After nearly a decade and a half, Demons & Wizards broke the silence with an international tour in 2019. Later this week, the project of Iced Earth guitarist Jon Schaffer and Blind Guardian singer Hansi Kürsch will release their third album, simply titled ‘III’. The album is full of the intense, yet theatrical heavy metal the fans have come to expect from Demons & Wizards. Their record label Century Media provided me with an opportunity to speak with Schaffer about the album.

Have you stockpiled any compositions in the years between ‘Touched By The Crimson King’ (2005) and ‘III’?
“Three of the songs have been written during the writing sessions for Iced Earth’s ‘Incorruptible’. Those were ‘New Dawn’, ‘Invincible’… And actually, ‘Universal Truth’ was a Sons Of Liberty song which I had already demoed with vocals. Those tracks have all been written around the same time. Once I knew I wasn’t going to use those for Iced Earth, I sent them to Hansi and he came up with some vocal ideas. I was about to go on tour with Iced Earth, but I was definitely interested in getting back to it once I got back.
This was in the summer of 2018, after which I went on a month-long hike through the desert of Arizona. A week after I got back, I flew to Germany, where Hansi and I had a few meetings to plan everything we’re doing now. When I got back, around November 2018, I started writing the rest of the album. The instrumental part of the album was done in my studio in March of 2019. The vocals were done in a studio in Germany.“
How important is it for you to make a Demons & Wizards song sound different from Iced Earth?
“There is no attempt to make it different, the same or anything in relation to Iced Earth. That’s just not the way I think. It’s just about being in the moment with the music and how it speaks to me. The only thing, from a productional standpoint, that I paid any attention to is how the kick and snare sounds related to the guitar tones. There are four different tunings on the record – standard tuning, my typical Eb tuning, C# and baritone tuning – so there are small, subtle differences when you compare the kick and snare sounds. And that was deliberate, but in terms of ‘I want the production to go this way or that way’… No. I just wanted it to feel good based on what we were doing.
I feel the dynamic range of this album is a little bigger. Every song sounds very different and that gave us the opportunity to not have the same kick and snare sounds on every track. It lends itself well to these types of variables without it ever sounding like anything else but the same album.“

Vocal Melody

“Hansi has different sources of inspiration for lyrics than I have. And that’s the cool thing. If I have a piece of music and I don’t really know what to do with it vocally, I can send it to Hansi to see what he wil do with it. If I’m driven to write lyrics and vocal melodies, if I have a clear vision of what the song is about, I will almost always save it for Iced Earth. Having said that, there are three songs on this album that I wrote the lyrics for. When I have a specific task, like when I go into the studio to write an Iced Earth album, I’ll write an Iced Earth album. But my songs have to move me. And I want them to move other people. Even before the lyrics and vocal melodies are added. The music has to make you feel something when you hear it.
‘New Dawn’, for example, was a song for which I could not hear a vocal melody. After I built the Independence Hall studio and hooked up everything, that was the second song I wrote there. And I liked it, but I just couldn’t hear a vocal melody. I liked the piece of music, but I just couldn’t hear it. I played it to Stu (Block, Iced Earth’s singer). He wrestled with it for about a day and he didn’t know either. I said: you know what, let’s not force it, I’ll send it to Hansi and I guarantee you he hears something cool in it.
And he did. He came up with something. But it’s a different kind of arrangement. If you mute the vocals and just listen to it instrumentally, it’s pretty difficult to pick out the chorus. It just doesn’t have that kind of structure. And that’s fine. But as I expected, Hansi came up with a bunch of cool parts and I think the song is really cool.
In terms of production, that’s one of my favorite sounding songs on the record, by the way. And it’s also the first song I ever wrote in C# tuning. It more or less came out of left field. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. It’s just a rare example of a piece of music that I could not hear any vocals to. Generally, I do. That’s the reason why I write so many Iced Earth lyrics and vocal melodies: because I hear them. If it’s something I don’t hear, but do like the music, that’s typically the material I co-write with someone else.“

