Mandy Meyer returns to Krokus

Reunited: Meyer, second right, with Krokus

Guitarist Mandy Meyer has returned to Krokus, the band have confirmed.

He joined the Swiss outfit in 1980 and enjoyed their rise to the peak of fame before leaving in 1983 to pursue other musical projects.

Since then he’s been a member of Asia and Gotthard, among others, and since 2009 he’d been working in Unisonic, featuring Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen of Halloween fame. He went back to Krokus for a spell in 2005 and appeared on their Hellraiser album the following year.

Now he’s officially part of the three-axe lineup, alongside vocalist Marc Storace, guitarists Fernando Von Arb and Mark Kohler, and bassist Chris Bon Rohr. They haven’t yet confirmed a replacement for drummer Freddy Steady, who departed amicably last year.

Meyer says the reunion came about after Von Rohr invited him to guest on a 2011 tour of Japan. “I agreed in a New York minute,” says the guitarist. “We got along great – it was as if time had stood still.

“Everything is much better than before, because these days we know exactly what we’re doing. We are ready for the next major coup.”

Krokus are working on a new album with Meyer, which will be called Dirty Dynamite and is due out in February. Von Rohr describes the material as “pure, dirty, in-your-face hard rock, with a touch of blues.”