SNOWY SHAW Talks About New DREAM EVIL Material, Collaboration With MATS LEVEN

Thomas Herpel of Metal Covenant recently conducted an interview with acclaimed drummer/songwriter Snowy Shaw (KING DIAMOND, MERCYFUL FATE, MEMENTO MORI, NOTRE DAME). An excerpt from the question-and-answer session follows:

Metal Covenant: Where are you with DREAM EVIL now? I read that you are about to start recording the follow up to "The Book Of Heavy Metal", is that correct? And with Peter [Stålfors, bass] and Niklas [Isfeldt, vocals] back in the band will this be kind of a second dawning for the band, are you full of new enthusiasm?

Snowy: "We will all get together in the beginning of December and listen to all the new material that each one has written and then decide what songs to record and where we are heading style-wise. Maybe this time we'll try a new thing of briefly feeling them out in the rehearsal room before we record the songs this time around. But I think we'll be entering the studio mid-to-late December sometime. With everything that has happened over the last year or so with constant changes from one week to another, I find it harder to motivate myself like I did when writing 'The Book of Heavy Metal'. I'm sure we can sort all that out now and come to an agreement of where we should take this spectacle."

Metal Covenant: What can we expect from the coming album, will you carry on with the tradition that you have laid out with the earlier albums? Do you have any working title for the album or songs yet?

Snowy: "I have a bunch of ideas of course but we haven't really discussed in what direction we wanna take things this time. For better or for worse, DREAM EVIL is a democratic band, so it's kinda hard to say anything for certain at this point. My own songs are maby a bit more uptempo and faster this time around, but I guess it follows in the tradition since I wrote them especially for DREAM EVIL and it's my take on what DREAM EVIL are supposed to be or could be or should be. Some old-some new-some borrowed-some blue, eh… we'll see how things turn out. Here's a couple of titles for some of my songs, all in the good ol' DREAM EVIL tradition: 'Let's Heavy Metal (Ourselves to Death)', 'Speed Demon', 'Weekend Warrior', 'Do the Sign', 'See No Evil - Hear No Evil - Speak No Evil', 'I'm a Metalhead', 'Man of Honour', 'On Hell's Hot Fires', '21', 'Alcoholocaust', 'Glorious', 'Out of the Sunlight'."

Metal Covenant: You also have a project together with the great vocalist Mats Leven [YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, THERION, KRUX, TREAT] called S&M, what can you tell us about that? Is it just a one-time collaboration or something that you plan to do more of? What musical direction will you be taking with this and how will it sound? And most important, when do we get to hear anything from this project?

Snowy: "Mats came to Gothenburg today (Saturday) and I hope we'll be able to work a little bit on Monday. He's just been on a seven-week U.S. tour with THERION and I've been busy on my own here, so it's a bit hard to organize our get-together sessions. We don't wanna rush things or jump to conclusions with this project. The important thing is that we do music that we both like a lot. We started working together because we discovered during the time that he was supposed to be the new DREAM EVIL singer that we shared so much influences and musical taste, and I'm talking a rich buffet here that stretches from BOWIE to MANOWAR via SPARKS and ULTRAVOX. That is highly unusual and I must say I have never enjoyed writing music together with anyone else as much before this collaboration."

Read the entire interview at MetalCovenant.com.