I’m Not A Dictator; I’m A Benign King

Vocalist Tobias Sammet officially began his career in 1992 with power metal upstarts, Edguy, regarded at the time as a mid-tier wannabe Helloween. Be that as it may, the band gained a loyal following in the years that followed, to the point that Sammet was able to pursue other musical goals. He threw everyone an unexpected curve with the announcement that he was launching a metal opera project featuring himself backed by guest vocalists and musicians, making good on his threat with The Metal Opera in 2001. The rest, as they say, is history.

Sammet kicked off 2025 with his 10th Avantasia record, Here Be Dragons, staying true to form by working with long-time compatriot Sascha Paeth (producer, guitar) and a host of singers including (this time) Bob Catley (Magnum), Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Maids), Geoff Tate (ex-Queensrÿche), Michael Kiske (Helloween), Adrienne Cowan (Seven Spires), Tommy Karevik (Kamelot), Kenny Leckremo (H.E.A.T.) and Roy Khan (Conception, ex-Kamelot). Also holding true to tradition, at the time of this writing Avantasia had embarked on a European “evening with” tour with a line-up that differs slightly from the album but is no less impressive.

BraveWords: You launched Avantasia in 2001, so it’s safe to assume people may have forgotten or are completely unaware that this was only intended to be a two-album studio project. It’s shocking to realize Here Be Dragons is your 10th album.

Sammet: “I’m shocked, too, but I’m even more shocked because it’s just my 10th album with Avantasia. We won’t talk about it, but I have that other band as well (laughs). Present tense… I don’t know if it’s present tense or past tense, to be honest with you. But that’s another story. This is my 20th album at the biblical age of 47 years old. It’s a dirty job but the best can do it (laughs).”

BraveWords: Here Be Dragons is a compact record compared to previous albums, such as The Scarecrow (2008) or Ghostlights (2016). That was unexpected…

Sammet: “You can’t really plan something like that, but I realized at a certain point in the process that it was a very compact album, very punchy, and in hindsight I’d say it’s also because I approached the album a bit differently. Not in order to come up with something more compact, but I think that’s a direct result of the approach I took. For the first time in the history of Avantasia, I did not sit down before I started working on the album with a concept, a storyline, or even a topic. Also, most of the songs weren’t written with a specific singer in the back of my mind. I just had the faith that whatever I did, it would be Avantasia. It’s in my DNA. I told myself, ‘Throw yourself into the adventure and just do it.’ It felt like material for a fairytale book, with individual tales and individual chapters, but I didn’t worry about it. I think the whole idea of conceptual albums have become a bit of a ball and chain for me, or a corset. I wanted to break out of that. Here Be Dragons feels like band album.”

BraveWords: How did you go about choosing the singers for the new album? Was it clear from the beginning who you wanted on board?

Sammet: “The song with Ronnie on it, the original musical idea of that song goes back to the Mystery Of Time era (2013). We recorded a version of that song back in 2012, but we put it on the shelf. I knew it was there and I always wanted to go back to it, but I would end up writing a new song. For some reason there was never time to finish it. We re-arranged part of it and re-recorded it, and I had the idea that it could be a Ronnie song.”

“With, it was planned for Michael to sing the song. It was completely written, it was an up-tempo song, it has a slight Helloween feeling to it but is more neo-classical like an Yngwie Malmsteen song. It also has an eerie, mysterious atmosphere, but I had a feeling that if Michael would sing it that it would work. And it would not be the typical ‘Reach Out For The Light’ / ‘Shelter From The Rain’ kind of song.”

BraveWords: Do you have favourite singers that you make a point of going back to, like Michael Kiske, Geoff Tate or Ronnie Atkins? It seems they are part of the Avantasia DNA now. Maybe that’s what makes the new album feel more like a band effort compared to 10 or 15 years ago.

Sammet: “I’m just happy to have those great singers in the family. For a very long time, Avantasia has been known as this ‘all-star project’, and I neither like the term nor the idea of it. It’s not an all-star project; it’s a world of its own. Some people will say, ‘Oh, it’s boring. They’ve got the same five singers that have already sung on previous Avantasia albums…’but to that I say, I’m a huge Iron Maiden fan that loves what they do and loves hearing just Bruce Dickinson on vocals. So, Avantasia is not about a bucket list anymore, and I don’t want it to be perceived that way. We have eight or nine different voices on this record who managed to fill every respective song with life and give it something unique. The singers are so different that we have a very large colour palette to paint with and create music with. That’s something I cherish. Nothing is carved in stone. I may work with people in the future that I’ve never worked with before, but first and foremost I really appreciate the power and forceful diversity that we have in the Avantasia family now.”

