- Hi, Drago! Congratulation to Pantommind with the selection among the participants on Bulgarian Eurovision National Selection, why did you take the decision to apply for a participation?
- Thank you. If I have to be honest, the first decision was…just for fun, heheh

- Have you watched Eurovision Song Contest in past years, any personal favourites you have?
- Yeah - damn fuckin' Lordi of course :)

- Do you think that win of Lordi can bring more rock bands to the competition?
- Lordi's win certainly garnered a large amount of publicity for the more extreme styles of Rock that are out there. If that opens up more opportunities for bands like Pantommind, who aren't exactly mainstream, it will be a positive trend not only for the artists, but to new listeners as well. Perhaps the overall selection process will be/has become more open-minded, I mean Bulgarian ProgMetal? Who'd have known. :)

- What is your aim in Bulgarian preselection? Are you there to win, or may be just to promote your album?
- Absolutely we are in this to win, but also consider it to be an invaluable opportunity to promote not only our album, but our style of music in general.

- How can you describe your entry "Days of Old"?
- It is a powerful song… Heavy but accessible, memorably melodic, intelligent. Our guest female vocalist on this song compliments Tony's voice amazingly well. There is a sample of the song at our MySpace site

- Can you describe your cooperation with Colleen Gray?
- Colleen is an incredible artist/ songwriter/ singer…we're so proud to know her and work with her. She recorded her vocal parts on "Days of Old" at her home studio in San Diego, CA after learning the song from pilot tracks our singer Tony had recorded. After sending us the raw vocal recordings, we mixed them in with Tony's parts and the music.

- Will she take part in Bulgarian preselection as well?
- I wish there will be some possibility for her to perform with us after the first round, should we move forward. Unfortunately, other commitments inhibit her being able to come out from the US for the first round on such short notice. Now ,we will perform "Days" with a guest female singer from Bulgaria. Her name is Daniela and she is DAMN good too :) !!!

- Progressive metal style is very difficult to fit in 3 minutes, did you manage to find a solution to that?
- Most Progressive Metal packs more in three minutes than 5 or 6 Pop songs combined, so we concentrated more on a "standard" song structure than writing this one as an Epic. We succeeded in combining Prog Elements with a shortened time format and are very proud of the end result. The full version of the song will be available on our upcoming cd, "Lunasense".

- Do you think that besides good song it is also very imporant to have good show presentation at Eurovision? Are you planning something different in your performance?
- Absolutely yes, show presentation is extremely important. It's one thing to play a great song, it's another thing entirely to play a great song greatly. Our intent is to leave a lasting impression with the judges, not only for the great song, but also for the musicianship behind it.

- What statement do you support: "There is need to bring more rock to Eurovision" or "Rock musicians should stay clear of the contest, perhaps organizing own rock contest"?
- It definitely won't hurt Eurovision to bring more rock to the contest. Good music is good music… regardless of the genre.

- Have you heard about unofficial online Heavy Metal Eurovision competition run by our site?  We had Pantommind song "Shade of Fate" taking part in 4th edition of the contest.
- Yeah, we know about it. You know,in the I-Net there aren't too many bands named "Pantommind", so it is easy to find out :)

- Can you describe shortly what is Pantommind, your music and lyrical styles?
- We re an ordinary progressive-metal band. Is this short enough :) ???

- Describe us your upcoming album "Lunasense"? Will it be different from your previous material?
- We'll keep the same style you are familiar with from "Shade Of Fate", all 9 songs and 2 instrumentals are direct and terse, maybe a bit heavier and minor in tone but hopefully, as melodious and catchy as previous ones.
There will be some guest musicians on our new album - Colleen Gray and our ex-guitar player "Floyd" Rossen - he has a couple of fantastic solos there .You may be sure - "Lunasense" will rock you!

- Any release information already available? Label, date?
- Nope, the recording is still in progress , soon we will start some European and US labels negotiations.

- Do you think it is possible to create metal music and live on the income from it? Do you work on your other professions as well, or you're only working in the band?
- With the rise of such bands as Evanescense and Dragonforce, the possibility of making a living from music is starting to become a reality more often than in the past for bands of our style(s). As for now, we all also have "day" jobs.

- Today some people say about crisis of most of the metal genres, that there is absolutely no new developments, tendencies? Do you think it is correct, and do you think there should new changes in the style to develop it?
- The problem isn't that there are no new developing tendencies, it's that there are so many sub-genres. We've seen a rise in the number of up and coming female fronted bands.

- What do you think about current heavy metal scene in Bulgaria? Any promising new bands appearing or Bulgarians rely on experienced bands?
- For some time there has been an awakening on the Bulgarian music stage… The production quality is much better and this attracts the attention of foreign labels. More and more bands sign contracts with international labels. There are many heavy, black, core metal bands and one or two progressive, hahaha…

- Can you name your music influences - bands and persons?
- First of all - BLACK SABBATH,they're the greatest band ever! Also Fates Warning, Queensryche, Crimson Glory, Savatage, Psychotic Waltz, Devon Graves, Dio and the Mountain King Jon Oliva.

- What are your top 3 world albums of 2006 in heavy metal or in any genre?
- Andromeda's Chimera, Vanden Plas - Christ 0, Adagio - Dominate

- If you were invited by some rich producer to form own project and you were given unlimited money for expenses and full freedom of creativity. What will be the music you record, will it be similar to Pantommind? And whom from international musicians you could invite as guests to this project?
- The music will be P-U-U-U-URE PANTOMMIND sounding, you can bet on it! We will send invite to Colleen Gray, Ray Alder, Jon Oliva and Bjork. Then will bring the whole Dream Theater to record the stuff, ahahah, this is a joke, of course. Hhm…or may be not?!

- And our final question: can you name any metal bands coming from CIS (ex-USSR) countries?
- ARIA - it's heavy , melodic , catchy , heavy (yea again) with great vocals (the new guy Berkut is as good as Kipelov at least) and CHERNIY COFFEE.

- Thank you a lot for the interview, good luck with preselection, hopefully you will rock Europe!