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!