In a recent discussion with MetalMasterKingdom, Blind Guardian's frontman Hansi Kürsch, shared insights into the band's progress on their upcoming studio album.
According to Hansi, the band had initially started the songwriting process some time ago but decided to discard all previous ideas. He explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): "We started songwriting a while ago, but I think we skipped all the ideas we've had. We do that from time to time, because if the span between the real songwriting and the ones we did before is so big, then it doesn't make sense to keep on working on these songs because you do not get back into the mode, and so it's better to just put them aside.
"And some of this stuff really got forgotten over the years, and we never touched it again. So, we will start from scratch zero right now. We are still in the mode of 'live band' due to all the touring we have done. So I would expect the next songs to be heavy — heavy and aggressive."
When questioned about whether the new album would resemble their 2022 release, The God Machine, Hansi remarked on the complexity of the comparison. He noted, "That's difficult to say, because The God Machine is more of a production result than it is in the songwriting itself. The songwriting is not too different from what we did on Beyond The Red Mirror, but the way we treated the songs in the studio is so different. So the result turns out to be, obviously, differently impressive to people. I would say, yes, we go for individual [songs]. With the lyrics, I am more focused on this than having a conceptual album. When having a conceptual album, you may go musically in one direction too. So we go freestyle."
Kursch recently hinted at a potential release date for the band's next album, however, remained cautious about a firm release timeline: "I'm pretty sure it's going to be…. I'm not sure what it will look like exactly. We did the re-recordings for Somewhere Far Beyond for the anniversary album, and we did the live recordings in 2022, so this is something certainly to come up very soon. But we're talking about new material."
In the meantime, Blind Guardian has been revisiting their Somewhere Far Beyond album to great effect.
