MASTERPLAN (EN)

– Hi, thanks for your time. What are you currently up to? How is everything doing right now with Masterplan?
Hello! We are doing well, thanks! Just now I stopped rehearsal for answering your questions. Haha (laughing ). And seriously, we are working on our new album with the songs that I wrote in Helloween.

– Congratulations on your long career and your new tour and live album. What are your feelings about the upcoming events?
Thank you. We are very excited about the Spain tour, I’m not sure if we will dare to go on such big tour again, so it can be one of the last tours for Masterplan. I’m looking forward to meet our remarkable fans in this beautiful country.

– Masterplan sounds kinda metaphysical. Can you explain what’s the meaning of this word for you?
Masterplan is everything for me. Some people thinks maybe that I’m a Master here and the band is my Plan, there is some part of truth here probably. But not everybody knows that the name of the band was proposed by one of our Helloween fan. It was fit immediately like something was leading us to these decision. Masterplan is the way I follow, it is my life.

– Yourecently released your newest live album, entitled Keep your Dream Alive so, what are your expectations on it?
We just wanted to show us to our fans who maybe doesn’t have possibility to visit our shows or to people who just likes to have the live concerts in their pockets. Of course you can notice that everybody is able to find almost everything on YouTube or other Internet resources, but it is a huge difference between amateur video made with some mobile and professional work with nice fat sound. I hope our fans enjoy it.

– What is the purpose of naming your album this way? Can you explain it to us?
Certainly. I write the name of the new live album a bit different: «Keep your Dream A Live». In this case our Dream has come Alive already on the stage. And I hope that we help, inspire our fans to follow their hearts, to make dreams come true.

– Talking about your newest opus, how did the idea of doing a live album arise? What would you like to emphasise about the experience?
As I said above we wanted to show our professional made live video. I cannot say for sure whose idea was to make an album, I think we decided it together after some show which we liked a lot. And we worked on the album all together as well, it was great experience for everyone, we made kind of new job that we never did before.

– Is the tracklist we find on the album something similar to what we can expect to see from you on stage next month?
Yes, we will play our Keep-Your-Dream-aLive- program, but I can promise some surprises from our next studio album.

– Was it easy to capture your sound and essence on a live scenario?
Oh yes, it was not easy. I spent many and many hours in the studio, and even after the finishing the guys were showing to me the places for correction. But as I said, it was a great experience. We are rising and developing.

– Your band has been three years without releasing a studio album. How comes? Are you already working on new material?
Yes, we started to work on our new album, but material is not so new. We want to re-record Helloween tracks of my composing. I’m happy to give a new life to these songs, to let them sound different, like I dreamed when I didn’t have my own studios.

– We’ll focus on the creative process now. How does your band compose the songs?
It is quite long process. All of us are creative and have many different ideas. So we trying to keep them somehow, to write down and when we meet, we disclose our cards. By the way we did one of such brainstorming last year in Spain. We just stayed there for several days after the festival. All my best songs I wrote in Spain or after visiting it. So maybe one more album will come out after this tour, who knows? Haha (laughing)

– I know that your band has walked a long path, but if I ask you to choose a song from your entire dischography as your favourite, which one would it be?
That is a difficult question, my fave I wrote might be Heroes or Kind hearted light, but playing wise I love Soulburn a lot.

– I see you keep trusting AFM Record’s work for your new album. What can you tell us about your experience with them?
We just signed a new deal with them last year, I am happy that they trusting us so much, I am quite happy with them.

– Can you explain us something interesting about the making off of Keep your Dream Alive?
I was sometimes watching the video a lot and I forgot to work on it than…

– How do you feel about your upcoming tour? Has it become usual for you or it still has some thrill?
Every show is like in the first time for me. You cannot used to the adrenaline which comes to you in several minutes before show and stays till it will be over. And doesn’t matter that you played this song already one thousand times.

– If we focus on your interests, do you prefer the studio or do you rather show up in the stage? Is creating music better for you or do you like feeling the warmth of your fans the most?
Studio and stage are like wife and husband, like two hands of one body, they cannot survive without each other. I like everything that somehow connected to the music. I like to see how the fresh material comes to the live in the studio and of course I love to demonstrate this result of hard work on the stage.

– Can you explain what we’ll see when we come to enjoy your show?
It is better to see once than hear a hundred times. Haha. Just come and enjoy it. We will do all our best to surprise you.

– Talking about your upcoming visit to Spain. What was your experience in our country before? Do you keep any memories?
Yes, as I said before, I have only good experience in Spain, beautiful people, always nice weather. I’m in love with this country, even thought about moving to Tenerife or some smaller city on the coast.

– I know we can fill pages talking about your band but, can you tell us the word that describes Masterplan better? Can you summarize it all in just one word?
Hm, quite difficult question. I need to ask our band members. Haha. From me I would say it in two words: Inspired Flight. During the existing of the band we changed many musicians, we came through different situations, but the most important thing that we are still here, we are positive and I hope all our fans feel this energy.

– Your band has been on the go for over 10 years. We know it’s a lot, but can you turn back on time for a while and explain us any special event that happened in one of your gigs?
Every show might be some things happen, but nothing too bad so far. We do our best in front of 50.000 people and in front of 50… In Korea we played in front of 15 people 2 years ago…that was nice haha… the promoter forgot to advertise the show

– Which bands of the current music scene would you recommend to us?
I am not so much into new bands to be honest, maybe my friends from Spain I can recommend, Lords Of Black….. I mixed the second album as well, I like them a lot

– And finally, what are your near-future plans?
Just after the tour I have some work in my studio, several bands come for recording. And of course we continue to work on our new album.

– Thats all, thank you once more for answering our questions. If you want to add some final words; feel free to do it. See you all in Barcelona.
Thank you very much. Looking forward to see you, Spain!