Drummer Phil Ehart, who brought the original Kansas line-up together in 1973, is as so often on tour with his band. Nevertheless, the 65-year-old finds time for a half-hour chat about the current Kansas album "The Prelude Implicit", which heralds the end of a 16-year studio break, before the sound check begins in Wendover/Nevada. It's not just a work of contract fulfilment, on the contrary: the band is fully motivated again - which is why "The Prelude Implicit" can't be classified as a farewell gift, but as the beginning of a new era.

eclipsed: For a long time it seemed that the prospects for a new Kansas studio album were nearing zero. In 2009 you said, "The Kansas Recording Mill is painful because we take everything so seriously." Why did you change your mind now?

The Uriah Heep veteran Mick Box is a humorous person on and off stage. No matter when and where I met or spoke to the musician personally in the last thirty years, he always had time for shakehands and a nice anecdote or two. Even if you criticize his band, he stays cool. Meanwhile he even reacts calmly when his counterpart talks about Ken Hensley, Heep's former mastermind. After all, it's now also a pleasant experience for him when Ken - like last year in Moscow - returns to the stage with his old band for a gig. But it's even more fun for him when he thinks of the early days of hard rock pioneers.

eclipsed: The back catalogue of Uriah Heep is not reissued for the first time. What's different this time?

It's been over 30 years since the little, corpulent man spoke to a German magazine. Not because he has something against the country where he earned his first musical spurs in the early 60s (with the Monarchs), but simply because he doesn't like interviews. Not at all. Getting him in front of the microphone is a real game of patience - with dubious managers who have a kind of exploratory talk on the phone, a catalogue of questions to be submitted, several appointments scheduled at short notice as well as cancelled, long phases of icy silence and then - all of a sudden - an appointment on Monday, 29 August, Culloden Hotel, Belfast. In the five-star golf resort with a panoramic view of the bay of the Northern Irish capital, Van Morrison appears regularly in the ballroom. In front of 350 hardcore fans who are spending a fortune experiencing the "local hero" (taxi driver) in an intimate setting.

The songs were written as hoped by "Bat Out Of Hell" mastermind Jim Steinman. Among them also the opener "Who Needs The Young" which is questionable at least among rock fans. On the interjection that the track is strangely placed in the first place, as it seems more like a musical number, you can feel how the elemental force breaks out of Meat Loaf, which you painfully miss at some points of the album. "This is the first song Jim ever wrote. It was to be recorded first for 'Bat', but did not fit into the songframe. It was clear to me that we had to record the title now and as an introduction to the album. It's a cabaret song, a piece that fits right here in Berlin."

MARILLION - The New Kings (IV): Why Is Nothing Ever True? (3:10)
Album: FEAR - Fuck Everyone And Run (2016)
Label/Distribution: earMUSIC/Edel
www.marillion.com

Politics and prog united in emotionally stirring, wonderfully arranged longtracks - the new album of the British prog legend has it all. Marillion take a clear stand against the steadily growing, unholy power of capital and wrap their "Protestalbum" (Steve Hogarth) in graceful, experimental, stirring songs.

Theodore never thinks while composing about what his listeners expect when they hear his music. "I play on it when I have an idea in my head," says the 24-year-old Greek, "and in these moments it's all about creating atmosphere. I don't like classical pop music like that. My stuff is more theatrical or cinematic. Three minute radio pieces are not for me." "It Is But It's Not" is the cryptic title of the first "real" album of the Athenian prodigy, after it threw the exclusively digital fragment "7" into the world in 2012. "That was a test balloon," explains the bearded man, "to see where my musical significance lies at 20. With my current record I am a big step further, I see it as my first true artistic calling card for the world."

It only takes a few moments until the band DGM is named and the bow to Symphony X is made. "Of course we were proud that their guitarist Michael Romeo played the lead guitar for our new song 'Dogma'", DGM bassist Andrea Arcangeli makes clear. But especially with their meanwhile eighth album "The Passage" the Italian band certainly doesn't bake small rolls anymore. Symphony X are certainly still a great influence, but the songs of guitarist and band boss Simone Mularoni are often very genre-typical, but they can certainly compete with the best tracks of Romero's New Jersey group.

With "Flying To The Stars", the Berlin/Leipzig quintet Coogans Bluff has released a new studio album, which is retro in an excellent and unusual way, but does not swim on the current retro wave.

eclipsed: To fall right into the house with the door: Is the new album "Flying To The Stars" your best album so far? If so, why? If not, why not?

Willi Paschen: I think it's turned out all right. Whether it's the best now, I don't know exactly. I like the others too. The new album is more in the overall context. All band members were involved in writing the songs. This time we also took a different approach by writing almost all the songs in the studio. And not like the records before, when we first worked out the songs and then went into the studio to record the songs. This time we worked out the songs together. That's why it feels like an overall system to us, even if we still have individual songs.