My hitlist for 2011

As every year here is my annual hitlist:

Albums:

Arch/Matheos - Sympathetic Resonance
Machine Head - Unto The Locust
Powerwolf - Blood Of The Saints
Graveyard - Hisingen Blues
Joe Bonamassa - Dust Bowl

Gigs:


Death Angel @ 70000 Tons Of Metal Cruise
Sanctuary @ 70000 Tons Of Netal Cruise
Forbidden @ 70000 Tons Of Metal Cruise
Fates Warning @ Essen
Nevermore @ 70000 Tons Of Metal Cruise

Movies:


X-Men First Class
Agora
Kidnapped
Machete
I Spit On Your Grave

Books:


George R. R. Martin - A Song Of Ice And Fire
Stieg Larsson - Milennium Trilogy
Keith Richards - Life
Henning Mankell - The Man Who Smiled
Art Spiegelman - Maus

Timekillers:


World Of Warcraft (I know, big surprise...)
Diablo 3 Beta
Portal 2
Starcraft 2
Mass Effect

Best Investment:


My Kindle

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all of you, see you on tour next year :-)

The end of the tour

After 15 months on the road we just finished the "At the edge of time" world tour with a fantastic show in Warsaw. I want to thank our crew for making life on the road easy for us and a special thanks goes out to all of you guys for celebrating so many awesome gigs with us!
See you all again next year!

New Arch Matheos Video released :-)

I have always been a die hard Fates Warning fan, with their "Awaken the guardian" album being  my very favourite album ever, this one is pure magic for me. So of course I was completely thrilled when they announced this kind of "reunion" of the old Fates Warning, and Sympathetic Resonance turned out to be an awesome album, it perfectly shows how the old Fates Warning would sound like in 2011. Here is the first video for this album, the song "Midnight Serenade", my personal highlight for 2011 :-)

The real me

Did you ever surf the internet and suddenly stumble upon yourself? Sometimes this happens to me, there are some cool sites online just paying tribute to myself or Blind Guardian, on the other hand there are also some freaks creating pages or profiles using my name and pretending to be me, which is not cool at all. So how can you know if it is really me that you found online? Actually this is very simple, aside from the official Blind Guardian homepage, the GMC homepage and this blog there are only two more places where you can find me:

Facebook - Yes, I have a Facebook account, no, I won't add you ;-) I am using Facebook only to babble with some friends of mine, there is no such thing as an "official" profile, it is only private so don't bother sending me requests there.

Google+ - I am also using Google+, originally I only wanted to see how it is compared to Facebook, in the end I liked both so I also kept my profile on Google+. Since this is not as private as my Facebook account you can even feel free to add me there, just don't expect too much posting from my side, you see how often I update this blog ;-)

If you see "Marcus Siepen" anywhere else on the internet you can be absolutely sure it is not me, I am not running any other pages or profiles on whatever communities.

Latin America & Australia

Hmm, I just realized that I am a bit slow with my updates again, so let me finally tell you about the rest of the Latin American /Australian tour. After finishing the Brazilian shows under perfect conditions and with awesome gigs we started moving into unknown territory and played in a lot of countries in which we have never played before. Unfortunately we ran into some serious technical problems, everything from broken mixing consoles to wrong electricity voltage or no electricity at all, but thanks to our crew we could still play every show and some of them turned out absolutely remarkable despite of the technical chaos. Take the show in Caracas for example, by the time we arrived at the venue to do soundcheck the whole place was completely flooded because of very heavy rain. The big problem was that also all the power generators were in the water, all the electricity was drowned completely, there was no chance of using anything of our equipment that demanded the converted power. So in the end we used equipment that we borrowed, stripped down everything (going down from 48 channels of monitor sound to 8 is fun :-) ) and played a set that was completely adapted to the circumstances: we couldn't use any clean sounds for the guitars or any keyboards, so we kicked out all those songs demanding this and played a pretty old school set, still the show was a lot of fun. My personal highlight of that evening was the Bards Song, the only "clean guitars" song that we didn't sacrifice, we played it with crunchy electric guitars, it sounded pretty differend but everybody still liked it.
After the Latin American part of the tour we went to Australia and played some great shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Unfortunately we had to cut the set in Sydney short because the owner of the venue only informed us about a strict curfew exactly one minute before that curfew, when we asked earlier on that day if there would be a curfew it was still "no curfew tonight"...Well, it was still an awesome show and we can always add the missing song next time ;-)
So a big thank you goes out to everybody involved, our fans, our crew and all the new and old friends we met during those weeks.
Another big thanks goes out to my friends in Sinbreed, whith whom I played a couple of gigs during the last weeks. Shortly before we started the South American tour Frederik asked me if I would like to play some shows with them cause they only had one guitarist in the band and of course I accepted the invitation. I didn't have much time to learn the songs, actually my only chance was using a couple of days off on the road, but in the end that was time enough and I loved the new experience, after all it was my first time playing with different musicians since the middle of the 80's. In case you missed those shows, don't worry, we are planning to do more next year ;-)

