NEVERMORE: Expect The Unexpected

NEVERMORE singer Warrel Dane recently spoke to Australia's Beat magazine about the group's brand-new album, "Enemies Of Reality".

"What I was trying to do with this record was to avoid the concept," he said. "We've done one concept album, and that was 'Dreaming Neon Black'. I have always felt that if we tried to do another one, it would just kind of take away from that. 'D.N.B.' is very close to my heart because it was based on very personal experiences. With this album, there's some very common lyrical themes woven throughout it, but for me, it's more of an experience rather than a concept. I think perhaps you can link all of the songs together because in essence it might be one long song, with different movements. I know the theme 'E.O.R.' keeps coming up over and over again in the lyrics. That was definitely intentional, but it wasn't meant to be a concept. I kind of hope that people can kind of absorb the meaning of it and actually understand it, because I'm very, very happy with the way this record turned out."

NEVERMORE didn't want to produce a carbon copy proven formula of 2000's "Dead Heart In A Dead World", but instead allowed instinct to guide them.

"This album wasn't something that we really set out to do differently, it's just that we've just been through a lot in the last couple of years. We toured so much for the last record, and we've had problems with the record company that have been very well publicized, and I think the overall tone of aggression on this record is probably more of a by product of our life experiences in the last two years. We had to take it out on something!"

Regarding the album's running time of just under the forty-one minute mark, Dane said, "Well, we definitely wanted this album to be brutal, unrelenting and to the point. We also wanted to a really strong statement and make sure that there weren't any filler tracks on this album either. Metal can still be vital, vibrant and ever changing, and that's what we've always tried to do. It was just time for us to really let ourselves out of the box, and really do whatever the fuck we wanted to do. It would have been really easy for us to sit back and create 'D.H.I.A.D.W.' Part II, and maybe perhaps that's what a lot of people expected. In the immortal words of Chuck Schuldiner, 'People should expect the unexpected.' With this band, we're never going to do what people expect of us. We will always trying to moving forward and drive ourselves to create something that's a bit different with each record. If you really expand the boundaries of what metal is all about right now, I don't think playing it safe is the right approach." Read more.