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We’ve kept you waiting all week but here it is – one of the most amusing interviews you’ll read all year with the frontman of one of Europe’s most underrated bands. Edguy’s Tobi Sammet is a funny guy but his music is pretty serious stuff for all fans of melodic metal.

rushonrock: Edguy are still far from household names over here. What are you going to do about it!?!

Tobi Sammet: Raising our profile is not only a problem in the UK – the same goes for everywhere. Even where we sell a few records we’d like to sell a few more! If you play the kind of music we do then we can’t rely on the major media giving us much support so we just do it old skool style – tour, play, tour, play. That spreads the message better than anything could. It gives us the chance to show people that we’re the best band in the universe since Led Zeppelin!

rushonrock: That’s a point we can debate at another time but for now what’s the word on cracking the USA?

TS: Right now we’re trying to get ourselves out there in the USA. But I’ve got to say that touring the UK is more of a pleasure than touring the States. It’s tough over there but all we can do is keep releasing great albums and hope people will start to hear them.

rushonrock: Do you see yourselves as a successful band?

TS: I don’t know how a band like Edguy can measure success. The most important thing in a band as in most walks of life is that you’re happy with what you’re doing. All of us could have done something different. We were all going to school. Some of us even studied…All of us were starting to listen to our teachers and we had potentially great futures outside of music but we didn’t want to go down that road.

rushonrock: But we’re sure you’d like a few more Euros in your pocket?

TS: These days it goes without saying we want to have commercial success and when you reach the stage we’re at it means, at the very least, you can finance the big productions that make your records sound better. But for me success is not having to get up in the morning and work a 9-5 job. That’s the key. We have had a degree of commercial success in our own way but I suppose the thing is we’d never doing something in order to be successful. We don’t focus on any special market or group. We do what we like and hope other people like it too.

rushonrock: Will you ever be really big outside mainland Europe?

TS: It’s getting better for us in the UK. Slowly but surely we’re starting to make an impression on British audiences. If you want to be big in the USA you have to go there and stay there. I wouldn’t want to live in the USA in a million years! It’s a different planet and I don’t want to go there. That means we’re never going to be a big, big act over there but that’s OK. I just don’t want to make the sacrifices we’d have to make to break that market in a big way.

rushonrock: With new album Tinnitus Sanctus up your sleeves you must have a chance?

TS: Every musician says it but TS is the best album we’ve made for sure. It’s a combination of what we’ve done in the past and new elements without sounding too ridiculous. In a heavy metal band you have to be ridiculous to a certain extent but it’s important not to cross the line.

rushonrock: Are you worried about coming over all Spinal Tap in your old age?

TS: There are lot of Spinal Tap moments in every band’s history and we’re no different. But we’ve made a classic melodic metal album which has managed not to sound too ridiculous. That’s an achievement when you play our style of rock. Take Dragonforce. They’re at the extreme end of what we do but they’re ridiculous on purpose. We’re more mid-paced than those guys – they just like to push everything to the limit. They say look at the clothes that I’m wearing and listen to the stupid things that I’m saying and they love it.

rushonrock: So when are you next in our country?

TS: We’re coming over to England in January and playing a couple of shows in Derby and London. I don’t want to kiss ass but we love England and the English people and we’d play a whole lot more shows there given the chance. But the food in England is terrible. Luckily the rock audience is great. We’re staying in a haunted hotel in Derby so that should be fun…

Ok, hang on to your leather tassles and dust down that ripped denim – it’s going to be one hell of a ride on rushonrock this week!

Tonight we are at not one, but two huge gigs in Newcastle as late 80s soft rockers Extreme go head to head with 2008 upstarts Airbourne for the city’s rock bragging rights.

Expect reviews from both before we run a rather entertaining interview with Edguy‘s Tobi in the week Tinnitus Sanctus gets its long awaited UK release. Later in the week we’ll post blogs from Rock O’ The North and Self Made Man but if that’s not enough expect a fair smattering of news from the busy worlds of rock and metal.

And it’s all building up to next Monday’s release of Chinese Democracy – a rare thing indeed in an age when Guns N Roses records have become an endangered species. Enjoy the site, leave a message and contact us on the link above.