Oi Brasil, tudo bem?

The first 2 shows in Brasil were awesome, Rio and Porto Alegre rocked big time! I have seen people passing out, starting to cry when we played certain songs, there were even circle pits and I heard the loudest crowds singing with us, well done my friends! Todays show in Sao Luis is pretty special to me cause it is my birthday today, so you better be good ;-) See you tonight :-)

Waiting at the Airport

Buenos Aires airport, waiting for our flight to Rio. The tour is big fun so far, even though I got a flu. Chile was great and returning to Argentina aftet 13 years was incredible you guys didn't forget how to sing. Now I am really looking forward to the shows in Brazil, next up is Rio, see you guys tonight

South America

South America here we come! In the moment we are still in Frankfurt, waiting at the gate, with 18 hours of flying time ahead of us, still I am very excited. I am looking forward to some great shows, meeting some old friends again and exploring some places where we didn't play so far. Touring rules :-)

Gamescom

Friday Andre and me had a great day at the Gamescom in Cologne. DTP invited us to check out their upcoming game "The Cursed Crusade" and it looks awesome. Cool setting, cool graphics, lots of weapons, combos and finishing moves, this one will for sure be fun to play. Of course we also visited our friends of Blizzard to check out the latest news about Diablo 3 and we made some new friends at the Bioware/Star Wars camp. Normally I am not the biggest fan of fairs like that but being a die hard gamer I really enjoyed Gamescom, I am already looking forward to the next one.

Guitars for Van Canto

I know the rumor has been online since some days already, so lemme confirm the news: There will be some real guitars on the next Van Canto album, played by myself :-) And yes, I am talking about real guitars, I am not singing them, I leave that to the people that can do this properly.
Some time ago Stef asked me if I would be interested in recording some guitars for them, and I found the idea very cool, after all I like Van Canto a lot and I haven't recorded anything for anybody else but Blind Guardian during the last 25 years, so I immediately agreed. He sent me a demo of the song called "Spelled in Waters", with only some vocals and a piano, and I started to work on guitars right away. I really liked the demo version of the song, but of course a guitar is different compared to a piano, so I changed some things, added some others and the guys liked the result :-) The most tricky thing was to find the right time to record my takes, whenever Van Canto have been at our Twilighthall studios Blind Guardian have been on the road, so in the end I recorded everything in Stefs studio, and I have been hellish nervous :-) I am just not used to recording things for other people, but well, I survived and the result sounds great.
The album is called "Break the silence" and will be released on the 23rd of September, check it out!

Wacken

We are back from Wacken again and all I can say is it was absolutely awesome, one of our best shows in my humble opinion. The audience was fantastic, so in case you have been there, thanks for a special night ;-) In case you have not been there and you would like to get some impressions of the show, here are 3 videos:

Bard Song recordings

Big studio work today. The winners of the Blind Guardian ebay auction came to our studio today to re-record the Bard Song with us. Andre and me already did our takes and in the moment one of our Canadian friends is recording the bass. I'm curious about how the final version will sound like.

