limitlessness of existence and the infinity and the wildness of space. And then there are the space police who come up with stupid rules in space where there should be no rules and no limits and no boundaries… That’s why in the song itself the space police are the bad guys. We thought it was a great and a very, very well defined cover artwork to catch attention and… You know, it’s really funny because the record label thought that neither the album cover nor the album title was a clever step to market the band. They said, “Ahh, I don’t know, it looks a little bit strange for a heavy metal album”. But on the other hand heavy metal has always been the music of outlaws, it has always been the music of people who were different, who did not give a shit about what the industry or their parents, or whoever thought. It was music from people who were flicking the middle finger to people and saying, “This is who we are. We do things our way. If you don’t like it, fuck off”. At the same time you’re being told by the music industry, “Well, this is not really heavy metal. We should be a bit careful”. No! Especially because of that it IS heavy metal, because it’s different and it will piss people off. (laughs) It will get attention. So I think it’s a great cover, it’s very tongue-in-cheek and it’s a real heavy metal cover.

Maybe you’ve heard this question several times today, but since I’m from Russia I can’t help asking you what Baba Yaga is doing on your album.

You know, there is this Russian movie, a children’s movie. I don’t know what the original title is, it was the 60s or the 70s, and Baba Yaga was actually played by a man. Do you know it?

I know the actor, he always played this type of characters.

Ok. Actually he’s playing Baba Yaga in two movies, but one of them is very famous. It’s about that magic forest and a guy is coming to the hut of Baba. He is always asking her… I don’t know what the guy is called. Is he called Ivan or…?

Yeah, Ivan.

Ok, anyway. It’s a really great movie and it is always shown around Christmas here in Germany. You know, I’ve always been fascinated by witches and by scary tales. I mean, that’s how I actually came into writing the first Avantasia story because I’m fascinated by eerie ghost stories and witches stories. I like those fairytale movies, I like those children movies and that’s why I wanted to write a song about it. When I was a kid I was deadly scared by those movies. Baba Yaga is the mother of all witches, I think she is the blueprint for a witch in the European folklore. I just thought it would be great to write a song about that and use her as a metaphor for danger. That song is actually about the phenomenon that the human nature always tends to strive for danger, to seek danger and to get yourself into situations that – and you know that - are not good for you. And at the same time the temptation is bigger than the fear and the brain power to say, “No, I shouldn’t do that”. The song “The Realms of Baba Yaga” is about that aspect of the human nature, when you get yourself deeper and deeper into troubles just because the temptation is too big. It’s about somebody who’s following the call of Baba Yaga, tempting him, “Come to me, I’ll give you wisdom or whatever”. And he is scared but he is in a way like hypnotized and he is getting deeper and deeper into the realms until he crosses the point of no return. I think that reflects the human nature in many ways. You can understand that song in many, many different ways. It could be speaking about nuclear energy, about what mankind is doing… We’re playing with fire actually. It could also be about substance abuse, it could be about the fascination of black spirituality, or it just could be about the fascination of little children who want to hear a fairytale story although they know they will not sleep at night and will be shit scared. (laughs) And that’s what I was, I was pretty much that kid. I always wanted to hear ghost stories and then I could not sleep, but the next day I wanted to hear ghost stories again! So I’m using “The Realms Of Baba Yaga” as a metaphor in that way.

You know, in all these movies Baba Yaga finally helps this guy.

Well, actually it’s pretty open in that song. It doesn’t have a definite end, it’s just talking about the first part of the whole thing, about the temptation. It’s always the scary things, the negative things that is interesting. It’s never the harmless things that is exciting to kids. It’s always the forbidden things. It’s always playing with fire that is much more exciting that playing with something that is just not really harmful, and not dangerous. So I’m just talking about that aspect.

How did you come to the idea of covering a rap song?

