Komodorock.com recently spoke with ex-ANGRA / ex-SHAMAN vocalist Andre Matos. An excerpt from the interview is available below.

Q: Your solo album, Time To Be Free, in my opinion, captures the essence of the freedom that we all need to search for inside of ourselves. How would you best describe the strongest purpose of this album?

Matos: "That is the definition. Time To Be Free is about the inner freedom, which is quite difficult achieve I think. The oriental people know about this better than we do because sometimes you can't care about a situation that you are in and try to find your peace inside yourself, your freedom, especially, and we keep seeing people in this funny world that we live in nowadays where everything is changing so fast. I mean, I grew up in a different time when there was no internet and no cellphones and I have noticed how fast things are moving and also, how many people are actually looking for freedom somewhere else, it's all about money, buying stuff and I think sometimes they forget the basic essence of life. Music is still there and this is the main reason why I play music. Music is still a very powerful tool, a powerful weapon to wake the people up. This was my main purpose with this record, trying to, with the songs and the lyrics, to give people new ways to face life, to feel comfortable and to feel free inside."

Q: Is music your freedom?

Matos: "Music is absolutely my freedom. There is no better thing. When you're on stage, when you're composing, when you're recording, that's where you put your whole soul and I really mean to deliver it when I do it."

Q: I find it interesting that you say you find your freedom in music and whilst you're on stage, composing and recording because so many bands don't have that harmony or the balance and it seems that this is when everything goes wrong and you have constant fighting between the members.

Matos: "Yeah, that is bad. I've been there too. I've been through some split-ups before and I understand it perfectly. When there is no harmony between members you basically cannot create good music and this is one of the main reasons why I split up with my previous bands. Maybe VIPER, my very first band when I was a teenager was because I wanted to continue with musical studies and I didn't have the time to focus on both and I chose to go to university, but with Angra and Shaman it was basically a question of us not having a balance between the members and you cannot pretend that you're creating music. It sounds like crap and when you play live, people notice it, the audience is not stupid and they notice that something is going on and then it appears that bands is just doing it for the money or whatever reason, but this is not the way I live or think and I always try to get better and to be as honest as I can musically. I think that's why sometimes breaking up a band is better than keeping it in a forced situation."

Go to this location for the complete interview.