UNISONIC TRIVIA
Trivia
The first thing Unisonic ever put on sale contains a recording made in Japan. The news page on the band's own site describes the mini album Ignition, released in January 2012, as carrying a live version of Helloween's I Want Out; Blabbermouth dates that recording to 15 October the previous year, at the Loud Park festival at Saitama Super Arena. The first document of Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen playing a Helloween song in the same band, in other words, came out of Japan.
The debut album came out nine days early in Japan. Blabbermouth reported in February 2012 that Unisonic was due on 30 March through earMUSIC / Edel, nine days earlier in Japan, and the news page on the band's own site sets the two dates side by side: 30 March, Japan 21 March. The formats differed as well. Europe and the rest of the world got a jewel case, a limited Mediabook with an extended booklet and a bonus track, and a limited vinyl-and-CD package; Japan got a jewel case and a limited digipack with a bonus track exclusive to that market.
Michael Kiske went back on stage after seventeen years. Blabbermouth records Unisonic's debut concert as taking place on 5 June 2010 at the Live Music Hall in Mörlenbach, Germany, and describes it as Kiske's first live appearance in seventeen years; Souls Alive was played in public for the first time that night. Since parting with Helloween in late 1993 he had sung on solo albums and as a guest, but had not been part of a real band.
Unisonic grew out of another project entirely: Place Vendome. Blabbermouth records that while working on it Michael Kiske found two musical soulmates in Dennis Ward and Kosta Zafiriou, and that after two Place Vendome albums the three decided to form a band of their own. Marquee / Avalon's Japanese notes explain what Place Vendome was — a 2005 idea of Frontiers Records, putting Kiske out front with members of Pink Cream 69 behind him. Those two players simply carried on as Unisonic's rhythm section.
Kai Hansen joined because he asked to. In the account Blabbermouth published in March 2011, Michael Kiske explained that after enjoying Unisonic's first shows in the summer of 2010 he had agreed to the short Avantasia world tour — and that being on stage with Kai was different from the rest of it: they felt the magic again at once and both realised they wanted to be in a band together. Kai was drawn to the open musical concept of Unisonic and eventually asked whether he could join. Kiske put it to his bandmates, who were all for it.
It was Dennis Ward who put Mandy Meyer forward for the guitar seat. Blabbermouth notes that Ward had previously produced a record for Krokus, and that he suggested Meyer as the perfect fit for the vacancy. Meyer is a Swiss guitarist whose earlier work includes Asia, Gotthard and Krokus. The band's bassist being a producer as well shows directly in how the line-up was assembled.
In November 2012 Michael Kiske lost his voice partway through a show in Hamburg. Blabbermouth reported that he had been unwell for days, that his voice gave out on stage, and that Kai Hansen took over lead vocals for the rest of the night so the band could finish their set — the two men who had both sung for Helloween swapping roles in front of an audience. Two German dates as special guest to Gotthard were cancelled, and doctors told him to rest until he had recovered.
In November 2016 Helloween announced that Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske were returning. As BARKS reported, the plan was a 2017 world tour called Pumpkins United with a seven-man line-up including them both. In the comment BARKS carried, Kiske drew a distinction: singing Helloween songs as Unisonic had been purely a look back, whereas playing with the original line-up and the band's current singer Andi Deris would be something extraordinary. What the two of them restarted in Unisonic ended by carrying them back to the band they came from.
Ignition, the first thing the band ever offered for sale, reached Japanese shops two days ahead of everywhere else. Marquee / Avalon list the Japanese edition as a debut EP issued on 25 January 2012, catalogue number MICP 40012, priced at 1,650 yen and holding four tracks: Unisonic, My Sanctuary, a demo version of Souls Alive and a live I Want Out. The news page on the band's own site announced the same release as hitting stores on 27 January.
The second album, Light Of Dawn, also appeared in Japan first. Marquee / Avalon date the Japanese edition to 23 July 2014, catalogue number MICP 11170, priced at 2,860 yen, with thirteen tracks plus one bonus track. Blabbermouth had announced in June that the record was due on 1 August in Europe and 12 August in the United States, which puts the Japanese edition nine days ahead of Europe and twenty days ahead of America. The EP that preceded it, For The Kingdom, ran the same way: 21 May 2014 in Japan against 23 May in Europe.
The Japanese edition of the live album Live In Wacken came out on 19 July 2017 as a CD and DVD set, catalogue number MIZP-60050, priced at 3,520 yen, with We Rise added to the CD as a bonus track. The running order Marquee / Avalon print shows that the thirteen CD tracks are not all the band's own: A Little Time and March Of Time are Helloween songs. They are a record of Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen playing material from their own years in that band, on one stage.
