Sascha Gerstner is a common-sense man: « there are just too many heavy metal bands, everybody thinks he is a guitar player, everybody thinks he is a producer, everybody thinks he is a rock star.” That’s the truth and we needed someone to tell it. Not a shady -quote unquote- journalist like me, no, but a good guy who knows what he talks about. And, honestly, Sascha Gerstner- Helloween’s current guitar player- one of the fathers of the genre who influenced so many (maybe too?) bands, is the right man for the job!

Sascha is actually more than realistic whether it be about the profusion of heavy/ speed metal bands – which does more harm than good to this style of music- or the so-called open-mindedness of the heavy metalheads. Here comes a musician who presents a real out of step speech with what his fellow musicians usually say. This is the proof that it was a judicious choice to take Sascha as a successor to Roland Grapow in 2001, since Helloween is also an out of step band in the heavy/speed metal world.

By the way, in the following interview, Sascha is full of praise for the pumpkin’s current line up, according to him, Michael Weikath (guitar) and Andi Deris (singer) see it as “the most stable line-up they ever have”. Besides, he reminisces his early beginning with the band and the poor state in which he found it when he arrived.

A really interesting interview- thanks to its honesty- which also reveals many details about the new album, 7 Sinners, and which comes back to the way Unarmed was welcomed, a project that grown to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the band and which saw the classics of the latter giving itself original re-interpretations to say the least.