Evergrey could be called the thinking-man's Swedish metal band. Its concept albums unflinchingly explore the dark side of the human psyche, such as its 2004 record "The Inner Circle," which delved into the mind of a ficticious man who leaves his life behind to join a religious cult. Vocalist/guitarist Tom S. Englund, guitarist Henrik Danhage, bassist Michael Hakansson, keyboardist Rikard Zander and drummer Jonas Ekdahl continue forging a musical path with music that is shedding its progressive skin for a tighter sound that still showcases their technical skills as musicians.
After an absence of 18 months, Evergrey is coming to America this May with In Flames, Nevermore and Throwdown to support its new album, "Monday Morning Apocalypse." It arrived in stores April 4. Danhage candidly discussed the making of the record with Blistering.com after fielding an unexpected phone call from us.
Blistering: How would you say "Monday Morning Apocalypse" differs from Evergrey's previous albums? Henrik Danhage: I think it's different, just as much as every album has [been as] the previous one. It was two-and-a-half years since we recorded "Inner Circle," so of course a lot of things have happened both in our personal lives and with the band . . . I think that we have grown, and I think this album is better on focusing more on the essence of Evergrey, which always have been songs, and the producer stepping in as well, and fighting for what he thought was the core of the song, was real interesting, and I think that is probably the biggest difference from the previous ones, that all the songs are just more focused.
Blistering: Your previous albums have usually had a concept behind them. How would you describe the concept for this one? Danhage: Well, it's not a concept in the sense like "Inner Circle" or "In Search of Truth." It's more of, little things have happened. It [has] very sad and dark subjects, but it's not any storyline going on there like Tom likes to do. One of the reasons was that we wanted every song to stand for itself, and at the same time, we decided that we wanted to make a really quick album. We didn't want to fuck around too much, so I think that's one of the reasons as well; it's easier to write 12 little [songs] instead of a whole big story and maybe going into some research and all that.
Blistering: So you decided not to go with a concept format because you didn't want to spend a lot of time in the studio? Danhage: Yeah. And the time that we had during the writing process, we didn't want to lose Tom for a couple of hours every day, because he had to write lyrics . . . to make a whole album together as a story, I think it demands a lot of the writer, and we really didn't want to do that. It's just as [much] work as writing the actual songs.
Blistering: Was it refreshing to work in a different format instead of being limited to a concept? Danhage: I think at some point, because . . . something that happened that week in the studio or last night or whatever, some of it's really inspiring, and [you can] write about that instead of being stuck with a story. I think it was really fresh.
Blistering: What is the idea behind the album's cover art, with the five of you in the police lineup? Danhage: The whole idea of that was to have journalists like you ask that question [laughs]. We've been doing press for a month now, and every single one of you guys have been asking that question. And, we were discussing covers and we were doing a lot of covers with a lot of details, and, you know, always having something to do with the storyline going on in the albums. We [were] thinking, "What will make people react when they walk into a record store," you know what I mean? If you only think about metal, it's at least five heavy metal albums coming out every day, and then you can see all the pop and hip-hop and all the other crap coming out as well. It's over 100 CDs coming out every day, and in order to reach out and stand out in a record store, you have to do something different, and this is definitely a CD that people will pick up and look at, because it looks very different.
Blistering: I don't know why, but when I looked at it, maybe because all of you are in what looks like tuxedo outfits without the jackets, I got the idea that it was five guys in a wedding party that got busted for unruly behavior. Danhage: Yeah, it could be that way. You could look at it [as something] kind of funny, you know [laughs], just like you said. It's waking up in an apocalypse from a really good night. It wouldn't be the first time that happened to five guys that are out partying, you know. But on the other hand, it's just, we wanted to do something different that felt fresh.
Blistering: Mattias Noren has done your artwork previously. Did he do this one as well? Danhage: Yes . . . We have really good communication with him, and I think that, it just works really good, because now, he knows what we want, even though we always order complete[ly] different covers every time. He knows what we want, and it's very easy instead of trying to use a new guy and not know the outcome of it, so yeah, we used him this time as well . . . we were very happy with what he had done.
Blistering: There were two producers you worked with for this album? Danhage: I would call them a team, you know: It was a team of a producer and a mixing guy, a sound engineer. They got a lot of stuff together, and they are huge here in Sweden, I think they've done like 60 productions or something like that . . . It was really fresh, [working] with a producer, and then we went up to Stockholm to mix the album, and then the other guy came in as well, like another member. So we were a team of the band, those two guys and assistants. We were eight guys in total working on this album. Carina, Tom's wife, [did some singing].
Blistering: What's the name of the producer and the mixer? Danhage: The name of the producer is Sanken Sanquist, and the mixing guy is Stephan Glaumann.
Blistering: When "The Inner Circle" came out, you guys were self-producing your records at that point, and Tom noted in an interview that he felt you guys would continue to not use an outside producer. Why did you decide to use one after all on this record? Danhage: I think that at that time, I think that we spent five-and-a-half months in the studio recording "Inner Circle," which is stupid and crazy. I mean, looking back, it was really, really hard staying focused and keeping things fresh for five months. It's impossible. We wanted to just concentrate on mainly the songs, writing a bunch of good songs, getting them onto tape and just let some other guy deal with all the bullshit of sounds and computers going down and all that so we can just [do what] we're doing instead of just spending time on things that [don't have] anything to do with music; at least creating music, you know—editing drums and all that, we just left that to other people . . . We wanted to do something new. We were producing a lot of albums by ourselves. It was really nice having somebody that had done a lot of different music, and they all sounded really good. So it was really nice paying a guy for his knowledge.
Blistering: What kind of influence would you say they had on the actual sound of the album, besides dealing with things like mixing? Danhage: . . . As far as most of the sounds, we paid those guys a ton of money to do this, and if me and Tom would be up there with comments on everything, it would just be a big waste of money . . . I think it would be crazy if the band would come up the whole time and make comments on sounds and little things and tweaks, because that was the whole reason they were there . . .
Blistering: That's what they were paid to do, so you guys just let them do it? Danhage: Which was really hard at first . . . I'm extremely happy that we were brave enough to take this chance instead of playing safe, you know, and doing it on our own again and doing, like, the same things as we had done before. It was really brave for us to hire those guys.
Evergrey could be called the thinking-man's Swedish metal band. Its concept albums unflinchingly explore the dark side of the human psyche, such as its 2004 record "The Inner Circle," which delved into the mind of a ficticious man who leaves his life behind to join a religious cult. Vocalist/guitarist Tom S. Englund, guitarist Henrik Danhage, bassist Michael Hakansson, keyboardist Rikard Zander and drummer Jonas Ekdahl continue forging a musical path with music that is shedding its progressive skin for a tighter sound that still showcases their technical skills as musicians. 
