Sören Van Heek
Wizard
I am doing well today, thank you. We finished recording the new album, everything is mixed and done, cover is ready, videos are produced. In addition to that we manage and rearrange some new things in our band, so of course I am very excited about the next time to come!
Yes, this is a hard time somehow. We are lucky because none of us or our families got ill or was infected to date. So the "hard" thing for us is that we can't play live. We miss the fans, the adrenalin, the metal party with you all. But this crisis also had something good: We found the time to make a new album. That would not have been possible if we were on tour this year. I am a positive man so I try to see the good things and I prefer being happy with all we have done. All my best wishes go out to all people suffering from this shitty virus.
We had to move our concerts to the year 2021 and I hope that we will return. Hopefully all the clubs will still exist next year. I keep my fingers crossed for them, they have really hard times! Of course we are very looking forward to our first "after crisis" concert! It sure will be a very special feeling, hahaha.
No, in the meanwhile we concentrated on making "metal in my head" so we did not have the time to produce much other stuff like live-video-streams. But we are still alive and more active since ever! You will see!
We always plan albums, hahaha, but we are not the fastest people. To be honest, we wanted to record this album last year, but the songs were not ready. And this year it was a good time to do this project. We did no rehearsals and concentrated only on the album. We made a very long pre-production and worked hard on the songs, the choirs and so on.
I know, hard to believe while listening to these 10 short metal songs, but it is really hard work to get all this thing done. But we love it, we love heavy metal and especially this album!
Hmm, that is hard to say. Perhaps it has to do with the fact, that Dano (guitars) left the band this year (or end of last year) so he was not involved in composing the songs. Dano likes thrash metal (like I do) so on every album he did with us there were also a few "thrashy" songs on it. Now these songs were gone and only Sven (most songs) and Arndt (with a little support of Tommy, Marcel and Gustavo) made the songs. So they all have the same style, you know what I mean?
We all are not very religious. We only love heavy metal. To feel the power, the emotions, the atmosphere, the strength: all ends in the will to make a great party!
I don't know if metal music is not as strong as 30 years ago. This each and every one has to decide for himself. I never stopped listening to metal and never stopped going to concerts. So for me the world is ok and fine! There is always metal in my head. Always. Right in this moment I listen to Slayer and Virgin Steele, hahaha.
What do you mean with that? We want to entertain you, us and every single Metalhead! That is our mission 😉
Don't think too much! Put the album in your player, have a nice drink by your side, lovely people around you and press Play! And then you only have to enjoy listening to the music! Be happy! Mosh and bang around! Drink and kiss your friends! Just have a good time!
There is no other message, hahaha! You got it! We are Metalheads as fuck, that sounds damned good to me!
Since 15 years (if I counted right) it is the first album without Dano Boland. Recently, we welcomed Tommy Hartung in the band. I did not like it, that Dano left the band. But I also saw, that he was not happy anymore. He did not want to play live so much and he also did not like studio work. And beside that he made a side project "Vebrifuge", his band where he played in his youth and which was reanimated last year. So he liked to hang around with them, playing all the old thrash-stuff. And he is lucky with that. So this is the most important thing, to be satisfied with what you are doing. We, the rest, were looking forward. Being stronger than ever!
Tommy is working very hard and he is so full of power and everything is so exciting for him. You can write him at 2 o'clock in the morning to make a new riff and on 3 o'clock you get your riff, hahaha. So he worked with us on a few riffs, but in the end he was a little bit too late to compose complete songs (too late meaning: he came in the band to late). We did not play live with him due to circumstances but I hope that also this will be fine!
After thirty years we don't have to prove anything to anyone. It is and has always been important that we as a band are happy and stand behind what we do. Everything else is a nice aftertaste.
You never know what will happen after a release. The album "Metal In My Head" is a very strong Metal album from our point of view. We are definitely ready and open for anything. It remains to be seen what the future will bring.
Jacky is always by our side! For me as drummer alcohol is forbidden in the studio while recording. But for Sven it is essential, hahaha. 2 weeks before his recordings he (strong smoker) started to smoke e-cigarette. The first day in the studio was a catastrophe. He could not reach high tunes and it was very hard to sing. So at the end of the first day he decided to get back to John Player Special, smoked a packet of this, drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels, and believe it or not: the next day everything was fine, hahaha! No joke! Martin Buchwalter (our producer) was angry with him: You cannot stop smoking 2 weeks before the studio, you motherfucker!
Sven wrote the text after seeing a fantasy film (don't know what film it was, but it inspired him). I think this is one of my favorite songs on the album. It has everything a good metal song should have: power, atmosphere and a good refrain! I like it very much and I think it is a typical Wizard song. I am very looking forward, what the fans will say about it. We also did a video with this song because we all love it.
Yes, you can see it like that. Wizard exists over 30 years now and if we look back, there are so many uncountable great memories we shared with the fans (and other metal heads). Of course we want to give this feeling back to them! We want to tell them, that we see them and that we like what we see and love what we do together! First we wanted "30 years of metal" to be the album title. However, in the end we decided to switch to "metal in my head", because it should not sound like the title to a "best of" album.
Oh, to this song I cannot tell you very much. Sven composed it and he was done with it very fast (in my opinion). The creation of this song was no highlight for me. Don't know why. It did not kick my ass; you know? But when listening to it after we recorded it, I now like this song very much. Perhaps we only had a bad sound in preproduction. This song you have to hear loud with a super sound and then it kicks your ass like hell! A song that is similar to this is "we fight". That one I love minimum more. It reminds me to simple powerful Manowar songs like they did a long time ago. I am still a big fan of this metal style.
Our label Massacre records released something like a "best of" called "Taste of fear". But it only contains songs published by Massacre and is also only available as stream or mp3. Of course one could think about a best of album, but that would of course be a very long album, hahaha.
We also could, e.g. re-record the "Magic circle" album with which sound we are very very unsatisfied or our first demo "legion of doom". Don't know, if we find the time, perhaps we do something like that. If you want to have a summary of our last 30 years, I recommend you the videos made by Mathias Hacker filming a very long video interview with us. Because it is so long, he cut it into 5 or 6 pieces.
I thank you and the fans out there for your time! We love what we do, and to say it with song titles of us: Heavy metal will never die, we are bound by metal since metal is in my head!
Visit us on Facebook, get in touch with us, and we hope you will like our new album! In the sign of the Wizard. Snoppi
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