EVERGREY Frontman: 'We Are Probably The Most Non-Religious Band On The Planet'

The official EVERGREYMySpace page has been updated with an interview with the band's singer/guitarist Tom Englund. The questions for the interview were recently gathered from the EVERGREY MySpace friends. A few excerpts from the question-and-answer session follow:

Q: Was it a consious decision to make "Monday Morning Apocalypse" a shorter album with shorter songs and was this done to appeal more to the U.S. market?

Tom: "It was not a conscious decision but at the same time EVERGREY has always, at least in our eyes, been about writing the best songs whether they are 7 or 3 minutes and for the first time in our career we had the knowledge and ability to write the album we maybe wanted to write all along, since the day we started. We merely didn't have the experience and skills to do so before. But that was EVERGREY at its best then and this is EVERGREY at its best today. We did though write to appeal to the current market, but all of the markets, not only the American one."

Q: How was the recording from "Monday Morning Apocalypse" different than the previous albums, and why was it written the way it was?

Tom: "Actually all of them have been very different from each other. Since we have been working with different producers, technicians, studios and of course players in EVERGREY for almost every album we have come to apreciate an album recording for what it is, which is to capture us, our feelings and our songs and then put that on a piece of plastic. The main difference though, that would separate 'Monday Morning Apocalypse' from the others was that we had hired outside producers, we still recorded it in Division One, our own studio, but during the recordings we all along had Sanken and his assistant there which meant that if something fucked up, like the computers, we could go and have a beer, watch a movie or practise a solo instead of worrying about the damn computer. At the same time it was very healthy for the songs and the overall recording that someone else from the outside had input and opinions about the songs we had written, they came with ideas that we tried and sometimes liked and sometimes just laughed at but the main thing was that we all trusted and respected everybody's opinions.

"After the recording was done we went to Stockholm to mix it. This was also quite different, since usually I am involved in everything from the writing of the songs to the production and mixing. After they worked on a song for a day or two we could go in with an opened mind and 'fresh' ears to make decisions on whether something was too loud or too low in the mix or something needed to sound different.

"During an album recording you get so much involved and tied up in you own self that it becomes unhealthy. Therefore it was nice to have a guy saying sometimes, 'Hey, you play like shit here and trust me you wouldn't wanna put that on an album.'"

Q: Is EVERGREY a religious band? The lyrics seem to have religious meanings behind them.

Tom: "We are probably the most non-religious band on the planet. However we have had issues with people within religion like priests molesting children and cult leaders using the weakness of others in order to gain something for themselves. That is the bad impact religion can have on some people. Therefore we encourage people all the time to think for themselves to not have the religion think for you. Life is too short to have someone else decide for you what to do and not to think."

Q: What was it like for EVERGREY opening for IN FLAMES on the U.S. tour earlier this year. Did you get better reactions than expected?

Tom: "The great thing about playing in EVERGREY is that we never expect anything, we just do what we always do which is to give 100% at all times. People who maybe heard of EVERGREY have a made up mind of how we sound, look and perform but for every show we have people coming up to us saying stuff like, 'Hey you were awesome, I thought you were like this or that.' The cool thing is that EVERGREY have fans in every genre of metal, well of music really, which is really great cause we dont have to write with any boundaries.

"The tour with IN FLAMES was the same thing like when we were touring with ARCH ENEMY, ICED EARTH, CHILDREN OF BODOM or whoever else we've been touring with, we had a great time and became really good friends with the guys in IF and the audience seemed to really enjoy evergrey or maybe even discovering us for the first time."

Read the entire interview at this location.