MASTERPLAN TRIVIA
Trivia
The Japanese edition of Time to Be King carries a bonus track the other editions do not: 'Never Walk Alone'. It is a different song from 'Kisses From You', the digipack bonus, and the track listing Blabbermouth printed places it last, marked as the Japanese addition.
Masterplan begins with Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch being dismissed from Helloween in 2001. The disagreement was over the direction of The Dark Ride, the album Helloween had released in 2000, which had pushed darker and more modern metal elements to the front. The two started a new band the following year.
The debut was recorded before there was a record deal. Blabbermouth reported on 25 February 2002 that the band were starting vocal takes that day and that the album was headed for release through a label yet to be determined. Andy Sneap was producing. The plan at that point was to finish the record in March and then go looking for a deal; Masterplan finally appeared in 2003, on AFM Records.
Jorn Lande announced his departure in May 2006. His last show with the band was on 8 August that year at Lokersefeesten in Belgium. The drummer Uli Kusch left not long afterwards, and Masterplan recorded their third album with a new line-up.
Two accounts of why Lande left stand side by side. The statement the band put out in May 2006 said that as writing for the third album went on the differences became plain: Lande wanted a more melodic path while the rest of the band wanted to go back to the metallic roots of the debut. Lande himself, speaking the following year, said that on the first two records everything had been written by Kusch and Grapow and that his part was to put melodies and words on finished songs; he wanted the writing to become a band matter, and when it was clear that would not change he left. He also said he wanted fewer experimental and modern touches and a more straightforward metal record. Nothing available settles which account to prefer.
PumpKings, from 2017, is Masterplan rebuilding songs from the Helloween albums Grapow played on. Three come from 1991's Pink Bubbles Go Ape, two from 1993's Chameleon, three from 1994's Master of the Rings, one from 1996's The Time of the Oath and two from 2000's The Dark Ride — eleven in all.
'Rise Again', which closes Metalmorphosis, is not new. A single of the same name had appeared on AFM Records early in 2024, and the album carries a reworked version of it. The record is the band's first new material since Novum Initium in 2013, and Frontiers Music released it on 26 June 2026.
The early Masterplan was, in the language of the time, a supergroup. Around Grapow and Kusch from Helloween came the Norwegian singer Jorn Lande, then known for his work in Yngwie Malmsteen's band, and the line-up was completed by Axel Mackenrott on keyboards and Jan S. Eckert on bass.
The self-titled debut was trailed by the single 'Enlighten Me' and, on release in 2003, went straight into charts across Europe. The label's own account has the band building a worldwide following within a matter of months.
After the debut Masterplan went out across Europe with HammerFall. The first time they headlined a tour of their own was the 'Flying Aces' run that followed the second album, Aeronautics.
Live work picked up sharply once Rick Altzi and Jari Kainulainen were in the band. The label's account has Masterplan playing more headline shows and festivals around Novum Initium than at any earlier point in their history — which is what finally produced a concert release from a band that had gone without one for years.
Sixteen songs came out of those 2002 sessions. By Grapow's account at least five of them sat close to the older Helloween and Stratovarius sound, while the rest went in a more modern direction — something like Helloween's The Dark Ride taken a step further. None of them, he said, were good enough to waste as B-sides, so some might end up on an EP or on a second CD.
Uli Kusch put his own departure down to the band no longer inspiring one another, and to the impossibility of making music together once that is gone. He went on to concentrate on a new band, Beautiful Sin.
For the third album, MK II, the singer was Mike DiMeo, formerly of Riot, and the drummer Mike Terrana, who had come through Yngwie Malmsteen's band, Axel Rudi Pell, Metalium and Rage. The new line-up played its first shows as the support act on a Saxon tour of Europe.
Mike DiMeo left exactly one studio album behind him in Masterplan: MK II. He announced his departure in January 2009.
In April 2009 the Dutch magazine Aardschok reported that Jorn Lande had rejoined Masterplan, and the band answered on its own site that the story had not come from them. The same post stated plainly that it was also untrue that Lande had left because of Uli Kusch.
Lande came back to Masterplan for a while on the fourth album, Time to Be King. Speaking about the reunion he said there had never been trouble between them — they had simply decided, professionally, to go their separate ways for a time — and that what makes the pairing worth having is the combination of Masterplan's music with his singing. According to the label, though, this line-up never played live, despite a good many requests.
Time to Be King was released by AFM Records on 21 May 2010 and entered its first-week charts at number 31 in Germany, 15 in Sweden and 45 in Switzerland. The advance single, 'Far From The End Of The World', had appeared on 16 April.
In November 2012 Masterplan announced a new line-up: Rick Altzi, who had come through At Vance, Sandalinas and Thunderstone, on vocals; Jari Kainulainen of Stratovarius, Symfonia and Devil's Train on bass; and Martin 'Marthus' Skaroupka of Cradle of Filth on drums. With Grapow and Axel Mackenrott, those five made the fifth album, Novum Initium.
Masterplan's first concert release was Keep Your Dream aLive, in October 2015. It came as DVD with CD and as Blu-ray with CD, and the video carries a complete show from Masters Of Rock along with footage from Wacken Open Air, the band's Asian tour and ProgPower USA, plus all five of their official music videos. The Masters Of Rock set is what appears on the CD.
PumpKings was widely read as revenge. Grapow rejects that: to him it was a relaxed thing, taking his own songs and putting them in a new costume with new band members. By his account the record slipped by about two years, which is how it came to land at the same moment as Helloween's Pumpkins United reunion tour. Grapow was not part of that tour, and in a 2018 interview he said he does not live in the past.
Grapow joined Helloween at the start of 1989, replacing the founding guitarist Kai Hansen. He had been spotted by the guitarist Michael Weikath, who saw him playing with his own band Rampage in a club in Hamburg and kept the name in mind against the possibility that Hansen would leave. Grapow's first job was to see out the touring for 1988's Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II.
Grapow explains Masterplan's move from their longtime label AFM Records to a worldwide deal with Frontiers Music as a matter of the people involved. Andy Allendörfer, who founded AFM, was a firm supporter of the band and they felt it; he died after their second album. After that the company changed hands and moved, and although Grapow kept being told the band were a priority, he came to feel they were one of a great many. That, he says, is part of why no new material appeared, and he spent those years working in the studio for other bands instead.
The songs on Metalmorphosis were written by the keyboard player Axel Mackenrott and by Grapow, with two guest writers — friends of his, one Slovak and one Swedish. Of the ten sets of lyrics, Grapow wrote nine and Rick Altzi one.
'Through The Storm', from Metalmorphosis, came out of the band's time playing metal cruises. By their own account one of those shows took place on deck in a storm, with freezing wind and heavy seas.