|
Sweden's progressive metal stalwarts Evergrey have been busy getting taking their name to new heights in the past few years. Three North American tours, two studio albums and a live DVD/CD have all been very successful for the band. Currently touring the States with In Flames, Metal Coven took the opportunity to talk to them about their new album, "Monday Morning Apocalypse."
Phil: First of all, how is this tour going compared to your previous two U.S. tours?
Tom: This is a bit special since we're touring smaller places; this is a secondary market tour and it gives us an opportunity to visit places where we've never been before and I think it's a great opportunity for Evergrey to play places that we haven't played before and also come back in the Fall and play the bigger cities.
Phil: What's the itinerary for the Fall tour? Headline, support?
Tom: We don't know yet. We're doing so much stuff this Summer right now and also planning a European tour, so we'll see when we have time to squeeze it in, but we're doing this festival thing in Atlanta, so we might try to connect those two things - the tour and Atlanta.
Phil: Speaking of the European tour, what are your expectations for your first Russian show?
Tom: Really we don't have any expectations, ever. (laughs)
Rikard: No. I mean, it's always, when you go to a place for the first time, it's always fun to play, but it's also very cool to see a new place. So mostly, it's going to be cool just because it's Moscow and we get to see what it's like and see how the fans are in Russia.
Phil: Alright, now why did you choose to go with a more straight-forward song writing style for "Monday Morning Apocalypse"?
Tom: It wasn't a conscious choice. It was two and a half years since we had started writing for the "Inner Circle" album and we've done a lot of stuff since then, also the live album and the DVD. Evergrey has been progressing with each and every album towards this, I would say. If you look at the "Recreation Day" album, that is probably as straight-forward as this is, maybe with some small musical passages that we have cut down on this album. The only thing we wanted to do was make an album that we knew would fit extremely well live and that's the only sort of conscious decision we did. We had producers for this album as well, but we wrote the songs before they came into the picture. I think is just where evolution has taken us today.
Phil: Were you more amused or annoyed by people's reactions to your choice of producer? (Sanken Sandqvist)
Tom: That Britney Spears, Def Leppard thing, that was kind of funny, we thought. (laughs) That was a conscious choice to go with those names, we could have only mentioned Rammstein if we wanted… I mean the guy has done tons of Swedish metal productions; we thought it was kind of funny to go with those names. It would have been really obvious to mention Paradise Lost, you know. But Britney Spears gives a kick in the ass. (laughs)
Phil: Hey, maybe a possible touring connection in the future! (laughter)
Tom: Yeah, we wish! (laughter)
Phil: All right, now I know you've spoken a bit about it before, but what was the idea behind the album cover for the new CD?
Tom: Same thing there, really - we wanted to do something that… we don't want to repeat ourselves. We wanted to do something that would stand out in a shelf of two hundred records, so at least you would look at this one, you know. We've gotten a lot of shit for it and that's really what we set out to do. We have done five albums prior to this and nobody ever asked anything about the covers, but for this album, everybody's been asking about the cover, so we won. (laughter)
Phil: Okay, now that you've completed your recording deal with InsideOut Music, are you planning on shopping around or sticking with them for future albums?
Tom: Of course, we would be stupid when we are in a situation where we can choose to not see what the other offers would be. We had the same situation for the last album and we chose to stay with InsideOut since they paid the most money and have always treated us well and as long as they keep doing that and pay as much money as anyone else, I'm sure we're going to stay with them anyways.
Rikard: We've got full freedom writing music, so that's really good for a band to have that freedom, so we'll see, but nothing's decided yet.
Phil: Now tell us a bit about how you were able to do something as unbelievable as writing, recording and releasing "Recreation Day" in a five month period.
Tom: (laughing) That's a long time ago, so I can't even remember. That was a terrible time, to be honest. I was in the studio for nine weeks, day and night, pretty much twenty-four hours a day and just go home to eat dinner, if I was lucky, and then come back, so it was like being at war. I mean, there was mostly for you (Rikard) and Henrik, it was like "okay, now you get the time to sleep for a couple of hours while I do this," then he comes up, "you can sleep now." There was a massive amount of pressure that we don't ever want to relive again. That actually made me not want to listen to the album. I think I didn't actually listen to it for seven months or something like that; I didn't enjoy it at all when it was done, which is quite sad 'cause you're going to have to live this album for two years. So that's not a work situation that we will ever put ourselves in again.
Phil: Alright, last question; how much thought and planning goes into the ideas you put behind the albums, researching for the lyrics and that kind of thing?
Tom: (pauses) Every minute of every day until it's done, pretty much. Evergrey is not a band that writes songs; we don't write twenty songs and throw away eight. It's never been like that. We write ten or twelve or eleven songs that we feel one hundred percent confident about and know that we put our hearts into it and made it as good as possible and… what was the question? (laughs)
Phil: Just how much forethought and planning goes into the lyrical content?
Tom: As much as possible. I mean, we never release or record or write anything half-hearted.
Phil: Okay, thank you very much!
Tom: Thank you, anytime.
|
