Exclusive Interview with Tobias Sammet (Avantasia, Edguy)

Tobias Sammet, the mastermind behind the German Power Metal band Edguy and of course the head of the Metal Opera project Avantasia, has reached a lot in the last 20 years. Playing shows in over 40 countries and countless chart entries are just a few of them. His biggest achievement seems to be the work with his own heroes on Avantasia. In just a few days the next masterpiece, called "Ghostlights", will hit the stores and just a month later Tobias Sammet will attend the preselection round of the Eurovision Song Contest in Germany. So there were several reasons to talk to him again. But this isn't just another interview out of hundreds. This time it was important to me to involve the Avantasia/Edguy fans, so I asked those people in a fan forum for their questions and the resonance was great. Thanks to all those people from all over the world who sent in their questions! There were so many, so I couldn't use all of them, but I selected a few and combined them with my own questions. Read the result below.

CD-Review: Shakra - "High Noon"

When singer Mark Fox left Shakra back in 2009 nobody thought these guys will ever team up again. It seemed to be impossible because it was a quiet ugly break up with lots of bad blood. Fox was replaced by John Prakesh and just after two albums Prakesh left the band in 2014. I don't know what it is, but Shakra always had problems to keep their singer. To me it was a huge surprise when I heard the news of Mark Fox's return on the new album, called "High Noon". Now it's finally here and it feels like Fox never left the band.