Henrik Klingenberg is the newest addition to Sonata Arctica on keyboards.  I was able to ask him some questions at the recent Sonata Arctica gig in New York City.

* Interview and live photos by Shaq

Interview with Helloween Bassist Markus Grosskopf

Intro and interview by Luxi Lahtinen
Helloween live photos by Katja Autio

Helloween started their KEEPER OF THE SEVEN KEYS – THE LEGACY World tour in Zlin, Czech Republic. As always, the band´s tour  is extensive, covering many countries in Europe, both South and North America and Japan. After many months of writing songs, recording and promoting the album the Pumpkin team felt a strong need to hit the road again. Maybe that was one of those tiny reasons why Finland was blessed by as many as 3 dates on this particular Helloween tour that the Finnish Helloween fans found a very pleasing surprise for them.

When Helloween arrived in Helsinki on the 26th of November 2005, we caught up with the band´s nearly 2-meter high bassist Markus Grosskopf for an interview. It was just 1 hour before one of the night´s two warm-up bands entered onstage to make the crowd ready for the band a majority of them had obviously come to see, the one and only Helloween.  

We found our way to the Helloween´s backstage, and it was almost immediately sensed from the overall atmosphere that both the crew and the band were in as high spirits as we were. We were quite surprisingly, greeted by a few free, ice-cold beers by the band members. Now that was a good sign to assume Markus might have been willing enough to push through this last interview of today, so we all sat down confortably, and the recorder started rolling...

Thursday, August 11, 2005
White River Amphitheatre
Auburn, Washington  USA

**Live Review & All Photos By Lord of The Wasteland (NOTE: Photo approval was not granted for Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath)

Place Vendome is a new project fronted by Michael Kiske. The project has recently released its debut album and I hooked up with Michael to interview him about this project and his career in general.

Interviewed by: Anders Sandvall

Thanks to Frontiers Records for the promo pictures of the band.

Thanks to Stefan at Atenzia records for the help with the interview