When I decided to start this site, it i got the idea to use this page as a kind of musical diary - not just to announce news, but also to formulate thoughts that I was never asked in interviews. Today I want to say something about originality:
Some people like my music, some hate it, but none of them ever said that "Ice Ages" (or "Summoning" or "Die Verbannen Kinder Evas") was unoriginal music. The ironic thing is that I never tried to be original or wanted to do something different from the mainstream.
Every song I ever released should never have intended to sound "different" to the mainstream. For me, the idea of being different from the mainstream was just as much of a limitation as deliberately trying to sound just like mainstream music. For me, wanting to be different has always been just a reversal of the attempt to be like the mainstream - in both cases, one is influenced by the mainstream, either directly or indirectly.
What counts for me is the authenticity of a music. For me, someone who wants to make wholehearted commercial music is much better than someone who desperately wants to produce something against his own preferences just to be "original". What counts is the enthusiasm for the music and not how the music finally sounds. The enemy of any good music is the attempt to sound how other people want the music to sound.
Of course, I like it when my music pleases others, but it's never the line for me as my music has to sound. If it arrives well with people, it is nice, if not I would keep making the music i do like before.