Former HELLOWEEN Singer Defends His Right To Rock

September 4, 2005

Former HELLOWEEN singer Michael Kiske has issued the following statement regarding his involvement in the PLACE VENDOME project, also featuring PINK CREAM 69 members Dennis Ward, Uwe Reitenauer, and Kosta Zafiriou, plus VANDEN PLAS ivory tinkler Gunther Werno:

"We all pretty much know by now [that] whatever I do, certain people will always complain about it. It's not that I really care, but to clear [up] some confusion [regarding] my statement last year about me leaving the hard rock music scene, here is this:

"I did not mean with it that I'm not making music or releasing CDs anymore (not yet!) (I was in the middle of writing new material when I posted that statement.) But obviously it was all a bit unclear. What I meant was: I am not at all compatible with the hard rock or metal scene anymore. It doesn't work!

"My personal understanding of free art and my human ideals are pretty much the total opposite to what this scene idealizes most of the time. And as a songwriter, I will write no more hard rock songs in the future. I discovered that I have to do things different now; my own music has got to speak a different language, and it will. But I still have a heart for intelligent rock music sometimes.

"PLACE VENDOME is, and was offered to me, as AOR [Adult Oriented Rock]. I did the vocals to the demos which were not very heavy. Dennis Ward produced some of the songs with lots of heavy guitar overdubs afterwards. A bit too much for my taste, but it's OK.

"Don't forget: it's not MY record, just a project I did vocals for.

"Dennis did a very good job on the production, and its not that I'm getting sleepless nights because of those E-guitars, but I personally would have done it a lot less heavy to be more AOR. The amount of E-guitars does matter in terms of how it comes across, and now some songs can easily be called hard rock. But that's not my fault. It also creates even more confusion that Frontiers Records promote this album now as melodic hard rock. I think it is, and I have been told, it is AOR. But whatever it may be, it was fun to do. And as long as it is no soul-raping, brain-and-heart-dead-inhumanity-idealizing-Evil-Knievel-brutal-metal, I am OK [with it]."

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