News

I guess most of you will know that we are about to release a new live album in a couple of weeks, if not, head over to our official Blind Guardian homepage to read all the details about it. Whenever a band puts out a new album there is a lot of promotion to be done of course, after all we want you guys to know about our new releases, so over the last couple of weeks we did tons of interviews. No matter if you are doing them at home, talking to people on the phone or skype, or if you are going on a promo tour, you will do interveiw marathons, which means you will do several interviews in a row... for hours... for days...for weeks. This can be a lot of fun, but sometimes such a marathon can do funny things to your brain. Since all the interviews are about the same topic, of course some questions will come up in pretty much every single interview, so far so good, no problem about that. But after some time those repeating questions trigger something in your brain, well, in my brain at least. At some point you hear the question, and you start to wonder "didn't he already ask me this??? I already told him... Why is he coming with up with this AGAIN?" Of course I know that nobody will ask me the same thing twice, but in that moment this is the thought that is immediately crossing my mind. But it can get even more funny, because after some time you start to wonder how exactly you answered that question the last time, you desperately try to recall your own words to give the same answer... Stupid? Yeah, I know, but it happens, at least I can laugh about myself after this happens. Another thing that can happen during long interview sessions is a kind of tunnel vision, you are so focused on the main topic (in this case our new album), that any other question can really through you off course completely. The other day I was doing an interview for an italian magazine and at some point the guy asked me about my favorite metal band from Italy. Not a tough question, right? In my case the correct answer would be Lacuna Coil, but in that moment the question completely took me by surprise and I couldn't think of any italian band, no matter if we are talking about metal bands or any other kind of band. My mind was completely blank and I really had to struggle to come up with an answer, at least I recalled a band that I like at some point, but in doubt I guess I would have said "Albano and Romina Power" to at least give some answer. Of course something like this triggers a chain reaction. After that incident I checked the rest of the interviews that I had on my list for that day, just to make sure that I know my fave bands from those countries. Poland? Behemoth. Greece? Poem. Finland? Amorphis... Of course nobody asked me about any of my fave bands anymore, but hey, I would have been prepared. The ultimate nightmare when it comes to interviews is something different though, it is not tricks that you brain might be playing on you, it is communication problems. Bad phone connections when you are doing a live radio interview are a classic, but the worst thing that ever happened was an interveiw that Hansi and me did together. The guy that did the interview with us had such a strong accent and a weird way pf formulating his questions, we had absolutely no clue what exactly he was asking. Throughout the whole interview...we didn't understand a single question! We could onle guess and give vague answers that we hoped would somehow match what he wanted to know, but to be honest, we just got smaller and smaller in our seats and most likely he was wondering what the hell those two idiots were talking about.

But anyway, today there are no interviews, today it is time to play our first gig in 2017, a sold out show at the Rockfels festival on the beautiful Loreley. It is not only the first gig of this year, for me it is also the first show with some new guitars so this will for sure be fun. Whoever is comeing, see you guys later.

Since I started my Instagram account I keep getting all kinds of questions from my followers, so I thought it might be a nice thing to answer them. In case you also have a question for me that you would like to be answered, just follow me on Instagram and post your questions in the comments to my videos, I will do my best to answer as many as I can. You can find a link to my account below this blog, or you can just click here 

Just added a whole bunch of tourdates for 2016. Our friends in the USA can look forward to the second leg of our US tour (still with our friends of Grave Digger as support), right after that we will return to Japan to rock the Loud Park festival again. See you guys somewere on the road.

Did a quick little design update for the page, if you want to follow me on Instagram, Google+ or Twitter you can find the links at the bottom of my homepage.

Hey everybody, I just did a couple of small updates here on the site, some tourdates were added and I also updated the favourites section. Still on my to do list is an update of the gear section, adding some photos from the gigs in 2015 and I am also thinking about adding some video content to the site, but more about all this when the updates are online.

Something that is already online is my new Twitter account, so if you are interested, feel free to follow me @MarcusSiepen