BraveWords: Having both Roy Khan and Tommy Karevik on the album definitely has some Kamelot fans talking. You can bet they’re fantasizing about seeing them on stage together for an Avantasia tour.

Sammet: “(Laughs) The thing is, I don’t think those guys would have a problem with it. Roy quit Kamelot to do something different, and Tommy was an amazing singer before he joined them. He was a great choice to step into Roy’s shoes and leave his own footprints. Tommy is a very unique singer; he’s not just a stand-in for Roy. He has a complete identity of his own, so I never really thought about the fact that we may tickle the fantasies of Kamelot fans (laughs). I never approached it that way. It was an accident.”

“I’ve known Tommy even before he was in Kamelot. He was about to step into the band, and I’d met him at Sascha’s studio. I don’t know how many years ago that was, but we had dinner together and hit it off. Last year, when we were doing the summer tour, Tony Leckremo fell sick for a couple shows, so I asked Tommy to fill in and he put on an amazing show. That’s when Tommy became part of the family.”

“Roy had sung with Avantasia before, on The Scarecrow album in 2008. When I wrote the last song for the new album, even though I originally wanted to sing it by myself because it’s a very personal song, I just thought it needs another dimension. I decided to do it as a duet, but as with most Avantasia songs it wasn’t a question of who could sing that high, it was a question of who could sing that low and fill it with life and emotion. That’s when Sascha suggested we ask Roy. So I never thought about the fact we had two Kamelot singers on the album. I didn’t even identify Roy as the former singer of Kamelot; he is Roy to me.”

BraveWords: This begs the cliché question of whether you played the friendly dictator when it came to the singers recording the new songs, or were they given creative freedom to deliver what they felt worked best for them?

Sammet: “I’m not a dictator; I’m a benign king. Now you’ve got your headline (laughs). Most of the singers, they sing what I write for them, but if you don’t allow a singer to add their own identity and bring is something unique of themselves, that would be stupid. The song that Tommy did, ‘The Witch’, is a good example. Some people say it sounds like a Kamelot song, but I didn’t think of them when I wrote the song. I wrote the song long before I considered Tommy it or being part of Avantasia. I had the melody lines there, and by the time Tommy came into the picture, he took over those melody lines, and what he contributed was his own soul. People think it was a Kamelot-inspired song, but that just proves what a great singer and what a strong personality Tommy is. It’s hard to describe, but all of the singers bring the songs into their own worlds. Nobody really changed melody lines or lyrics. They pretty much sang what I gave them.”

BraveWords: You’ve been working with Sascha Paeth (guitar, producer) for over 20 years. He’s been an integral part of Avantasia since The Scarecrow. What did he bring to Here Be Dragons?

Sammet: “Sascha contributes his guitars and ideas, but the writing and arranging has become more and more my thing. We had a change in how we work together when I built my own studio. I think I really started to really do my own demos prior to the Moonglow album (2019), but the proper studio was built in 2020. Since then, I can make very, very polished demos, so to speak. If Sascha had more input, Avantasia would sound more bluesy, like Stevie Ray Vaughn. When I do things, it sounds a little more Limahl (laughs). Sascha mixes and engineers a lot of the stuff, I ask him for advice on the arrangements. He’s the producer and the guitar player, but it’s my record.”

BraveWords: You and Napalm Records went to the trouble of making a deluxe artbook for Here Be Dragons (featuring three CDs and a 96-page book). How much influence did you have on the final product?

Sammet: “To be honest with you, I did it for myself. These days, a lot of people do research on what the fans want, what you can flog off to people, and I don’t think we need that approach. I would always ask myself, ‘What would you, as a fan, want the new KISS album or the new Iron Maiden album to look like?’ There are so many things underneath the songs, underneath the production, underneath the songwriting, and it doesn’t cost me much other than a lot of time to put the book together. I decided I was going to choose the pictures, write detailed liner notes… I wanted to create something that I can take out as a diary, a picture book, in 20 years and travel back in time. Like a time capsule. I didn’t want it to be empty and hollow; I wanted it to have substance. I just wanted to do something that I would want to own myself from my favourite band. I think if you approach it that way you can’t go wrong.”

(Top photo – Kevin Nixon)