The first concert the band played as a five-piece, with Kai Hansen in the line-up, took place in Japan. Marquee / Avalon relate that the Loud Park 11 booking was confirmed while work on the debut album was under way, and that the band broke off the recording to travel. The set they played was built from three things: new songs intended for the album, songs from Place Vendome, the project Unisonic grew out of, and Helloween material from the years Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen were both in that band.
The invitation to Kai Hansen was extended after the tour the two men shared had passed through Japan. Marquee / Avalon relate that Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen both went out on Tobias Sammet's Avantasia tour in the winter of 2010, and that Kiske approached Hansen about joining Unisonic after that tour had visited Japan. In the Metal Forces interview Blabbermouth carried in April 2012, Kiske himself lists Tokyo among the places the tour took them.
Both of Unisonic's Japanese tours were billed jointly with another band. Marquee / Avalon record that the run after the debut album was coupled with Gotthard, and the run after the second album, Light Of Dawn, was coupled with Edguy. Gotthard is a band the guitarist Mandy Meyer once belonged to, and Dennis Ward and Kosta Zafiriou are the rhythm section of Pink Cream 69, so the connections inside the line-up show directly in how the shows were put together.
The Japanese edition of the debut album Unisonic was issued on 21 March 2012, catalogue number MICP 11040, priced at 2,828 yen. The running order Marquee / Avalon print has twelve tracks, from Unisonic through to No One Ever Sees Me, with one bonus track on top. Since the European and rest-of-world editions were dated 30 March, the Japanese pressing arrived nine days early, and a limited digipack carrying a bonus track exclusive to that market was prepared alongside it.
Loud Park 11, the festival Unisonic played, was held on 15 October 2011 at Saitama Super Arena. Reporting in August of that year, BARKS noted that the sixth edition ran for a single day and that Limp Bizkit were the headliners. The bill for the day also carried Whitesnake, Arch Enemy, The Darkness, Trivium, Krokus, Stryper and Amaranthe. BARKS introduced Unisonic to its readers as the band Kai Hansen had just joined.
The band's first music video had its worldwide premiere at 6pm CET on 12 January 2012, on earMUSIC's YouTube channel. According to the news page on the band's own site the song was Unisonic and the film is a band performance shot in a magnificent ballroom in Heidelberg, Germany. The same announcement billed the occasion as Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen joining forces again for the first time in twenty-three years.
Ignition was the band's first commercial release, and a seven-inch of the same song was prepared for the day it appeared. The news page on the band's own site describes what reached shops on 27 January: an individually numbered, strictly limited coloured picture vinyl single of Unisonic. The EP itself carried that song plus another brand new track, a demo version, and the live recording of I Want Out.
Around the release of the debut album Unisonic toured South America and Mexico with Gotthard as special guest. The announcement on the band's own site lists five dates in 2012: 12 May at Teatro Flores in Buenos Aires, 14 May in Antofagasta, 16 May at Teatro Caupolicán in Santiago, 18 May at HSBC Hall in São Paulo and 20 May at Circo Volador in Mexico City. The official live schedule shows the same pairing again that October, for three Spanish shows in Barcelona, Madrid and Pamplona.
Three European festivals were the first Unisonic confirmed. The band's own site announced Masters Of Rock in Vizovice, Czech Republic on 12 July 2012 and the Rock Hard Festival in Germany on 27 May of the same year, and a separate item added Gods Of Metal in Milan, Italy on 21 June. The official live schedule gives Gelsenkirchen as the town for the Rock Hard date.
Unisonic's official fan club was called Souls Alive. The news page on the band's own site announced its launch and described it as a fan camp made by fans for fans. Souls Alive is also a song title: according to Blabbermouth it was the song first played in public at the band's debut concert on 5 June 2010. The first piece the band ever performed gave its name to the place their audience gathered.
For the seventeen years after he left Helloween, Michael Kiske went on singing but did not appear on stage. Marquee / Avalon relate that he kept making solo albums and lent his voice as a guest to records by Tobias Sammet's Avantasia, Masterplan and Gamma Ray — and that all the same he never stood on a stage after leaving Helloween. Audiences could hear him on record for years without any chance of seeing him play.
What drew the most attention in the announcement of Unisonic's formation was a single line: this band would play live. As Marquee / Avalon put it, that amounted to a declaration that Michael Kiske would sing on a stage for the first time since leaving Helloween. The band duly played a handful of shows in 2010, built around festival appearances at Sweden Rock Festival and Masters Of Rock, and their set included two Helloween songs, A Little Time and Kids Of The Century.
Unisonic was announced as a four-piece. Marquee / Avalon relate that five years after Place Vendome the band was unveiled with Michael Kiske, the Pink Cream 69 rhythm section of Dennis Ward and Kosta Zafiriou, and Mandy Meyer, a guitarist whose earlier work included Asia, Katmandu and Gotthard. It became a five-piece when Kai Hansen joined in the early part of 2011, a date Blabbermouth gives as early 2011.
