Avantasia - A chat with a mastermind, AKA Tobi Sammet

An interview with Tobias ‘Tobi’ Sammet the mastermind of Avantasia. Tobias met up withMusic Trespass Photographer / Reporter Ashley Naismith to talk about his new record and other things.

Music Trespass: You have just finished recording your latest album.

Tobi: ‘The Mystery of Time’.

Music Trespass: Yep, that’s it.  How do you feel about the result just after leaving the studio?

Tobi: Terribly Happy!  No, seriously. Everything turned out the way I wanted it to turn out and even if had been not what I’d hoped for, I could have pulled the…

Random Drunk Punter on the Steet: CHELSEA!!!

Tobi: Chelsea…

Music Trespass: Apparently.

Tobi: Football. Well, err…  If it hadn’t been to my satisfaction, I could have gone back to the studio and worked on it again.  That would have been possible at any time because there was no strict deadline.  The great thing about working on Avantasia is that it doesn’t necessarily exist.  Well not necessarily exists, that’s the wrong way to put it, but it’s that we weren’t expected to exist by the time I started to work on this album.  Nobody waited for anything in particular, nobody had a release date; I could just work on it and enjoy the creative process and the production process which was spread out over such a long period of time. That’s why I could ensure that everything was exactly the way I wanted it.

Music Trespass: So, you are given complete creative control in the studio?

Tobi: Yes, Yes!

Music Trespass: Nobody was telling you what to do?

Tobi: Well you get those people involved because you want those people to have an impact, or have a mark on what you do.  Otherwise there’s no reason to ask high profile people like Biff Byford (Saxon) to be part of your album.  You want those people to have an impact and to leave their mark and charisma on the album. But in the end, I can make all the decisions. When I’m in the studio, I have the final creative influence on it, and that’s something I really don’t want to miss.  I mean, I’m working on Edguy… 95% of my time, I think, is consumed by Edguy and the remaining 5% is my hobby, Avantasia.  That’s why I spread it out over such a long period of time and work on it slowly.

Music Trespass: There’s some really nice tracks on the album, do you plan on making any music videos for them any time soon?

Tobi: Yes! We have done one already for ‘Sleepwalking’ released 25th March.  I know it’s a Pop track, everybody says that; whenever you do something that is not extremely heavy, they call it Pop,  but this time, they are right!  It is Pop. But I think that the magic of Avantasia is being generated because of the diversity.  You have ten tracks on the album and you go from rock to Heavy Metal to Speed Metal to Pop everything is allowed. It’s the total of those ten songs that makes Avantasia what it is. ‘Sleepwalking’ is the shortest track and also the most accessible track and that why we shot a video for it.  A beautiful video!  Real beautiful, very enchanting. It has the atmosphere of sleeping hollow.

Check Out! the Video for 'Sleepwalking' Below...

Music Trespass: You’ve written on the album art that it is a ‘Rock Epic’.  So is that what you meant, the movement through genres, like a conceptual journey?

Tobi: Yeah!  That’s a great thing!  It’s hard to label Avantasia.  Avantasia is just Avantasia, it’s a label of its own. It’s the journey through all the ten songs together, that’s Avantasia, and it’s also the diversity.

Music Trespass: The opening track of the album, ‘Spectres’, really struck me. To me, it sounded a bit like ‘Scarecrow’ blended with ‘The Wicked Symphony’, but with a whole new take on both.

Tobi: *Ponders for a moment* I didn’t think about it that way!  I think it’s just a new album and a new song and it’s a very epic song.  It has many tempo changes and it’s a very atypical album opener, some people have said.  But that’s a great thing! Everything is unlimited.

Music Trespass: When I was listening, there’s one part that’s reminiscent of ‘Amaranth’ by Nightwish. Do you take any influence from them, or are you friends with them?

Tobi: Err… You know, I know them.  I know Tuomas and I have a lot of respect for him.  I’m not…  I don’t want to say that I’m not a Nightwish fan, you know that sounds stupid.  To be honest, they haven’t been a huge influence to me.  I don’t know if I’ve heard that particular song, I know ‘Nemo’.  But I have some of their records, Nuclear Blast normally send me some of their stuff.  I will have to listen to it, but it hasn’t been a major influence.  But I do have a lot of respect for Tuomas.

Music Trespass: Did you get to see their movie, out of interest?

Tobi: Nope, not yet.  Did you?

Music Trespass: No, it hasn’t come out in Britain yet? (That’s a hint, Nuclear Blast!)

Music Trespass: The name of the album, ‘The Mystery of Time’, is poignant.  Personally, I’ve studied the philosophy of time, so I was wondering if you take any influence from philosophy or is it just a name?

