Dan Zimmermann

Dan Zimmermann was Gamma Ray's drummer between 1997 and 2012 — the fifteen years of the classic line-up and the most stable period in the band's history. Born in 1966, he joined together with Henjo Richter in the rebuilding that produced Somewhere Out in Space (1997), and the two gave the group the stability it had lacked in the previous decade. His playing has the precision and power German power metal demands, but without the rigidity the genre usually brings with it. Zimmermann works well on continuous double kick, sustains high tempos across eight- and nine-minute tracks and keeps dynamics through the transitions — a quality audible in the long, narrative pieces Kai Hansen writes, where the drums must mark sections without breaking the flow. He recorded Somewhere Out in Space (1997), Power Plant (1999), No World Order (2001), Majestic (2005), Land of the Free II (2007) and To the Metal! (2010). He is also a founding member of Freedom Call, the band he assembled with Chris Bay and which ran in parallel throughout his time in Gamma Ray. It was precisely to devote himself to it that he left Hansen's group in 2012, ending one of the longest partnerships in German power metal.