Simon RushworthWe’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…