Tobi: 'Mystery of Time' is…  ‘A brief mystery of Time’, Stephen Hawking…  Wait, ‘A brief history of Time’, not 'Mystery of Time!' *laughs*. That’s just a funny side aspect. I think time is a mystery.  It is a very subjective thing.  It is based on perception, it is not an absolute value. It’s not something that we can measure but it’s something that’s based on the subjection and how we perceive it.  Of course, it also sounds big and it sounds epic and it describes the story best.  The story is ultimately about time running faster and faster and, if you look around, everybody is burning out, everybody is having less and less time and everybody is stressing out. We’re all caught in a treadmill and nobody can give you a reasonable reason why, nobody knows what we’re running for and why we’re running ourselves to death. 

We’re too tired to think about how senseless it is to run ourselves to death because we don’t know where we run to.  We forget about the true nature of the spiritual roots of ourselves, to put it that way.  The story is about a young scientist who notices that something is sucking away people’s time to keep them away from what’s an essential value for human spirituality. Then an exciting story begins because he gets dragged deeper and deeper into the exploration of the coherences of his conviction as a scientist and spirituality and the aspect of time; time is ultimately the key to spirituality.  It’s really out there.  I don’t do drugs, but it’s just an exciting story I think.

Music Trespass: You’ve included a few guest vocalists on the album including, as you have said, Biff Byford of Saxon.  What made you choose him over all the other possible vocalists?

Tobi: Well, you know it’s just…  It’s a very subconscious gut decision.  You listen to the demo vocals and there’s something in the back of your mind.  You know the voice, but you can’t quite get it.  And then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, you say “It’s going to be Biff Byford.”  And I’ve known Biff for a very long time and we’ve been friends for ten or twelve years and it was overdue.  I was onstage with Saxon in Wacken 2007 singing ‘Strangers in the Night’ and he’s a great guy, he has a great sense of humour, he’s a nice guy.  He’s a legend, he’s one of the founders of heavy metal and I’m really honoured to be working with him on this album.  Also, guys like Eric Martin and Ronnie Atkins, it’s…  I feel blessed to be working with all of these high profile musicians who have ultimately influenced me as well.  This is…  I have an idea of a voice but then of course, the cast on the album reflects my personal tastes as a music lover; they are heroes of my own private record collection! 

Music Trespass: I’m assuming that must be pretty extensive.

Tobi: The record collection?

Music Trespass: Yeah.

Tobi: Well, you know, there’s a couple of hundred missing yet!

Music Trespass: With a new album comes a new tour.  You’re playing Bloodstock Open Air this summer…

Tobi: Yep.

Music Trespass: …Opening up for Lamb of God, I think.  How does it feel to be playing such an iconic festival in Britain?  You’ve played it before with Edguy, but never with Avantasia.

Tobi: It’s great!  You know, it’s not so much…  I’ve never thought of Bloodstock in particular, but I’m honoured to finally be playing in Britain because a lot of people know how much I love England and Britain.  A lot of musicians involved in the production of ‘The Mystery of Time’ are British and the story takes place in Britain.  The story was actually written in Britain, the beginning at least.  On the last Edguy tour, I started, I enhanced my stay in London and I went to pubs and just wrote the story.  I went sightseeing, creating and using my imagination.  The story actually plays in Britain too, in a British small town during the Victorian era.  There’s a lot of British musicians like Bob and Biff and Russell and the cover was painted by Rodney Mathews.  Everybody knows I love Britain, which is why I’m so honoured to bring Avantasia to the mother country of heavy metal and football and Robin Hood… and Indian food for the first time!  I think Indian food was invented in Britain. 

Music Trespass: Ha, ha, curry is our national food.  Are you going to play any tour dates in Britain?

Tobi: Nope, we’re not doing any single tour dates in Britain.  We’re doing tour dates in Germany and some countries where we’ve been before where we have established the name Avantasia already.  In Germany, we just started with Wacken in 2008 then we did four single shows in 2010 and now we’re doing ten single shows.  But in England, we’ll just start with Bloodstock and see how things go and if we do it again in seven years, we’ll do some single shows in England as well. I don’t know if we’ll ever do it again because it’s such a rare accident to be able to bring all those people on one stage and to have them all available at a certain period of time, so we can’t take that for granted and that’s why we can’t predict if there will ever be another Avantasia show one day.

Music Trespass: The song ‘Dweller in a Dream’ seems to me like the perfect live song.  It’s fast paced, catchy-as-hell and its great fun to listen to!  No doubt it’ll get blood pumping, do you intend to bring it live?

