Tobias Sammet

Tobias Sammet — born in Germany in 1977 — is a singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, founder of Edguy and creator of Avantasia. He put Edguy together with schoolmates in Fulda while still a teenager and turned what was a boys' project into one of the central bands of German power metal in the generation after Helloween and Gamma Ray. He wrote practically the entire repertoire across twelve albums, from Kingdom of Madness (1997) to Monuments (2017), including the risky turn of Rocket Ride (2006), on which the band traded epic power metal for straight hard rock — a decision that split the audience and showed Sammet would not settle for repeating a formula. Avantasia is his greater and most improbable work. Conceived in 2001 as a rock opera with dozens of guest vocalists from different bands, orchestra, choir and continuous narrative, the project seemed too excessive to work — and became bigger than Edguy, with ten records and world tours on which Sammet brings to the stage a rotating cast of singers from distinct generations and genres. His importance lies precisely there: he created a format that did not exist. Avantasia is not a band with guests, it is an operatic structure applied to metal, sustained by his own composition and by a rare capacity to write for other people's voices — each track conceived for the specific timbre of whoever will sing it.