Although I haven’t had the chance to listen to your first two demos , I’ve heard that there is a more ambient touch to the music, can you give a short introduction to the history of Thunderstorm ?

Well, the first two demos were pretty simple, as far as arrangement and writing are concerned, but were also based on heavy metal. Thunderstorm has laid down the first demo back in 1998, then in 1999 we recorded our second demo, but this time around we were tighter, the changes in the line-up led to an evolution of the band. In 2001, after another big line-up change, we were able to record "Beyond the Dawn" which is our landmark CD to date. Now, after we changed our drummer once again, we are in the studio recording the tracks for our latest release, due this summer.

Now your sound is more into heavy metal but you have this unique atmosphere created by the keyboards, I haven’t listened to too many bands which use the keyboard in this manner at least not in heavy metal from where came this idea?

For "Beyond the Dawn" we wanted to create kind of a Sci-fi atmosphere, we were able to do that with keyboard tracks. The new CD we are recording is packed with keyboards, synths and stuff like that, because of the new sounds you can create. It's very creative to work with keyboards... The only drawback is that we can't play the stuff live (we don't have a keyboard player... YET!)

What is the meaning of the name Thunderstorm, and what is the connection of the name to your music?

The name is so old; it almost lost its initial meaning... Well, we were looking for a powerful name, something to link your thoughts to might, power and loads of bass frequencies :)

What`s the concept behind the cover of your latest CD "Beyond the Dawn”?

Space, the final frontier....

Althought many Romanian bands are playing in Romanian language why did you choose to play in English?

We just wrote the songs like that. It's how we felt the songs should be heard. On our latest record, we will also have some versions in Romanian, again because it felt like certain songs could come across better if we played them that way. Maybe on the next record we will do something in German, I don't know, we're pretty unpredictable....

Do you have contacts outside Romania, like distribution, appearance on heavy metal compilations etc.?

Well, we recorded a Blind Guardian cover song, which was supposed to appear in the Czech Republic, but in the end, it was nothing; we had lots of promises for gigs in Hungary, but none of them became true, so... we are perfectly unknown abroad... Maybe the internet will help us promote our latest record, "Children of Nightfall".

There are some new Heavy metal bands in the Romania Underground; do you see that as a reborn of the interest for heavy metal in Romania?

There are a few heavy metal bands here and I think they're doing a great job; we hope that we can be more than a heavy metal band, we are into other stuff too (power, prog, etc..) and we're trying to combine them with heavy metal. I think that's what separates us from the other bands here in Romania. It most certainly is a revival of underground music.

You use mostly a normal voice for your music, but on the song "The god of hellfire" you used some death metal voices, why?

The song required this type of vocals. It's partly done with a pitch shifter, because our singer cannot sing like that :)

Do you listen to other styles of metal besides heavy metal?

Like I said, we all listen to lots of different styles: I listen to progressive rock, power metal, death, thrash, even black metal, while the guys are into hard rock, speed, etc. We basically listen to everything from AC/DC to Six Feet Under...

Which are the main topics of your lyrics?

Dreams, places beyond this world, ghosts, vampires, life, death, anything we consider to deliver a good story...

Do you often play live, when was your last gig?

Let's put it this way: we're not playing as much as we would like to, but we had a few interesting gigs this year. Our latest gig was in Buzau. And let me tell you, it was one of our best shows, so we can only hope for the best in the future.

Give me an personal favorite 5 bands that you think are best.

1-Iron Maiden
2-Dream Theater
3-Manowar
4-Stratovarius
5-Thunderstorm..... Ha, ha, ha, no, seriously, Queen.

Add something in the end!

I hope we will blast YOUR speakers with our latest record, "Children of Nightfall", which will be one hell of an album with lots of great songs, great graphics, killer sound and I hope we'll see YOU at our shows! Stay heavy!

Interview by Cătălin Carlaonţ