The first time Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen played a Keeper-era Helloween song together again was not on a Unisonic stage but on a Gamma Ray one. Marquee / Avalon relate that Kiske jumped on stage at a Gamma Ray show in Germany in June 2011 and the two performed Future World. It happened after Hansen had agreed to join Unisonic and before that line-up had played its first concert.
Unisonic announced a deal with earMUSIC / Edel in October 2011. In the comment Blabbermouth carried, Kosta Zafiriou explained that several labels had shown interest and that it was the enthusiasm of Max Vaccaro and his team which convinced the band earMUSIC was the right company for them. The plan set out at that point was a debut EP in January 2012 and a full-length album in the early spring.
Recording for the debut album began at the end of September 2011 at ICP Studios in Brussels, Belgium. Blabbermouth reported that after Kai Hansen joined in early 2011 the band carried on writing, folding his gift for anthemic rock songs into the material they already had. Later articles repeat the same detail: the album was made at ICP Studios in Brussels.
The debut album's cover was created by the graphic artist Martin Häusler. Blabbermouth noted that he was known for work with Meat Loaf, Gotthard, Helloween and Motörhead — and that the same man directed the music video for the song Unisonic. The news page on the band's own site names him in both roles as well, as the artist behind the artwork and as the photographer and director behind the clip.
Kai Hansen joining Unisonic did not affect his position in Gamma Ray. Blabbermouth attached that line to its October 2011 report of the label deal, and repeated it in November 2012 and again in June 2014. He held both bands at once for years after joining, and Unisonic was built on that understanding.
The four live tracks on the For The Kingdom EP all come from one concert. Blabbermouth records that Unisonic, Never Too Late, Star Rider and Souls Alive were previously unreleased live cuts taken from the 2012 edition of the Masters Of Rock festival in the Czech Republic; the live schedule on the band's own site dates that appearance to 12 July 2012 in Vizovice. The EP was produced by Dennis Ward, and its cover art was again the work of Martin Häusler.
Light Of Dawn appeared in four configurations, one of which held a disc found nowhere else. As Blabbermouth set it out, the standard CD carried twelve tracks, the deluxe digipak thirteen, the gatefold double vinyl thirteen plus a download code, and there was a strictly limited box set. The box added a CD of its own titled The Early Demos, holding Souls Alive, I've Tried, Cry Out Loud, The Other Side and No One Ever Sees Me, together with an exclusive seven-inch pairing a karaoke version of Exceptional with a 2012 live recording of We Rise, a T-shirt, six new photographs and a poster.
The North American edition of the debut album came from a different company than the European and Japanese pressings. Blabbermouth gives the date as 22 May 2012, through Armoury Records, an Eagle Rock imprint — nearly two months after the European 30 March and the Japanese 21 March. Blabbermouth adds that on that release the bonus live version of I Want Out was carried only by the domestic edition.
Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen were bandmates in Helloween for only a few years. BARKS records that Kiske joined as lead singer in 1986, aged eighteen, so that Hansen could concentrate on guitar; Hansen then left the band in 1989 and went on as the central figure in Gamma Ray, while Kiske stayed until the 1993 tour and left after it. How brief that overlap was is part of why Unisonic drew the attention it did.
Between the Helloween years and Unisonic, Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen worked together exactly twice. In the Metal Forces interview Blabbermouth carried in April 2012, Kiske recalled singing on Gamma Ray's fourth album, Land Of The Free, and Hansen helping out on Kiske's first solo album, Instant Clarity, alongside Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith. They shared no band in those years, but the thread between them was never cut.
Before Kai Hansen joined Unisonic, the idea had run the other way. In the Metal Forces interview Blabbermouth carried in April 2012, Michael Kiske recalled that when the two agreed they wanted to work together again, Hansen first suggested Kiske join Gamma Ray. Kiske did not want to step into a band with twenty years of history behind it. Then, by his account, one of the others pointed out that Unisonic still had only one guitarist, and that settled it.
After Michael Kiske lost his voice in November 2012, two German shows were called off. Blabbermouth reported that the dates on 9 November in Langen and 10 November in Ravensburg, both as special guest to Gotthard, were cancelled, and that the band hoped to be back on the road for Bamberg on 16 November and Munich on 17 November. The report cites the official fan club's own site as its source.
The five members of Unisonic come from clearly separate places. The description Blabbermouth attached to article after article sets it out: Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen are both former Helloween men, Dennis Ward and Kosta Zafiriou come from the German band Pink Cream 69, and Mandy Meyer is a Swiss guitarist who has played with Asia, Gotthard and Krokus. Two German bands and one Swiss player, and that is the whole line-up.