Vanden Plas Guitarist Stephan Lill Talks "Live & Immortal"
The band is set to release a full concert audio and video performance from a "Chronicles of the Immortals" show.
Hello and thanks for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. Live albums are an important part of any decent music collection. Some artists do them better than others, and a few can even transcend their studio work with the perfect live release (Peter Frampton, Cheap Trick, etc.).
In this week’s issue, I’m discussing a live album and video release coming soon from a band that doesn’t get to play live as often as fans would like. German progressive metal masters Vanden Plas are the subject of this week’s MRC.
Let’s get to that story. If it seems a little shorter than usual this week, please accept my apologies. I came down with COVID a few days after the interview and as I write this, I’m still fighting off the last of it.
German progressive metal maestros Vanden Plas have always done things at a glacial pace — at least on the surface. The shortest period of time between studio album releases is two years, but the band more typically takes three or four years between albums. (Note: this doesn’t count the second parts of The Chronicles of the Immortals or The Ghost Xperiment, both of which were released as separate albums.)
And the band doesn’t tour nearly as often as the five musicians and their fans would like. That owes to the flurry of activity going on under the surface — the group’s work in musical theater, a time-consuming endeavor that pays the bills and allows Vanden Plas to make the kind of uncommercial-yet-brilliant progressive metal at which it excels.
“As musicians, you also have to get something in your refrigerator. You go to the gasoline station and all these things and so you have to earn some money,” guitarist Stephan Lill said. “Or you are a poor musician who just lives for the music and for the applause.”
The band has done Jesus Christ, Superstar, Chess, Evita, Little Shop of Horrors, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and others, including some based on their own albums.
Lill said the time spent between starting to work on a musical production and opening night takes about two years. That’s time spent writing music and lyrics, making changes based on story and direction, transposing keys to fit the voices of the actors cast in the roles, rewriting lyrics throughout the entire production if anything in the story changes or gets moved around, adding or subtracting parts, and so on. It’s a lot of work just to get ready for opening night and then there’s the full production run, playing the show every night.
So it’s no surprise that Vanden Plas doesn’t get to tour often, or that the band’s upcoming live release, Live & Immortal, set to drop on Aug. 12 on Frontiers Music, was originally recorded on Dec. 30, 2016.
“We had so much to do in between,” Lill said. “It’s the same problem we had with the recording of the ProgPower CD (The Seraphic Live Works). I think the ProgPower CD was recorded in 2011 and released in 2016 or 2017. It was also like five years or six years in between.”
Between the recording of the show and the upcoming release of Live & Immortal, Vanden Plas has since released both volumes of The Ghost Xperiment album, as well as a comprehensive, 11-disc box set of Vanden Plas studio recordings, The Epic Works 1991-2015. This is in addition to the band’s normal theater duties.
Vanden Plas’ introduction to earning a living in the theater started in the 1990s and came by sheer chance.
“The conductor (of Jesus Christ, Superstar) was searching a band for the theater,” Lill said. “And he heard us, and he said, ‘I want this band. I want this sound. Can you play with an orchestra?’ We never did before. We never played with a conductor, but the answer was, ‘For sure. Yes, we can.’”
Live & Immortal is a special release for Vanden Plas fans, because unlike The Seraphic Live Works, the new live set is an entire show, encompassing more than an hour and 40 minutes’ worth of scorching hot prog metal goodness. As one would expect from the time the show was recorded, it leans heavily on both volumes of the band’s epic work, The Chronicles of the Immortals, which was based on a theater adaptation of a vampire novel series by German author Wolfgang Hohlbein.
The development of those two volumes was a circuitous one. Vanden Plas lead singer and primary lyricist Andy Kuntz connected with Hohlbein and a theater adaptation for the vampire books, Blutnacht, was crafted. The band created The Chronicles of the Immortals for the theater production, and in so doing, had to remove all of the solos and progressive elements they’d written, in order to simplify it for the stage.
