UNISONIC – the metal super group featuring Michael Kiske (vocals, ex-HELLOWEEN), Kai Hansen (guitars, GAMMA RAY, ex Helloween), Mandy Meyer (guitars, ex-GOTTHARD, ex-KROKUS), Dennis Ward (bass, PINK CREAM 69) and Kosta Zafiriou (drums, Pink Cream 69) – have announced tour dates for Asia, with shows in Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Their schedule is as follows:
September
6 – Tokyo, Japan – Shibuya Ax
7 – Tokyo, Japan – Shibuya Ax
8 – Osaka, Japan – Grand Cube
10 – Nagoya, Japan – Club Diamond Hall
11 – Hiroshima, Japan – Club Quattro
13 – Taipei, Taiwan – venue tba
15 – Seoul, Korea – V-Hall
Go to this location for ticket links and Unisonic’s complete tour schedule for 2012.
As previously reported, Unisonic have been nominated in three categories for the Metal Hammer Germany Awards. They include:
– Best German Band
– Best Debut Album
– God Of Riffs
Fans are able to vote for Unisonic here. The award ceremony will take place on September 14th in Berlin, Germany. More details will be available soon.
Unisonic will release their self-titled album in North America on May 22nd via Eagle Rock imprint Armoury Records.
See Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen discuss the band in the video interview below:
The new Unisonic album features 11 tracks, plus a bonus live version of Helloween classic ‘I Want Out’ only available on the domestic edition, cover art by Martin Häusler (MEAT LOAF, Gotthard, Helloween, MOTÖRHEAD), and marks the first musical union between Kiske and Hansen in 23 years.
Unisonic tracklisting:
‘Unisonic’
‘Souls Alive’
‘Never too Late’
‘I’ve Tried’
‘Star Rider’
‘Never Change Me
‘Renegade’
‘My Sanctuary’
‘King For A Day’
‘We Rise’
‘No One Ever Sees Me’
‘I Want Out’ (Live)
Unisonic released its debut EP, Ignition earlier this year. After the addition of Hansen to the group’s lineup in early 2011, Unisonic continued the songwriting process for its debut release, incorporating Kai’s talent for writing great anthemic rock songs into its existing material. Hardly Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part 3, the Unisonic collective effortlessly fuse the many sides of heavy music they know and love. The band’s music is versatile and takes a broad approach to heavy rock without sacrificing the power and strong, catchy melodies that characterized the band members’ previous projects.
Check out the band’s video for album opener/anthem ‘Unisonic’, directed by Häusler in Heidelberg, Germany, below:
On April 20, Aniruddh Bansal of Metal Assault conducted an interview with with former HELLOWEEN and current UNISONICsingerMichael Kiske. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Metal Assault: Did you feel that the songwriting [for the UNISONIC debut album] went through a big change when Kai [Hansen, former HELLOWEEN and current GAMMA RAY guitarist/vocalist] arrived in the band?
Kiske: Well, he has his own ways. I like him and his songwriting anyway, and I know him for a number of years now. I was always a fan of the things he was doing. When he comes into a band like UNISONIC and starts working on material, he does it in his own way. Dennis Ward, who is an American, he also has his own ways and he writes beautiful songs. It’s not that Dennis can’t write great songs, but Kai has his own style of pushing things around, and as soon as he has his hand involved, things get more interesting, at least for my ears. It just gets more of an edge. Kai has a talent for nailing things down to the basics and throw out useless stuff. I think pretty much all the songs gained a lot after he joined the band. It’s just my personal opinion. Maybe there are people who don’t see this as dramatically as I do, but I really think Kai is a huge plus to UNISONIC.
Metal Assault: The main question in the fans’ minds would be, how does UNISONIC‘s music compare to the HELLOWEEN material that you did a number of years back?
