Vanden Plas

Progressive metal titans Vanden Plas formed in Kaiserslautern, southwest Germany in 1986 and have maintained the same line-up throughout their nearly 40-year career. Steered by vocalist Andy Kuntz, guitarists Stephan and Andreas Lill, bassist Torsten Reichert, and keyboardist Günter Werno, the group launched their career in 1991 with "Keep On Running," recorded as an anthem for the local national league football club FC Kaiserslautern, and followed it up with another sport-themed track in 1994, "Das ist für euch" ("This Is for You All"). Their self-produced debut album arrived that same year, Colour Temple, on which they mined an upfront metal style bolstered by gnarly guitar playing from Andreas Lill, while they veered off in an acoustic direction for the 1996 EP AcCult, which featured surprising covers of Ray Charles's "Georgia on My Mind" and "Kayleigh" by Marillion. They embraced a proggier rock sound for their next theatrical full-length, 1997's critically acclaimed The God Thing, carrying this aesthetic over to their 1999 album Far Off Grace. All of Vanden Plas have been involved in theatre projects and rock musicals alongside their band work, appearing in the likes of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Show, Little Shop of Horrors, and Evita, over the years. They have spent the past two decades putting out an array of metal-adjacent music, from 2010 album The Seraphic Clockwork (2010) to double-album The Ghost Xperiment, comprising 2019 LP Awakening and 2020 LP Illumination. A new live album, Live & Immortal, emerged in 2022.