Tobi: Actually, we haven’t actually intended on bringing that one live!  *laughs* I’m sorry to disappoint you, we’re playing eight songs off the new album.  I’m not sure we  can play eight songs in Britain because we’re only going to play for 90 minutes and so we have to play a very very balanced setlist, you know, a lot of old songs off ‘The Metal Opera’ days, mid-aged stuff etc.  ‘Dweller in a Dream’, most probably I’ll have to disappoint you. *Laughs*

Music Trespass: A damn shame!  Your fan-base and presence in Europe is relatively huge compared to your one in Britain, and we’ve never seen Avantasia before.  What can we expect from an Avantasia show?  What makes it special?

Tobi: Um… You see thirty years of Rock history on stage.  You see rock singers from all eras on one stage, singing in one band actually, it’s like a festival inside the festival.  Legends on stage!  There’s Mr. Big vocalist Eric Martin on stage with Bob from Magnum and…  Me!  With Oliver Hartmann.  I don’t know if Ronnie Atkins is going to come to Bloodstock Festival because I think he has other obligations that particular weekend, but there’s going to be seven times as many vocalists as most other bands at Bloodstock.  That makes it very unique!

Music Trespass: I didn’t think anybody could beat Therion from two years year in terms of vocalists.  They had five.

Tobi: Sh*t.  *Laughs*

Music Trespass: There’s a bit of a trend going on with some big bands where they take one album and play it start to finish.  If you could pick one Avantasia album to do the same with, which would it be?

Tobi: I think it would probably be ‘The Mystery of Time’.  From start to finish, it’s the most adventurous journey, it’s the most compact album. Some of the early stuff we did for ‘The Metal Opera’…  I really like some of the stuff we did for ‘The Metal Opera (Part 1)’… it’s a great album but I think the lyrics are a bit cheesy at times.  I mean, okay, its Heavy Metal.  You can get away with ‘The Metal Opera’.  But it would either be ‘The Metal Opera’ or it will be ‘The Mystery of Time’.

Music Trespass: What’s your best studio or tour moment?  The craziest, most drunken, most hilarious moment of your career?

Tobi: Must have been… the most drunken, hilarious moment of my career… that’s a…  I’ve had many hilarious moments in my career and I’m afraid to admit I’ve had a lot of drunken moments too!  It’s become quite rare now because we’ve got old and boring!  But I’d say… maybe the first and only time we’ve played in Israel.  It was the whole band in 2000, we’d had the same line-up for three years and everybody got sh*t faced together and we had to play a show the next day, one show in Israel, in Tel Aviv.

We were invited to a party that we didn’t want to go to.  It was an obligation because the promoter had dealt something and he had promised we’d show up.  It was ridiculous because we were tired, we wanted to sleep to play the show the next day.  He had got himself so much into trouble because when we were there he said “You have to come, you’re going to get free beers and everything! Please just come for half an hour to just say hi to everybody there.  So we were just presented, you know.  But once we were there, we felt so comfortable that we just stayed there.  And we stayed until six or seven in the morning.  It was the first time that everybody in the band got drunk out of their minds.  We were taken back to the hotel and the show was just…. Painful!  If I remember correctly...  Everybody had a headache and a hangover.  It was great for the social system of the band, the social connection within the band.  But I have to stress I don’t recommend drinking and I don’t really drink much anymore; nobody really does drink much in the band, we were never too bad…  But that was a real memorable… well not exactly memorable in the truest sense of the word because there were not many memories left! But the whole thing was really funny!

Music Trespass: Sounds like a blast!

Tobi: It was really funny, it was when everyone was taking turns using the bathroom in the morning, saying hello to the porcelain God! It was just like “No!  No!  I Need!,  I Need!” and everyone was throwing up. It sounds really weird and disgusting, but it wasn’t disgusting, it was just a bunch of five kids letting go and being let loose in Tel Aviv *laughs*.

Music Trespass: Haha!  Finally, is there anything you want to say to your fans in the UK?

Tobi: Well, I’ve got a new album.  So coincidentally, I should promote that!

Music Trespass: Would you have guessed?!

Tobi: Yeah!  It’s weird isn’t it?  Such a happy coincidence.  But I just want to say thanks to everybody for their support and on the 1st of April, it’s going to be 'Mystery of Time' day and I hope everyone is going to check out the album; it’s a terrific piece of music.  It’s not trendy, it’s not up to date, it’s not extreme, it’s just beautiful.  I think even in the year 2013, where everything has to be bloody and shocking, there’s still room for handmade beautiful epic Hard Rock music. I just hope people check it out and enjoy it!

Interviewed by Ashley Naismith

Check Out! the lyric Video for 'Invoke the Machine' Below...