Kiske: To me, there’s not much of a difference. I’m still myself, you know. I’m a different person, of course, it’s been 23 years since the “Keeper” days. Kai has changed, too. I think when I sing stuff that he has written, it always sounds like HELLOWEEN in a certain way, because that’s just how we sound. I don’t believe in a record production that attempts to sound like records of the past, trying to fake the sound on purpose. I would never go for that. I think that’s really wrong, but we’re just ourselves, and as much as that’s the case, I think we do sound the way we always sounded. Of course, there are other people in the band now. Mandy, Dennis and Kosta are different people as compared to Michael Weikath, Ingo and Markus [members of HELLOWEEN‘s “Keeper” lineup]. So, for that matter, it sounds different, but nobody knows what the next HELLOWEEN record after “Keeper II” would have sounded like, if Kai was still in the band at that time. It might have sounded like that, but we were never the type of band that repeated itself, you know. We always tried to break some new grounds creatively, and I think that’s why those “Keeper” records, even to this day, appeal to younger people. There was some kind of a “no-fear” spirit going on, just enjoying the time and making the best out of each song, not worrying too much, and that’s what I loved about that time. To a certain extent, it’s still the same way with UNISONIC. There is still a spirit going on between me and Kai, which reminds me a lot of that time.
Metal Assault: Vocally, have you done anything different on this album, or is it the same style that we’ve known you for over the years?
Kiske: I think I’m a lot better now (laughs). I can’t really listen to myself on the “Keeper I” and “II” records. I was a baby then. I was like eighteen years old when I did the vocals for “Keeper I”. Same for “Keeper II”, I was nineteen at the time. The vocal cords were not fully developed when you’re at that age. For a man, you have to cross the age of 30 for your vocal cords to really develop. So I think in terms of the sound of my voice, I’m a lot better these days than I was back then. I sound a lot fuller, and I don’t have to kick my ass that much to sound good out there, you know. Of course as a person I have developed, so my singing has improved. The vocal performance always depends on the personality. I’m 44 years old now, and I’ve been through experiences. I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m a grown man now, and I think all that benefits the performance I’m able to give.
Metal Assault: Obviously, you got better with age in terms of your voice. But not every singer is able to do that. Some get worse with age. Do you think that’s just natural, or is there something singers can do to improve with age?
Kiske: Absolutely. I mean, singing has a lot to do with your head. I don’t have problems with my voice unless I’m having a bad time. When my soul is down, then I begin to have problems with voice, but when I feel good about things, I can sing without any problem. I think it’s pretty much the same for every singer when it comes to technique. If you do things right, there is no reason you’d lose your voice. It will change over the years, but not necessarily in a bad way, and if you’re aware of what you’re doing, you’ll be capable of singing great, and you’ll be able to do everything you used to do when you were young. As long as you deal with the changes in your voice and learn how to do things differently, you can enjoy singing your whole life, actually. When singers lose their voice, either it’s a mental problem, or they do something wrong to burn the voice. You should always try to avoid violating your voice as a singer.
Anthony Morgan of Metal Forces recently conducted an interview with with former HELLOWEEN and current UNISONIC singer Michael Kiske. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
On working with fellow ex-HELLOWEEN member Kai Hansen (also of GAMMA RAY) in UNISONIC:
Kiske: “I also have a good relationship with Kai, and not many know that. Even when he left the band, we were still pretty okay. We didn’t hang out every night or whatever, and we didn’t do anything together musically apart from him helping me out with my first solo record (‘Instant Clarity’, August 1996) together with Adrian Smith (IRON MAIDEN guitarist) and me singing on the fourth GAMMA RAY record (‘Land Of The Free’, May 1995). We didn’t do much, but we were okay. We liked each other and when we saw each other there was always a good vibe going on, but we were not thinking about doing something together until we were onstage together with AVANTASIA in 2010. Before Kai, I had a friend of mine in mind as a guitar player [Sandro Giampietro]; a very strong individual, a great musician, and a guy who’s helped me out on a couple of records I’ve done in the past, but I think Kosta [Zafiriou, drums] was really scared of him. [laughs] He’s some kind of a person; he’s very different, very original, very funny, very friendly, but different. Kosta was a little bit scared of him so that didn’t happen, but when I was onstage with Kai on the AVANTASIA tour, it brought us to different countries. We played a show in Tokyo, we played one show in Mexico, one in Brazil, one in Argentina, and we played Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany, of course. It was a lot of travelling, but there was just a very, very nice chemistry going on between me and Kai, which I had almost forgotten about. We started talking backstage, ‘We should do something together again, because it just feels right,’ and we just didn’t know how, but at that time again UNISONIC just didn’t come up. I don’t know why, but after awhile, when we found out we don’t wanna do another project, Kai made it very clear if we wanted to do something, we gotta do one real thing. He suggested me joining GAMMA RAY, which I didn’t really wanna do, because I didn’t wanna join a band with a 20-year history. You always piss someone off, and to a certain extent it’s also a bit too much for me is GAMMA RAY. I like some of the material, but other material is just a bit too heavy for me, to a certain extent. One of the guys said, ‘We still have just one guitar player in UNISONIC,’ and then it clicked for me. I thought, ‘That’s it,’ because Kai‘s presence adds that extra edge — that extraordinariness — to UNISONIC that I thought was missing. Now he’s in the band and we started working on that first record, he’s proving me right. He fits into the band very well.”
