Can a childhood dream come true? Well for Subway To Sally's drummer Simon Michael, his power metal side band Silverlane were awesomely proving it was a band in it's own right!

-Shan Siva

1. Ok, straight to the million dollar question, on the face of the strength of your new album “My Inner Demon”, I’m wondering why Silverlane isn’t a full time band and you’ve quit Subway!

Oh, thanks for the compliment :) No, quitting subway to sally would mean no income of money on the one, and a missing possibility to achieve my creativity on the other hand. I love to play in both bands and they´re both important for me. It´s a long way until you can earn money which a heavy metal band like SILVERLANE. But we´ll see, what the future will bring.

2. So is the band a childhood dream come true given that you started this when you were still at school (I can see you all in 7th grade with dreams of having big hair ha ha!)?

The band´s definetly a real product, not a dream, of our childhood. We founded it in the middle of the 90s, my siblings Chris and Dodo and our schoolfriend Daniel. We were alway working on the songs and the whole band and the result is the record deal with Drakkar.

3. How did you arrive at your successful musical formula of ‘...good melodies with an equally good accompaniment - it works everytime!”?

Well we started composing our own material in 1996 or something. I can still remember, even the years before my brother and me were always jamming and playing our own songs. In 1998 we published our first demo-record, a sencond one in 2000, a third one in 2001 and a fourth in 2005. We developed our style and our skills and I think there are a lot more things to come, even after MY INNER DEMON.

4. Do you or your sister Dodo come from a musical background or are you formally trained at music school cos the standard of everyone in the band seems very high?

Me and my sister went to some kind of music- high school. She learned playing the violin, I learned classical piano for about 12 years. We also get involved with the classical theory of harmonics, music history and stuff... the other bandmates are also well educated. We live in an area, where playing an instrument or playing in a band is quite common and usual for young people.

5. Forgive me for trying to classify your style but sounding a lot like a power metal band to me, the one thing that made Silverlane immediately different was that you didn’t sing about dragons or dwarfs (I must be thinking of Dio right now ha ha) or trolls (like those bloody Scandinavians ha ha) so is that a conscious decision to be really different?

Eventhough we´re doing Power Metal, I don´t think it´s necessary to write only about knights and dragons. I think that´s some kind of absurd sometimes... and it isolates you in your creativity. I wanna be able to write about everything not only about fantays stories or farytales. We wanna do contemporary music and don´t want to fall back into some stereotypes of the 80s.

6. Also, looking at the inspiration of (Palestinian vocalist) Rim Banna and some of the song titles like ‘Kingdom Of Sand’ there seems to be a theme that focusses on the Middle East so can you tell us what’s behind this?

I love world music and especially oriental melodies. I think this applies quite good with rock music and I´m sure we´re gonna do more of that stuff in the future. In "KINGDOM OF SAND" it also works nice with the lyrics. The song´s about the crusades in the middle ages, about religious delision, and it´s set in the desert. So the orientel touch´s just perfect for that story.

7. How important is the theme of diversity to you as musicians and is this reflected in you as people - like, do you know people from other cultures and do you travel a lot?

Yes I travel a lot with Subway, but mainly here in Germany. I got in touch with different cultures, even our hometown Forchheim is affected by a lot of turkish people living there. Subway is also a big influence for me - we use a lot of ancient and oriental instruments. We mix heavy metal with world music. That´s also a inspiration for SILVERLANE, too.

8. Keeping on the theme of diversity, do you feel that Silverlane has found its ‘sound’ in this album or do you see it evolving still some more?

I think "MY INNER DEMON" is a good start for us and also a good direction sign for the future and our style in the future. There are a lot of people who say: "You sound too much like Edguy, too much like Helloween, too much like Gamma Ray.... " and so on, but I don´t care. We just do, what we like. I don´t even own a record of Helloween or Gamma Ray. But I´m sure we will, as every band does, develope and improve our music and our style.

9. What are your plans for touring the album?

We did a tour before the release together with LORDI. We want to play even more tours and festivals, that´s for sure, we´ll see, what comes in the future.

10. Lastly, what’s the meaning of the band’s name?

The meaning is some silver line on the horizon... we just liked the sound of the word, and still do :)