Spoony

Spoony — German drummer — was part of At Vance in the classic line-up, the band's most stable and productive period. He was on the records that established the group in the European power metal circuit, made with Oliver Hartmann on vocals: No Escape (1999), Heart of Steel (2000), Dragonchaser (2001) and Only Human (2002). His function carries a demand conventional power metal does not impose. Olaf Lenk's At Vance adapts pieces of classical music — Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart — into a band format, and those scores were not written with a rock pulse in mind. The phrases are of irregular length, the cadences resolve at unexpected points, and there are changes of tempo inherited from the original. The drums have to impose a band's metre on that material without disfiguring it, and without the track losing continuity. In the band's own repertoire the logic returns to the genre's usual: continuous double kick at fast tempo, serving as an engine for galloping riffs and solos alternating between guitar and keyboard.