Helloween Bassist Warns Bands About Getting Used by the Internet

Legacy acts have something special on newer bands besides age: experience. Bands that have been around multiple decades often marvel at the technological advances of today and the drastic change in music marketing. While some older bands are reluctant to get on the social networking bandwagon, others adopted early, staking claim to new fans and exciting old ones. The key, at least for Helloween, is to not get bogged down in the endless cycle of information.

"It's like you have to try to use it for yourself, you have to try to use what you need," Markus Grosskopf of Helloween tells Noisecreep. While the bassist agrees it's easy for all of us to get sucked in online, perspective is key.

"It's not easy sometimes because it's also so much crap going down and through this media," Grosskopf continues. "You have to use it, and you have to use what you really need, otherwise it [will make] you crazy I guess. If you know what you need, take just what you need and leave the other stuff beside you, otherwise you're going [to go] crazy. It's just like too big, too much, too heavy. Don't let it use you. That's the way I would take it and that's the way it's working for us."

Grosskopf reflects on Helloween's history with a warm fondness, proud of how far the band has come since forming in 1984. Thinking back to the days of vinyl, there is amazement at having a time and number limit on songs. While Grosskopf likes today's recording options better, he does admit it gets tedious creating songs for several different releases of the same basic album.

"Nowadays, because [of] the Internet you need some extra bonus tracks. There's so much more to feed that the whole scene [it] is different. It's so much more like interactive Internet stuff. [In the past], we did the record, we had a couple of interviews, we had a couple of magazines, a couple of TV shows and that was it. Today it's just such a massive amount of all those Internet magazines and stations."

The members of Helloween are actively working on an album of new material and already have some songs written. The band hopes to enter the recording studio soon. No release date has been announced.