BW&BK; recently hooked up with ELIS bassist Tom Saxer to discuss the band's forthcoming album, Griefshire, the last recorded work of vocalist Sabine Dünser, who suffered a brain hemmorhage on July 7th and passed away the next day. Saxer commented on the band's current state and the aftermath following Dünser's death.

"At the moment everything is going well," Saxer reveals. "We're okay now. I don't know how to explain it, but when it happened we couldn't believe it. It took a few days to realize what had actually happened and then it really hurt us. Recording was finished when Sabine died, only the mixdown wasn't finished. Every song on the album is how it was recorded. It was very hard for Alex (Krull/producer); he couldn't work on the CD for a few days afterwards, which is one of the reasons the album won't hit the stores until November."
"We did think about stopping the band," he adds. "During the first few weeks we thought everything was over. We couldn't see any light on the horizon. When we finally realized the situation we sat down together to discuss what we would do. There was no question that we would release the album. Only making the decision to continue was hard. Even now it's not easy but life goes on and we have to continue. This is what Sabine would want."

With regards to finding a new singer, Saxer say the search is still on.

"We've had a lot of responses - not as much as Nightwish, of course (laughs) - but there are a few singers we've been considering. At this point we haven't decided on anybody. We don't want a replacement for Sabine, we're searching for a new singer who is her own person and she'll be able to sing in her own way. We want to bring the band feeling back, not have a band and a singer, so we're taking our time. It's hard to play the songs without Sabine there, but we have accept things the way they are. It will never be the same and we know that."