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.

Album Of The Year 2014: # 15 - 11

Hello my friends,

2014 was an incredible year for our beloved genre. So many fantastic records hit the stores, you just can't count them and I think not one single "best-of list" does justice to the huge flood of Rock and Metal releases. Every single ranking list just captures a little glimpse, depending on various musical tastes - and so it is with my album of the year top 15 list. This ranking is a very subjective one, those records are the ones that found their way back into my CD-player over and over again and so I don't care about the scores I've given those albums. All records in this list have at least a final rating with 8 out of 10 points, but that's it. This list comes just straight from the heart.

And now let me give a huge THANK YOU to you people out there! Yes YOU, the readers of my blog and the ones, who supported "Rock & Metal 4 You" since the very beginning. You are the reason why I can do what I love to do. How much worth is a webzine without its readers? So thanks for stopping by from time to time and reading my stuff. Very special thanks go also to Denys Jaime from MyGlobalmind Webzine and to all the great musicians I had the pleasure to work with in 2014! The list is pretty long, so I can't thank everyone individually, but you know who you are! :)

I can't wait for the things to come next year with all of you guys! With that said I wish you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS! Hopefully some great records found their way under your Christmas tree. ;)
And now let's start with the first part of my album of the year ranking!

Special: TOP 15 Songs Of The Year 2014!

Hey folks,

various websites and magazines are publishing their "best of 2014" lists these days, so I'd like to jump on that train too and today I'll reveal the 15 best songs of 2014. For sure this is my personal taste, so maybe you guys have other favorites. Would be nice if you could put your top 5 songs of the year into the comments under this post. I'm very interested in what you think! All in all I must say that 2014 offered tons of great songs, but there are particular tracks that really stuck in my head the whole year. Those are the ones that are worth to be mentioned here.

CD-Review: Edguy - "Space Police: Defenders Of The Crown"

Here it is - "the best and heaviest Edguy album ever" and by the way "the best Heavy Metal album of all time". At least it was announced like that by mastermind Tobias Sammet. It is well known that Tobi is a little megalomaniac and you shouldn't take everything too serious, but last year he said his new Avantasia record would be the best one and he was damn right. It was my album of the year. So if Mr. Sammet says "here is the best Edguy album ever" expectations are high and what you can read in the press sounds also very promising. So, can this new record do justice to its big hype?