Blistering: As far as the actual musical direction of the album, how much of a say did they have on that, or where they more the type of producers where they would ask you to do several takes, for example? Danhage: It was very different. All the songs, we had the songs pretty much even before we attended the first meeting. The good thing was that the whole thing was to find what was the essence of the song, and maybe I thought the [keyboards] was the heart of the song, whereas the producers maybe thought the guitars were. So it was very different at first, and really, really hard having some guys that you don't know shit about coming in and fucking with your songs. That was really scary, especially for me and Tom, since we write most of the songs. But Sanken, he was just [like], "Just calm down and let me show what I think is the song," and he just did a really fast editing of the song, you know, changing places of the riffs, and we had a little guitar thing that was just in the background, which turned out to be a [lead] thing of one of the songs. But that, when he just put it together, [hearing the song was like], "My God," . . . and it's totally different from what we made at first, you know? So after that it was very easy, because he's older than us, and he's been doing, like I said, them two together have been doing like 60 productions and that he's been doing a lot of shit on his own, and so has the mixing guy . . . [it] was really cool, once we let all the egos go.
Blistering: The album seems more like a straight-ahead metal record with maybe less of the progressive elements to it. Danhage: I hope so.
Blistering: That was planned? Danhage: I think that we did that for the last, at least last two albums, because having stuff on just for the sake of it, it didn't make any sense. It wasn't like we sat down and had a big problem if a song was going over four minutes. On the other hand, the producer would ask us, "Well, just give me a reason why you want to have twice as a long guitar solo?" or "Why do you want the chorus or this passage of music that doesn't have anything to do with the song? Why do you go on a different avenue when we are focused on the song?" And nobody could really present a good idea why, so of course, a musical passage like that just had to go.
I think that we've been scaling down for the last couple albums, and for a muscian that knows his shit,you know, and had his playing together, they can still hear that there's a lot of demanding riffs and the playing skills of the band is still as good as it can be for what's playing; we're still playing on the top of our games, and any guitar player can't deny that. The same with the drumming and everything. It's just that like all the songs were more whole together and just for the sake of the songs. If I wanna jerk off solos, I should probably do a solo album, you know?
Blistering: As far as guitar solos go, I noticed that you're one of the bands that have them in their music. A lot of American bands these days shy from them. Danhage: It's probably because they can't play. Guitar solos, that is. [At the same time,] I think that is a really good decision. There's nothing worse than a really bad lead guitar player trying to play leads. I think it's better to not play leads. But on the other hand, there's been a lot of surprises. I mean, listen to the Slipknot guys. They didn't play a solo at all for the first two albums, and then on the third, they really opened up and fucking shredded like maniacs . . . I think if you can't play leads or if you can't sing clean vocals, what is the reason to do that? [laughs] It's just like me trying to be a circus [performer]. I'd just fall on my face.
Blistering: You said the album doesn't have a tight concept per se, but I noticed some themes have to do with someone being kidnapped and murdered. Danhage: The whole thing is that it's some kind of a guy being really abused and bullied at school, and it really affects things, so he really gets really fucking disturbed, and when he grows up, he decides to kidnap the children of the ones that bullied him when he was a kid, which is really dark and evil. But I really don't know who to blame, you know? And the reason that their kids are getting kidnapped is because they were fucking assholes when they were kids, so it's all because of that, which I'm not standing and defending. But it's very interesting. And that's one of the things I really like about Tom, he's not afraid of taking chances.
Blistering: That's kind of the idea behind at least some of the songs or the whole album? Danhage: Songs like "Still in the Water," "Monday Morning Apocalypse" and "Obedience."
Blistering: On "In the Dark I Walk You Through," I thought it was a man's perspective when his wife or lover disappears and he counts the regrets of all the things he should have done. Danhage: It's about a man [who] leaves his daughter at school, and after that, the kid got run over. It's just killing yourself because there were so many things that he really didn't have the chance to say, just like in life. You take all your friends and your family members for granted. It's a song of remorse, I'd say.
Blistering: For "The Inner Circle," you guys had a T-shirt that was inspired by one of its lyrics, "I am my own God." Do you have any merchandise related to the new album with a powerful concept like that one? Danhage: I don't think we have any right now. Right now we're just working on our regular . . . T-shirts, you know? But yeah, we need to come up with something good, because we got a lot of reaction on that one, and it was really good. We have to top that.
Blistering: With the Swedish invasion at Ozzfest last year, it elevated the profile of Swedish metal here in America. Has Evergrey seen any benefit from that attention? Danhage: It was really good. It was good for those four bands . . . that went on a big mainstream thing like that. Yeah, probably. I mean, if somebody saw that another band is from Sweden, maybe they would get some more attention from the reader in a magazine, but I don't think it has helped our sales or anything like that. Maybe it would if we would play Ozzfest [laughs].
Blistering: Do you know when you will do a headlining tour in the United States, or are you sticking with opening dates for now? Danhage: I think we're going to play in Sweden for two or three weeks and stuff, and then in May we're gonna tour with In Flames in the U.S. We're going to North America in the beginning of May, and we're going to tour for a month there with In Flames, Nevermore and Throwdown. It's going to be really cool and really funny . . . We're looking forward to that a lot. We haven't been there in over one-and-a-half years, so we're really excited to play in the states again.
Blistering: They were all my questions. Is there anything you wanted to add? Danhage: Just that people take time to investigate and invest the time in Evergrey, because there's so many other bands out there, and records are expensive and magazines are kind of expensive, so we just feel really honored that people put their interest and money in Evergrey, and we're really grateful for that. [END]
