FIREWIND rhythm guitarist and keyboard player Bob Katsionis was interviewed at Sonisphere UK by EspyRock and he spoke about the band's brand new material in which they have ten songs currently being worked upon, and how they are looking to change their sound as well as opening their minds to working with new producers to help them achieve their goal. An excerpt follows:

EspyRock: I know right now you’re working on new material and I’ve been talking to some bands about the control over the creative aspect of music and how important they feel it is to control that side of the music and let the business side of the things be handled by others. One thing that is noticeable with Firewind releases is that you change often from self-producing to bringing someone in to produce but even then you still have a strong hand in that side of things so what do you think brings better results?

Bob Katsionis: "This is actually tricky because we were actually thinking about having someone else come in to take a look at our sound because we want others opinions but Gus and I have a pretty certain idea of what we want to do with the music. Gus lays all the guidelines and I have a lot of technical knowledge, so it is pointless at times to have someone come in and say ‘do this and do that’ when we are pretty sure about what we are doing. I think this is why we have somewhat of an original sound but of course it’s not the most original sound ever like SYSTEM OF A DOWN."

EspyRock: But you can always tell it is Firewind when you hear it.

Bob Katsionis: "Exactly. You always know it is Firewind when it has these riffs and these keyboards and this can only happen if you produce your own band. So now we’re at a turning point that we think maybe we shouldn’t do something that sounds like an Allegiance part four, maybe we should bring in someone else who can say ‘let’s try this and that’ and why not, we’re on our seventh album."

EspyRock: How is the new material coming along that you have been working on?

Bob Katsionis: "It has been coming along well. I can tell you that we have around ten new songs so far which we are working very hard on and we trade files with one another every day. We still don’t know what is going to happen but we know there is going to be a change, whether it has a little more pop or death metal to the sound or whatever. We all have this feeling that we will need to change something and explore what is going on because we had people calling us ‘power metal’, but people don’t know what power metal is. We know what power metal is because we grew up with it, but people just gave us a tag and then others followed. We want to do music in our own style and to do that maybe the arrangements will change or maybe the production will change but whatever happens we will release another good album with good songs."

To access the interview in its entirety, click here.