On the track “No One Ever Sees Me” from the “Unisonic” album:
Kiske: “It’s about a girl from countries where they’re more or less the property of man in a very inhuman way, Muslim countries or India, where they have certain traditions that totally take the freedom of women and girls. The parents decide who they marry. Over here in Germany we have Turkish people; of course, not all of them, but some of those hold onto their old traditions where the brothers kill their sister. Or the father kills the daughter because she’s together with a guy that she loves instead of with who they decided she should marry and stuff, which is pretty strange to me. I don’t get it. Traditions are fine to me, and I’m okay with different mentalities and religions or whatever, but when it comes to inhumanity, in that way it doesn’t work. I had the idea of that song and those lyrics when I was watching an Indian father on TV talking about a young daughter of his. He was old, and he said in words, ‘I am going to decide who she’s gonna marry, and if she starts talking about love, I’ll kill her with my own hands.’ He thought it was totally justified. I was kind of shocked how a father could talk about his own daughter like that. This cannot be love, this is not love. I don’t know what it is, but it’s weird. That’s what this song is about. It’s actually from the girl’s perspective in a way, and those girls are actually alright with it most of the time because they just grew up like that. They grew up not developing their own personality and their own identity, so they feel that it’s okay that they’re just property.”
On his upcoming fifth solo album:
Kiske: “I don’t really have a head for another solo record at the moment, but I have decided to do that with Sandro Giampietro. We want it to be a very live record and a fun recording. I have a whole lot of songs which UNISONIC didn’t care much about which I will be doing with him. We will try to give it a nice, live acoustic feel. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be a very cool record, not so much for metal audiences but some of them are quite open too. Others will probably ignore it, but that’s okay. I’m sure we’ll record it in the summer; when the summer’s over, I’m sure that’ll be done. I’m not sure when it will be released but I still have a contract running for that one, so I have to do that anyway. I’ll be doing that.”
UNISONIC – featuring former HELLOWEEN vocalist Michael Kiske, guitarist Kai Hansen (GAMMA RAY, ex-Helloween), guitarist Mandy Meyer (ex-KROKUS, GOTTHARD) and PINK CREAM 69 rhythm section Dennis Ward (bass) and Kosta Zafiriou (drums) – have released video featuring Kiske and Hansen discussing the band’s self-titled debut album track-by-track.
All 11 parts can be seen below:
Check out video of Kiske and Hansen talking about the bonus track ‘Over The Rainbow’ found on the limited edition of the album below:
Unisonic will be released on March 30th (March 21st in Japan).
‘Unisonic’
‘Souls Alive’
‘Never too Late’
‘I’ve Tried’
‘Star Rider’
‘Never Change Me
‘Renegade’
‘My Sanctuary’
‘King For A Day’
‘We Rise’
‘No One Ever Sees Me’
‘Over The Rainbow’ (Bonus Limited Edition)
Check out the new video for ‘Unisonic’ and a promotional video clip below:
Unisonic have the following shows booked:
May
12 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – Teatro Flores
14 – Antofagasta, Chile – Statix Rock & Soccer
16 – Santiago, Chile – Teatro Teleton
18 – Sao Paulo, Brazil – HSBC Hall
20 – Mexico City, Mexico – Circo Volador
27 – Gelsenkirchen, Germany – Rock Hard Festival
June
15 – Clisson, France – Hellfest
21 – Milan, Italy – Gods Of Metal
July
1 – Malakasa, Greece – Rockwave
12 – Vizovice, Czech Republic – Masters Of Rock
October (with GOTTHARD)
11 – Barcelona, Spain – Sala Apolo
12 – Madrid, Spain – La Rivera
13 – Pamplona, Spain – Sala Totem
UNISONIC guitarist Kai Hansen (GAMMA RAY, ex-HELLOWEEN) is featured in a new interview with Matt Phelps at Über Röck. An excerpt is available below:
Q: So how did approaching the other Unisonic guys about you joining go?