Nature of the Beast

Does Hansi write anything else than the vocal melodies?
“Not really. I write all of that and send it to him. If doesn’t like something, he’ll tell me. But that never happened. He always gets a lot of inspiration from the stuff I send him. The only thing that tends to change is when he interprets a certain section as a chorus and we arrange it differently accordingly. The arrangement can always change based on what he interprets as verses, choruses and bridges. Those are the only changes that ever occur.
Usually, he sends me stuff of which the lyrics aren’t finished. Usually it’s nonsense, but it’s a way of capturing the melody and the cadence. And then we look what will be the big hook. And then it’s: alright, this is the chorus and this is what we build the song around. But generally, the arrangement is pretty close to the finished thing as is. The music almost always tells you what will be the chorus. Usually I instinctively know what it is, but always with the openness of changing the arrangement based on what I hear from Hansi.“
Has that ever bled into what Iced Earth does? I always found it interesting that Iced Earth started experimenting with bombast and layering around the time the Demons & Wizards debut was released…
“I think that was all part of the growth process. There were a lot of layers on ‘Burnt Offerings’ already. You have to realize that that was our first album with 48 tracks. If you’re given the technology, the temptation for musicians to use more tracks becomes pretty big. Of course you’re going to try and cram more ideas into it. That’s the nature of the beast.
The first two Iced Earth albums were 24-track albums. ‘Burnt Offerings’ was our first 48-track album. ‘Dark Saga’ and ‘Something Wicked’ were both 48-track albums. Then came the first Demons & Wizards album, which was part-analog and part-digital. The drums and rhythm guitars were analog, the rest was recorded digitally. ‘Horror Show’ was part-analog, part-digital as well. The next Iced Earth album was ‘The Glorious Burden’ and that one was fully digital. And that’s when the number of tracks became not an issue anymore. Then it got to: now I have the ability to do 160 tracks, woo!
You know… It can be a trap if you’re not careful, because you can get caught up in it and then you lose sight of the original concept of the song. I know I did. And I think a lot of guys get sucked into that. The fact that the possibilities are there doesn’t mean that you have to use all of it, you know?
I think it’s a natural progression that if you have the technology at your fingertips, the temptation is almost overwhelming. But for me… I’ve reached that point by getting some of those things out of my system with ‘Crucible Of Man’, ‘Framing Armageddon’ and ‘The Glorious Burden’. Those albums have so many parts… On ‘The Glorious Burden’, we had a full orchestra on ‘Gettysburg’ and all that, which was cool, but I got it out of my system. And then with ‘Dystopia’, I decided to go back and make a more straight-up, raw metal album. And then we went a notch back even further with ‘Plagues Of Babylon’, when we got even more raw and back to the roots. And I think with ‘Incorruptible’, I found a balance between the two.
I don’t know what will be next, as I haven’t started working on it yet. But after this Demons album comes out and I take a bit of a break, then I will get back to Iced Earth zone and I will do whatever feels natural at that time.“

Challenge

Speaking of layering: there’s always a lot of it going on in Demons & Wizards’ music. How difficult was it to interpret that music for last year’s tour?
“It was a small challenge. At some point, you have to focus on which is the most important part in a certain part. If there’s four different guitar parts and harmonies and what not, you just have to choose which of the parts are the most recognizable for someone who has not heard the songs before. That’s what we did when Jake (Dreyer, Iced Earth’s lead guitarist who also toured with Demons & Wizards as their live guitarist) came over to figure out the live parts. I transferred the old two inch tapes and I found the old hard drives of ‘Touched By The Crimson King’ to analyze every track. I was listening and though: man, I can’t even remember playing this at the time.
You just have to pick which part is the most obvious based on the way it was mixed at the time and which part jumps out. And from there, we move on. That’s how it goes with the vocals as well. Hansi always layers so many vocal parts and different harmonies. That is one of the reasons why we got the backing singers for the likes of Wacken, so we could make it as big as possible and still keep it somewhat realistic in terms of expenses. It was a small challenge, but not as difficult as I thought it would be. Some things of this new album will be a bigger challenge.“
Does that mean you are planning new live dates with Demons & Wizards?
“There aren’t any plans, no. The plan for 2020 is studio time for Iced Earth and the same for Blind Guardian. Iced Earth and Blind Guardian are both successful, busy bands. The biggest challenge for Hansi and me is to work around those schedules. But even if we did, there’s all these guitar tunings. Eb is the typical Iced Earth tuning and even for Demons & Wizards, but there are exceptions. That could be a challenge if we ever play these songs live with Demons & Wizards. There are four different tunings on this album and a bunch of songs from the past that are in D. If we ever have any fly dates, we’ll lose quite a bit of money on travelling with all these differently-tuned guitars, haha!“

Hotel California

Traditionally, Jim Morris plays all the guitar solos on a Demons & Wizards album. Why did you approach Jake Dreyer to do a couple as well this time?
“I would have been fine with Jim playing all the guitar solos like on the earlier Demons & Wizards albums, but there were a couple of songs that demanded something else. Jim is 61 and he grew up with Jeff Beck, Clapton and David Gilmour. And that’s great, but a song like ‘Split’ asked for Jake’s style, as it’s an aggressive heavy metal track. On ‘Wolves In Winter’, Jim tried a part and that was pretty cool, but when Jake played the same part, it just worked better.
When I asked Jake to play the Demons & Wizards material live with us, I thought it was cool to let him play some solos on the new album. He would come over to figure out the parts for the live show anyway. And on ‘Timeless Spirit’, I wanted a ‘Hotel California’-like vibe at the end from the moment we started working on it. So one late night, I recorded Jake’s solo which begins right after the heavy part at the end starts. It was just a brilliant take, so we kept it. One or two days later, I sat down with Jim and Jake to guide them through the piece.
Jake has a really cool vibrato and a good sense of melody. He can play all the shred stuff, but also what I call the ‘grown man shit’. And that’s what cool about the dueling guitars near the end of that song. You’ve got the old school dude and the younger guy who has an old soul approach. I think it’s a really nice trade-off. And then you get to the ‘Hotel California’ part where they play in harmony. That was one of the highlights of the recording sessions for me.“