After the musical began its run, fans started asking the band to release the music as an album. Vanden Plas went back into their home studios, rebuilt the songs with all of the parts they’d taken out, and came up with the two volumes of The Chronicles of the Immortals, releasing them separately.
Live & Immortal includes five songs from the two Chronicles releases, three more each from The Seraphic Clockwork (2010) and Far Off Grace (1999), two from Christ 0 (2006), and one each from Beyond Daylight (2002) — my personal favorite by the band — and Colour Temple (1994). Some of the treats in the setlist include “Scarlet Flower Fields” from Beyond Daylight, which was not previously in the band’s touring setlist, and the same with “The Final Murder” from The Seraphic Clockwork.
“(The setlist) was maybe the only thing which was the special thing for this concert, because we knew that we should play a lot of songs from the Immortal CDs, because they were present at this time,” Lill said. “For me, (‘Scarlet Flower Fields’) is also one of my favorite songs, because it has a lot of variation and deep feeling, and somehow a huge chorus. And so, we decided to play that song, which is not that easy. That was kind of a surprise when we rehearsed it.”
One staple of the band’s that was dropped for the show was “Rainmaker,” which the band had played live since 1997. Lill said he felt that was a song the band didn’t play particularly well live and although he likes the song, he felt it was a good time to drop it from the setlist.
The Live & Immortal video was professionally shot with multiple cameras by Oliver Barth, who had previously filmed some of Vanden Plas’ music videos. The band — Lill, Kuntz, drummer Andreas Lill (Stephan’s brother), keyboardist Günter Werno, and bassist Torsten Reichert — rip through the setlist to an appreciative crowd in Kaserslautern, Germany, the band’s hometown.
Playing in their hometown, no doubt in front of many friends and family, gives the show an intimate feel when watching the video.
Vanden Plas sounds tight and clean throughout Live & Immortal, bringing the symphonic and progressive elements to the forefront of their brand of German heavy metal. The video shows how much fun these musicians — and their audience — are having, particularly Andreas Lill behind the drum kit. The camera placement is excellent for catching all of the band’s virtuosity, and the mix doesn’t bury anyone, allowing Kuntz’s distinctive vocals to shine, while giving each musician his own space.
Fans of Vanden Plas will find a lot to love with this excellent live document of the band — soaring guitar solos, intricate keyboard runs, a driving and aggressive rhythm provided by Andreas and Torsten, and Kuntz’s outstanding vocal performance.
Live & Immortal is available on double-CD, special gold vinyl double-LP, DVD, and Blu Ray. You can preorder now on Amazon or the Frontier Music online shop.
For those who want a sneak peek or who aren’t familiar with Vanden Plas, two singles — “Scarlet Flower Fields” and “Godmaker” — are available on the digital streaming services and on YouTube. I recommend this release for any fan of melodic rock or progressive metal.
Tracklist:
CD 1:
Vision 1ne (Chronicles I)
Godmaker (Chronicles I)
Into the Sun (Far Off Grace)
Frequency (The Seraphic Clockwork)
Scarlet Flower Fields (Beyond Daylight)
Holes in the Sky (The Seraphic Clockwork)
I Can See (Far Off Grace)
Diabolica Comedia (Chronicles II)
Stone Roses Edge (Chronicles II)
CD 2:
How Many Tears (Colour Temple)
The Last Fight (Chronicles II)
Iodic Rain (Far Off Grace)
The Final Murder (The Seraphic Clockwork)
Christ 0 (Christ 0)
Postcard to God (Christ 0)
Note: The DVD and Blu Ray have the same tracklist but all on one disc.
Learn more about Vanden Plas on their Facebook page or at VandenPlas.de.
To see the entire interview with Stephan Lill, check out the video below or download Episode 72 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast on any major podcast platform (Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, Goodpods, Podchaser, etc.). In addition to talking about the story of this new live album, Stephan talked about his background, the first rock record he bought at a flea market, how Vanden Plas can make the music it loves and yet make a living, why it’s difficult for the band to find time to tour, what the band’s got coming up next, and much more.
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