Fates Warning

After playing I don't know how many shows ourselves over the last year today the time has come to be a fanboy again and see one of my alltime faves live: Fates Warning. I didn't see them in ages and I am really looking forward to the show!

Full Contact Hardware

Some time ago my friend Frank Aresti told me about a company called Full Contact Hardware, which offers replacement bridges for many guitars and basses. Their concept sounded very interesting, their bridges have full contact to the guitars body, which should definitely inprove the tone and the sustain, on top of that you have much more options to adjust all the settings, like individually changing the string action for every single string. I got very curious so Frank got me in contact with the guys and they sent me one of their bridges which I installed on one of my Les Pauls. My first thought was "Oh god, it looks like a Floyd Rose, with all the little screws..." but as soon as I installed it I loved it! Installation is pretty easy, adjusting the settings is no problem at all and most important, the tone definitely improves, not to mention the sustain. I still have to get used to the different look a bit, but I can definitely recommend this bridge. If you got interested, check out their homepage at www.fullcontacthardware.com

Volume limitations suck

Back from Tollwood where we played a cool gig and had a good time with the guys of Helloween. Unfortunately there was a volume limitation for that concert, so no band was allowed to play any louder than 95 db, which is not really loud for a metal show, but well, we had fun anyway. Next on the list is Norway, I have great memories about our last show there so we are looking forward to coming back, see you guys soon.

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice...

 Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

*Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.*

Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic drug. The method employs dichloroacetate , which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects.

This drug doesn’t require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies.

Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone. It was tested on Rats inflicted with severe tumors; their cells shrank when they were fed with water supplemented with DCA. The drug is widely available and the technique is easy to use, why the major drug companies are not involved? Or the Media interested in this find?

In human bodies there is a natural cancer fighting human cell, the mitochondria , but they need to be triggered to be effective. Scientists used to think that these mitochondria cells were damaged and thus ineffective against cancer. So they used to focus on glycolysis , which is less effective in curing cancer and more wasteful. The drug manufacturers focused on this glycolysis method to fight cancer. This DCA on the other hand doesn’t rely on glycolysis instead on mitochondria; it triggers the mitochondria which in turn fights the cancer cells.

The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can't be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.

With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn't break down and seed new tumors.

Pharmaceutical companies are not investing in this research because DCA method cannot be patented, without a patent they can’t make money, like they are doing now with their AIDS Patent . Since the pharmaceutical companies won’t develop this, the article says other independent laboratories should start producing this drug and do more research to confirm all the above findings and produce drugs. All the groundwork can be done in collaboration with the Universities, who will be glad to assist in such research and can develop an effective drug for curing cancer.

You can access the original research for this cancer here .

This article wants to raise awareness for this study, hope some independent companies and small startup will pick up this idea and produce these drugs, because the big companies won’t touch it for a long time.

Alternate version of the Bard's Song

I guess you guys will know the Bard's Song, but do you already know this version? I love it :-)

Before the storm

Backstage in Athens, everybody is still relaxing and slowly getting ready for the show. Yesterday rocked big time so we are looking forward to tonights gig, same place, different setlist, lets see how things will be...

Touring continues

Musikmesse was a lot of fun, unfortunately I didn't get to meet everybody I wanted to meet, but that's ok I guess, I'll try again next year ;-) Thanks to everybody who came to the autograph sessions at Gibson & Meinl, I had a lot of fun there, specially when somebody came with this self made autograph card... I didn't know I am the new guitarsit of In Flames, even Peter (In Flames bassist) didn't know about it :-) Should I learn some of their songs now? ;-) Where is my iPod...
Extra special thanks to everybody at Gibson, Meinl, Mesa Engeneering and D'Addario, you guys rule!

After carrying furniture for some days now (I just moved) I am just enjyoing a couple of days of extreme resting and lazyness, but in only a couple of days we will be back on the road again. I am looking forward to those upcoming gigs, the break after the cruise was great, but now it is time to rock again and we thought about some new additions for the setlist... I am sure we will have a lot of fun again, so see you guys soon.