I’ve been a huge Falco fan when I was a kid. Or ever since I was a kid, let’s put it this way. I saw him on German TV when I was 8 years old for the first time and I was fascinated because he had this really slick black hair and he was coming across really arrogant, but at the same time you could see he was smiling and even as a kid I was fancying that you never knew if he was joking or serious. To me he was just a fascinating character and I’ve liked his music ever since. I always dreamed about doing a cover version of one of his songs. I thought about different songs. First, I wanted to do “Der Kommissar”, but our producer, Sascha Paeth said, “Oh, no. ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ is way more arrogant, is way more tongue-in-cheek. Why don’t you go for that one?” It was more difficult to sing but we said, “OK, let’s give it a try. If it works we’re gonna put it on the album, if it doesn’t work, we’re gonna put it into the trash can and forget about it”. It turned out to be a really good song. We know that especially here in Germany and in Austria people will either love it or hate it, I mean we will get probably a lot of slack for that song, but what can we do? I mean, we’re no sissy chickens; we’re a heavy metal band so we should be prepared to get beaten up for it. That’s why we’re not scared to put it on the album and be proud of it.  

I was always wondering how you can switch between Avantasia and Edguy. Do you have a kind of switcher in your mind?

I’m a schizophrene. (laughs) No, it’s really hard to describe because to me it’s never been such a huge challenge. I mean, of course at first it’s difficult to switch from one to the other. When you’ve just come back from a huge world tour with Avantasia, you’re coming home and you say, “OK, now let’s work on an Edguy album”. That’s why for the first song on this album, “Sabre & Torch”, I had written the whole song on my own and arranged and recorded a demo with Sascha so I would have a start and it would not be that difficult for me to switch from one project to the other. I wanted to have a sliding, slow change from one to the other and make it a little easier for me. But in general it’s just a subconscious thing and I cannot really answer this question. I just don’t think about it too much, I just do it and I think subconsciously I have Edguy on my mind when I write for Edguy, and I have Avantasia on my mind when I write for Avantasia. The thing is the main target is the same, I wanna write a great song with a great melody, a good riff, a good hook line, I wanna write music that fascinates people and more importantly that fascinates me. That’s what I wanna do. And then, when you start recording it, it will automatically get more and more to Edguy or Avantasia depending on who is playing on the song. I mean, definitely with Edguy it’s five of us working on a song and recording it. With Avantasia it’s whoever is right for a certain song. It’s Klaus Meine, or Alice Cooper, or whoever should be right for a song is singing it and whoever should be the right drummer for a song is drumming it, and whoever should be the right guitar player is playing it… With Edguy we have to cope with the five of us, which is a limitation in a way but at the same time it will guarantee that signature sound of Edguy. So I don’t really have to force it into Edguy or Avantasia direction, it happens very naturally.

(At this moment the line became very noisy and Tobias couldn’t hear me, so he had to call me again and by the moment I got him back on the phone our time had almost run out, so we had to hurry up.)

Well, I have a lot of questions, really, but it looks like I have to choose only a few. OK, let’s go with this one. You know, there are a lot of people who don’t like clowns or are even scary of them. You seem to like them, don’t you?

The good thing about a clown is that at first sight he may be a joker but at second sight you never really know what he is saying between the lines. It’s a creature or a character that is being funny on the surface but it’s a two-edged sword, there are a lot of things he is saying between the lines. Back in the Middle Ages a clown, a joker, a court jester was the only one who was allowed to say whatever he wanted and get away with it. And he was indeed the only one who was allowed to say the truth and be cynical and wrap it up as something humorous. I think, that’s a role that we are playing in the heavy metal scene. We are saying a lot of true things and we are saying a lot of cynical things and sarcastic things and at the same time we can get away with it because we wrap it up and say it with a smiling eye and we feel very comfortable in that role.

Do you have any tour plans for this year?

Yes, definitely. We will start a European tour in September. First we’ll be doing Western Europe and we will definitely come to Russia. I think it might happen next spring, 2015. But I’m not sure, it can happen this summer as well. We will definitely come to Moscow and hopefully St. Petersburg. It’s just a matter of when.

I know you are a huge football fan. How comes you don’t have a song about that?

Well… It’s just… I don’t know. When you write songs about football, there are a lot of things you can do wrong. (laughs) So I’d rather make my comments on Twitter but I’d rather not comment on football in a song. (laughs) But I have to say that there is a bonus track on the limited edition of “Space Police” which is called “England” and in that song I’m slightly talking about football.

I have to check it out then. OK, thank you for the interview. I know, we have no more time.

Yeah, I really have to go now. Thank you.

Edguy on the Internet: http://www.edguy.net

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Ekaterina Akopova
March 4, 2014
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