By Martin Popoff
I also had to ask Andre if he knew what the secret was to Royal Hunt's success, what has captured the attention of a market that has awarded them with worldwide catalogue sales of over a million units.
"We're good!" laughs Andre, modestly. "I think we have a little bit something special to offer. Again it's our opinion, but the combination of our backgrounds creates something different. The most unusual thing is that I write most of the songs and I'm a keyboard player. In most other rock bands, the guitar player is very much up-front and that creates a different atmosphere. So the keyboards are probably more predominant. And Jacob, our guitar player is very much into Michael Schenker, Dokken, and personally I'm into older progressive stuff like Rush, Yes, Kansas. And Steen, the bass player, is very much into Queensryche and Saga. So everybody is bringing these different pieces and it creates a different picture."
In closing Andre maps out the next few months for the band. "We start the tour somewhere in the middle of September and of course we are concentrating on Europe, Japan, Korea and Russia. We do have plans to tour here with some other bands. We're trying to find a partner. I've heard some talk about Savatage; maybe we'll do something with them in North and South America. It's pretty hard, because hard rock in the States is still a very, very underground thing. It's very hard to tour, but this time we are dedicated to the cause (laughs)."