Signing sessions at Musikmesse Frankfurt

At this years Musikmesse in Frankfurt I will not only check out some new things, I will also do some signing sessions. At 11:30 I will be at the Meinl booth, doing a signing session together with Andre and Frederik. In case this is too early for you you  have another chance ;-) At 14:00 I will do another signing session, this time at the Gibson booth, so see you guys on Saturday.

Echo award

Today is the day of the Echo awards in Berlin. the Echo is the biggest and most important music price in Germany, you can compare it to the Grammys in the USA. Now guess who is nominated in the category best rockband national (or something like that ;-) )... yup, we are! So keep your fingers crossed for us and lets see if we can win that award.

Chapters two and three

We just came back from the 70000 Tons of Metal cruise and all I can say about it is that it has been the best festival I have ever been to! When we got the offer to headline this cruise it sounded very special of course, never before a metal festival took place on a cruiseship, going through the Caribbean, but I also had some doubts. I have never been to a cruise before, I had no idea if I would not be seasick all day long, I was wondering if there would be some peace for us in our cabins or if we would be hearing all the bands playing on the various stages 24/7. I was also not sure if the whole trip would turn into a 5 days autograph session with some die hard fans stalking all their fave bands all the time, or if the pool would be used to keep the cans of beer cold, but well, all of those worries were wiped away immediately. The festival reminded me a lot of the Dynamo Open Air back in 1987, when it was still for free and taking place on Eindhovens market square, the whole cruiseship was just filled with metalheads that wanted to have a good time, everybody was in a good mood and we all enjoyed some of the best shows that I have seen in years together, there was no real difference between musicians and fans, everybody was just hanging out together, enjoying something very special. We met a lot of old friends there, the guys from Iced Earth, Saxon, Nevermore, Sodom, Gamma Ray... we met a lot of new friends and I can't remember watching so many gigs in such a short time ever before. Some of the gigs were so incredibly good, it was awesome to see Sanctuary perform again after all those years, Forbidden, Dark Tranquility and Nevermore were awesome, Testament rocked big time, the same goes for most of the other bands that I watched, but my personal highlight was the Death Angel set at the poolstage. The last time I saw them was when they toured for Act III, and since then I didn't really have them on my map anymore, but they blew away everything, what a killer show!!! It was great to be part of something so special and I would definitely do another round on that ship whenever we get the chance to play there again.

But not only the cruise, also our North American tour has been a blast, special thanks to our friends Seven Kingdoms and Holy Grail for being great guys to tour with. From all the shows we did the ones in Toronto and Los Angeles were my faves (and I am not saying the other ones didn't rock ;-) ), on both days I had the chance to be a tourist again and spent hours walking around, taking pics and enjoying my time. Next time we should try to come to North America in summer though, specially the day in Toronto was so fucking freezing... I had the great idea to walk to the local Hard Rock Cafe and I guess I only survived because I stopped at EVERY Starbucks on the way to get another hot coffee... it was still fun though ;-)
Next on our schedule is a break for 10 weeks which will be very nice too, sleeping in your own bed can be somehing very precious when you didn't see home for months.

Feeds activated

Here is a technical update for a change, due to public request I just activated feeds for this blog, so if you want to feed on me feel free to do so ;-)

Hitlist 2010

New year has just started so it is time for my annual hitlist, here we go:

Albums:

Nevermore – The Obsidian Conspiracy

Orphaned Land – The Neverending Way of the OrWarrior

Bad Religion – The Descent of Man

Black Country Communion – Black Country

Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare

Gigs:

Nevermore (Gelsenkirchen)

Opeth (Essen)

Orphaned Land (Gelsenkirchen)

Movies:

The Expendables
Inception

Iron Man II

Wolfman

Sherlock Holmes

Books:

Alan Moore – From Hell

J.R.R.Tolkien – The Silmarilion

Christoph Sholder – Oktoberfest

Stephen King – Treachery

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

Eternal Timekiller:

World of Warcraft

Happy new year

Hi everybody, I know I am a bit slow with updating this blog in the moment but I definitely wanted to wish all of you a happy new year :-)