Sunday comes around quicker than a new Guns N Roses record and as ever rushonrock nudges you towards the new working week with a round-up of Monday’s must-buy rock releases. But we’re still missing our copy of Nickelback’s new one so let us know what you think of the Canadians’ latest…

Edguy – Tinnitus Sanctus (Nuclear Blast) 

rushonrock first became aware of these old skool metal heroes when 2006′s Rocket Ride blew us way with anthems like Wasted Time, Save Me and seven-minute epic The Asylum. Well Edguy are back and Tinnitus Sanctus takes up where the guys left off two years ago.

Full of soaring guitar solos, cracking choruses and a fair sprinkling of cheese the Teutonic masters play metal the way it was meant to be played – with plenty of power chords and a smile on their faces. And in frontman Tobi the energetic Edguy boast one of rock’s undiscovered gems. Or at least in the UK.

Quite why a band which has been making records this good for the best part of 18 years has yet to break the UK market is anyone’s guess but they’re a hell of a lot better than similar groups who have enjoyed recent commercial success.

Sex Fire Religion, Thorn Without A Rose (this is bound to cause a ruck with the Poison boys…) and Dead Or Rock are all as fantastic as they sound – and they sound simply magical. Without Edguy the world would be a more unhappy place but with these boys flying the metal flag there’s hope for us all!

rushonrock rated: 9/10 Cool [Ed]Guys

Sammy Hagar – Cosmic Universal Fashion (Loud & Proud)

For rushonrock Sammy Hagar will always be the bloke who made us glad Van Halen parted company with David Lee Roth. His unique voice, charismatic stage presence and ability to hold his own alongside one of the world’s finest guitarists demands respect. But this strange collection of oddments is unlikely to satisfy fans of any Hagar era.

There are elements of Montrose, snatches of VH and nods to The Wabos but this is about as diverse a record as the Red Rocker could have hoped to produce. It doesn’t really sit comfortably within any genre and yet ticks all the boxes for most fans of guitar-driven music.

this is one of those CDs where you’ll find your obvious favourites and discover some real duds depending on your usual taste. Covering the Beastie Boys’ classic Fight For Your Right To Party actually works but Loud, with too many star guests to mention, doesn’t.

At times this record sounds like Soundgarden, at times it sounds like Van Halen and every so often it sounds like nothing we’ve ever heard before. In fact there arev times when you feel Hagar has been hammering the Cabo Wabo (his own brand of Tequila) too often and for too long.

Cosmic Universal Fashion could be a grower. Or it could be a thrower.

rushonrock rated: 5/10 Hagar The Horrible?

Twisted Sister – Live At The Astoria (DVE)

This CD/DVD double pack is the latest in DVE’s Live And Loud series – Wednesday 13 kicked things off last week – and first off it’s pretty good value for any fan of over-the-top 80s hair metal.

If you can look beyond the fact that Dee Snider is surely too old to be singing We’re Not Gonna Take It  and swears like a trooper then it’s impossible not to raise a smile at the basic rock on offer. Twisted were always a band who knew how to put on a show and this gig has gone down in history as one of their best.

But just a word of warning. If you’re expecting to purchase an up-to-date record of JJ French and his big-mouthed buddy then this isn’t it. The gig presented here is from the summer of 2004 and things have changed in the last four years. Snider is older, the songs sound more tired and Twisted seem more concerned about cashing in on Christmas than producing new records.

But if nostalgia is the name of your game then this is a pleasant enough trip down metal’s memory lane and may well serve as an inspiration to young upstarts such as label mates Dear Superstar. It may also persuade Snider that enough is enough.

rushonrock rated: 7/10 Sister’s Still Doing It For Themselves

November looks like being the biggest month yet for your favourite new rock site with new visitors logging on by the hundreds every day. And here’s why. In the next few weeks we’ll be carrying exclusive interviews with Tesla, Stone Gods, Thunder, Edguy and Marshall Law - and later today we’ll post part two of our mighty Mike Monroe interview.  

Throw in the fact that we’re going to be reviewing blazing hot gigs by Extreme, Hot Leg, Airbourne and Thunder between now and the end of the month and you’d be mad not to make rushonrock your first stop for all things rock. With weekly blogs, album reviews and nostalgia by the bucket load we want to give you all the rock you’ve been missing for the past 20 years – and more.

Marillion fans can’t afford to miss out on our review of the band’s new official bootleg set and if you like you music heavier than 80s metal stars Mammoth then you’ll just love our look at Death Angel as they are now and as they were then. It’s all here and all new. Enjoy.