GAMMA RAY Frontman: We Wanted To Create Album That Was 'More Cheerful Or Positive'

EvilG of Metal-Rules.com recently conducted an interview with GAMMA RAY vocalist/guitarist Kai Hansen. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal-Rules.com: Well, I guess I'll start off and we'll talk about the new album "Land Of The Free Part II", of course. I was just wondering, I'm sure people have asked this in various ways but I'm just wondering if you could tell me how the album took shape. I'm wondering what happened first: were you writing songs and you guys thought "hey this sounds like 'Land Of The Free'" or was it you had already decided to do "Land Of The Free Part II" and then started writing it in a particular way?

Kai Hansen: "That was more like it, yeah, actually. It just came about that when it was time to talk about the new album or the next album we did so and it was like, we were all agreed on certain things. Having the will to do something that is more cheerful or positive or spirit-uplifting, if you want it like that. 'Majestic' was pretty sinister, in a way, or more aggressive maybe. We wanted to do something different again and when we described the direction for the new album, what we thought it could be like or what the direction is that we're going to start songwriting, it was all coming down to like 'Land Of The Free'. That was kind of the directive. We were sure we wanted a directive for this album, from a strong line to follow. Not to get too diverse in the songwriting, so we always mentioned 'Land Of The Free' to describe best what we kind of were going for. Then later on we came up with, 'let's write 'Land Of The Free II'.' You know, at least give it a try; accept this as a direction. If we think we achieve it or if this could be 'Land Of The Free', we could give it the title. If not, well, we choose another one."

Metal-Rules.com: Besides the musical similarities to Part I, lyrically are there any connections to the first one?

Kai Hansen: "Well, there are some connections. You know, you find some phrases, some words, some parts of the story again, which again, if you take for instance the song 'Rebellion In Dreamland' it starts with a certain specific scene. Like, somebody sitting somewhere on a seashore, you know and hearing those voices in a way, or being compelled to walk on and do something and stuff like that. On the second part, the last song is 'Insurrection' which actually kind of starts and ends with the same situation in a way. This is like, they're small connections, but still it's a bit different. While Part 1 was kind of a little story line in there over a certain character going on a journey or on a search for something and now it's more a loose compilation of songs that all deal with the theme freedom seen from various perspectives."

Metal-Rules.com: On the new album there's a couple nods to some of your influences and most notably is the section in one of the tracks that is reminiscent of "Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner" and I assume that was a deliberate little nod in the music that you did there.

Kai Hansen: "Well, definitely everything that sounds a bit like MAIDEN we do is a nod to those guys, you know, no matter what. When we started with HELLOWEEN on 'Walls Of Jericho' people were giving us the trademark IRON MAIDEN on speed. So we never mind that. But the fun is with this part in 'Opportunity' this is a bass lick that Dirk has been playing since I don't know how many years; seven, eight years… for a long, long time and he's of course familiar with IRON MAIDEN but he didn't know shit about 'Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner', I promise. He didn't know. Anyhow, when I heard this bass line, he was stuck with this song and I said 'why don't you put in this bass riff, we always said you had to put it in a song once' and he said 'yeah, that might work.' And he tried and it worked and I put on some vocals and instinctively they were kind of you, you have two chords and the bass run… I mean, what can you do? How can you not sound like MAIDEN, you know what I mean? So we kind of pushed it even more in that direction, so that's how it happened actually."

Read the entire interview at Metal-Rules.com.