INTERVIEW WITH IVORY TOWER (italian version)
by Giancarlo Bolther

You are at your second record, what has changed since your first album?
Our record company and the promotion agency did a great job for the first album! So we and our music has become a little bit more popular. We also got a lot of experiences resulting from the first album and so we got the possibilty to work faster in the studio(that saves money) and spent more time to the important things in the music like the vocals and choirs. But it seems to us that getting gigs becomes more difficult. 2 years we got phone calls from a lot of agencies to play gigs at alot of festivals and now they don´t call us and if we send material to them they are not interestet in Musically we change our concept a little bit from the first album. We put the guitar a little bit more in front of the music and the keyboards more in the back. Listen...it works great.
During the songwritng processs I wrote more guitar orientated riffs and songs. We also put some "classic" metal influences in our music like twin guitar solos and the music becomes more straight than before.

Are you satisfied with your last record?
Yes!!!! The album cotains great songs and the production was also great. We received a lot of fantastic reviews from all over the world. we also enjoy to play the songs live.

Which are the subjects that you like best for your lyrics?
The subfekts are very different. Andre writes about real things that happened to us our some of our friends or in the society. He prefers storries from the real life, no fictional things about dragons e.g. For example game of life is about violence against women, Beyond the stars is about aperson that is dying and the lyrics describes the feelings the person has during this period, treehouse is about a man that comes home to the place where he grew up and he learns to forgive his parents all the bad things they did to him.

In your sound I can hear all the typical German metal influences, what are the bands that inspire you most?
Oh, there are alot of bands that inspired us so much. But I think you mean especially the vocal lines: So first of all Andre is most influenced by Helloween with M.K. But he also loves the former stuff from Judas Priest with R.H. and Iron Maiden with B.D. And for me there are important bands like Saga, Dream Theater, Savatage, Fates Warning, AC/DC, Kansas, Gentle Giant, Pink Floyd, Whitesnake, Robben Ford, Mike Stern, chick corea....... The others in the band also love music from Bad Religion, Gang Green,.....even Offspring..

Do you feel more tied to the Heavy Metal scene or the new Progressive scene?
Difficult.....I think we are tied to ourselfes. I think there is no borderline between HM and PM, because I always discovered in ad´s of record companies the lable prog metal or prog power metal for a band. I went to our record store and listened to that cd and thought: Oh , It´s shitty 80 ies Rock! The companies use that lable because it´s very popular and the hope the will sell much more cd´s. I think we are tied to both scenes, but even to many more, cause we try to combine a lot of styles in our music and try to mix ` em up but only on bottom of metal.

What do you think about the success of the new prog and symphonic metal scene?
I think it´s fantastic, but also difficult because there are a lot of bands coming up playing that style. But now I think here in Germany speed melodic metal is much more popular now.

What can you tell us about your frienship with Mob Rules?
After the previous album we played a tour in the north of Germany with Mob Rules. They are funny cool guys and we had a lot of fun with them. They are playing next weekend at the Wacken Open Air and we´ll be there to support them...

Are you working on any projects together?
yeah, we are planning for the next album an all-star-project for one track and of course one of them will participate then.

Don't you think that there is a risk of excessive crowding of bands in your genre right now?
Yes, there are alot of bands, but they always have a handicap. They are playing good music but always the singer is not that good and so the instant feeling of the music becomes much lower. I think quality of the music and the presence of a band will be the keys to success.

Which are your future projects?
The production of the next album and to play a support tour in Germany/Europe.

Will you be playing in Italy?
Yes we would if we could!! We are very keen on to play live everywhere. But that is very difficult, because it´s business. It makes only sense when you sell a lot of cd´s in a country to play there, because the money effort is very huge for a tour because you have to pay technicians, Transport, Hotels/Nightliner, Insurance, a daily buy on and....... So we need financial support from our record company and more than 20 sold cd´s in a country.... But we hope it will work in the future to play live in Italy, maybe at a festival.

GB