Hansen: “When we said that me joining Unisonic would be the only option that made sense I was still really doubtful because I didn’t really know what Unisonic would be about, if it would be something I could really contribute too. I didn’t know the other guys so a lot of things had to be sorted out first. So Michael talked to the others and told them that he thought it would be a great thing if I joined the band, and they liked the idea. So we got together and got to know each other. Mandy (Meyer) was not present at that time, it was Kosta (Zafiriou), me, Michi and Dennis (Ward) and we just went out and had dinner to get to know each other and it was fun and full of good spirit. We talked about things and I said that there were a few things I wanted to make clear up front because if I join something and I devote myself to it I can be pretty strict and pretty choosy when it comes down to saying what I like and don’t like. If I think a song is crap I say it, you know? And they were all cool, we were all happy and it felt good. Then the final test was to make a date and just do jamming for a few days, see how it works out and see how it feels because sometimes you could be put together with the best musicians in the world and the outcome would be zero because you just don’t fit together. You never know. So we did that test and it went brilliantly so in the end there was no reason for me to say no to joining.”
Q: But that’s not the end of Gamma Ray though is it?
Hansen: “No no no. That’s not the end of Gamma Ray. This is just like a temporary holiday from the stuff I do with Gamma Ray. We will switch back and forth. We’ll work it so that one year’s a Gamma Ray year and one year’s a Unisonic year and that we we can work without leaving the other band cold.”
Q: Those jamming sessions then. I take it you maybe ran through a Helloween song together. How did it feel looking across and seeing Michael singing ‘I Want Out’ again after so many years?
Hansen: “Well we did that already with Gamma Ray. Michael joined me on the Skeletons & Majesties tour and we did it. We played it with Gamma Ray for a few shows, played some songs that we hadn’t had on the set list for years and Michael joined in for two shows and we played ‘I Want Out’ so I knew that feeling. But it was different now with Unisonic when we took the line up to Japan because it was more like a band for people to focus on. Especially in Japan where we haven’t been since maybe Keeper 1. So that was really great, really big time we got an amazing response.”
Unisonic’s full length debut will be released on March 30th (March 21st in Japan).
‘Unisonic’
‘Souls Alive’
‘Never too Late’
‘I’ve Tried’
‘Star Rider’
‘Never Change Me
‘Renegade’
‘My Sanctuary’
‘King For A Day’
‘We Rise’
‘No One Ever Sees Me’
‘Over The Rainbow’ (Bonus Limited Edition)
Check out the new video for ‘Unisonic’ and a promotional video clip below:
Unisonic have the following shows booked:
May
12 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – Teatro Flores
14 – Antofagasta, Chile – Statix Rock & Soccer
16 – Santiago, Chile – Teatro Teleton
18 – Sao Paulo, Brazil – HSBC Hall
20 – Mexico City, Mexico – Circo Volador
27 – Gelsenkirchen, Germany – Rock Hard Festival
June
15 – Clisson, France – Hellfest
21 – Milan, Italy – Gods Of Metal
July
1 – Malakasa, Greece – Rockwave
12 – Vizovice, Czech Republic – Masters Of Rock
October (with GOTTHARD)
11 – Barcelona, Spain – Sala Apolo
12 – Madrid, Spain – La Rivera
13 – Pamplona, Spain – Sala Totem
Fabiana Spinelli from www.heavyworlds.com recently conducted an interview with german singer Michael Kiske in occasion of the promotion of Unisonic self-titled debut album. In addition to Kiske, UNISONIC features in its ranks former Helloween mate and Gamma Ray mastermind Kai Hansen, Dennis Ward (bass) and Kosta Zafiriou (drums) of Germany’s PINK CREAM 69 and Swiss guitarist Mandy Meyer (who has previously played with ASIA, GOTTHARD and KROKUS). The entire 24-minutes interview can be streamed below. The album UNISONIC will be released on March 30 2012 (nine days earlier in Japan) via earMUSIC/Edel.
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