Edenbridge: Heading to new frontiers

Soon you’ll be able to enjoy the Austrian Melodic Symphonic Metallers Edenbridge live on Europe’s stages, where they will present their new 11th studio album “Shangri-La”. The band can actually celebrate their 25th anniversary this year! Founder Lanvall tells us the secret of their long-lasting “Angelic Bombastic Metal” journey – and a lot more.

Congratulations to the new album! Can you tell me, what difficulties have you faced on the recording? Which song from the new album was the most difficult to record from a technical point of view?

The recordings were pretty much as always without any major difficulties. The only thing was that I was not able to fly to England to do the mix with Karl Groom together. So we used a technology called Audio Movers, where I got the real signal from Karl’s mixing desk on my studio speakers and we communicated via whatsapp. That went really well. All of the songs have their certain difficult points, but „The Bonding (Part 2)“ with its 16 minutes was of course a challenge to bring everything to shape.

You are working with a new label AFM. What are the main benefits you have experienced so far?

AFM is a young dynamic team and is much more focussed on the digital and visual side, which is of course tremendously important nowadays with falling physical sales. To me the physical product is the only real one, but it is like it is. We have been focusing a lot on social media for months now for the album release and promoting the 3 singles and videos we did for the album. I also have to say, that these were the easiest contract negotiations we ever had with Nils Wasko.

Are there any disadvantages to producing the album yourselves, or is it more interesting working with the label?

I think in our status and as long as there are still physical sales, it is important to work with a renowned label, as long as you don’t want to do everything on your own. And I still have so much to do apart from the musical side, which keeps me busy the whole day, managing the band and doing social media. I would love to just concentrate on the music only, but that is impossible.

Can you say that the final result is 100 percent what you expected? Did you manage to fulfill all the ideas that you had, or do you think now, “We should have added this and that to one song, and removed this and that from another one”?

I am completely happy and I have to say this for every album we did, cause this was where we were at the certain points of our career. The albums sounds exactly what I had imagined before, maybe even better.

I think the new album will change not only the external component of the group, but also its musical side as well. Is it true that you will put the focus on music?

We have always put the focus on the music first and then on the other components. But you have to paint a picture. Therefore the photos and the cover as well as the lyrics have to tell a story, together with the music.

What do you enjoy the most about the challenge of evolving without losing the essence of your musical foundation?

To be free to do whatever I want to do musically. Of course you have to be careful of not completely changing your style, but that won’t happen anyway. But heading on to new frontiers, letting new influences in, is the exciting part of making music and composing. For the first time we dealt with gospel influences in 2 songs, which I wanted to do for a long time. This time it happened. Who knows what we discover on our next album. But doing the same kind of album over and over again would bore me to death.

It’s been years since your previous album, a little longer than your usual time between records. Was there anything in particular that led you to this time frame?

Well, we had some great shows in China 2019 and on the 70000 Tons of Metal Cruise in January 2020 before everything changed. So I needed to change plans, too. Therefore I started in March 2020 with composing and arranging the new album, which took me till Summer 21, when the recordings then finally started. I think the time between the records was pretty much the average 3 years in our case.

So what’s your secret? Do you create the lyrics or the melody for your songs first?

I am doing all the music, and the lyrics partly with Sabine. There is no secret. You have the be in the flow. Sometimes ideas come out of nowhere but often I am also improvising on the piano and the guitar and certain riffs, melodies or harmonies appear. Then I write them down for filing them. This is useful when you are arranging and be able to rely on existing ideas.

Do you think that technology plays a part in becoming more detailed in the recording process as well?

Technology is always great if it is useful and not working against humanity. I would not want to go back to the analog recording days and I did completely analog recordings on my first 2 solo albums in the 90s. You can do so much more in the arranging and recordings process with unlimited tracks nowadays and I love layering.

I think a big part of work for all the bands are concerts. What about your plans for 2023?
We played an album release show in Montreux (Switzerland) in conjunction with the renowned classic festival there. The tour then is planned for February 2023 – see the details HERE .
Thanks for the interview!

PS: There’s a new upcoming release – LANVALL’s first symphony, “THE FREYSTADT SYMPHONY”, will be released on CD/DVD in Spring 2023. This late romantic work for big orchestra, choir and electric guitar with influences from film music and rock/metal, premiered live on June 29th 2022, in the Messehalle Freistadt (Austria) and was audio and video recorded right there.  The performance features 120 musicians from the “Junge Philharmonie Freistadt”, the “Hard Chor Linz” and LANVALL on electric guitar. Join in the crowdfunding! Bandwebsite

Edenbridge are:
Arne „Lanvall“ Stockhammer (git, keys)
Sabine Edelsbacher (voc)
Dominik Sebastian (git)
Johannes Jungreithmeier (dr)
Steven Hall (bass)

Text: Julia Andreeva, photos: Band

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