Interview

Once again, EVERGREY is back in town. New record with Jonas and Henrik again, we could say that Tom has a lot of things to tell us. “King of Errors”, the first single makes me think that the band is stronger than ever. Let’s check it out!

SBM : Hi Tom! How are you!?

Tom: Oh great but it has been a long fucking day! You’re the final one! You got the juice of it all! (Laugh)

Ok so I’ll do my best!
We’re here to talk about your brand new album, “Hymn For The Broken”, but first of all I’d like to ask you a question about the previous one, “Glorious Collision”. It was almost done with a new line-up so how was it received by the fans?

Well people were sort of… hating this because Jonas and Henrik left. But what people really understood is that we came to this solution together. We never talked about arguing, we all respect that, they left because we needed to stay friends and if we haven’t done that we would not be here today.

Exactly and here they are, back in EVERGREY. How did it happen?

Well on the tour with Sabaton, the thing is that Marcus wanted to quit by himself, but we had two more shows and we needed to do it. But on the over hand, they were not involved in EVERGREY’s long ride. So we talked with Henrik and said, “Yeah that’s maybe time to end this now”. It didn’t feel bad, we weren’t bitter or sad, or anything. It was like we wrote the last letter of the book.
Then we had a record offer and we started to gather with Henrik and Jonas because I said “I don’t want to record an album if I need to invite new members again”, it’s sort of ridiculous.
There have been so many people in EVERGREY already that it wouldn’t be great to invite a new bunch of guys again.
So well Jonas and Henrik really wanted to be back in EVERGREY, Jonas came in with 27 songs, that’s a sort of proof to me that he wanted to be in EVERGREY.

So they were both involved in the writing of this album.

Yeah sure, and of course we’ve set up to produce it together. I had the vocals, he didn’t have any vocals or lyrics of course, but I had all these and we wrote new stuff together with the rest of the band; we all have been involved in writing this album to 100%, whatever Jonas and I wrote most of the songs, we had a lot of talk about the songs, we had 39 songs ideas.
We could even write the new album tomorrow! (Laugh)

We can even release a double one! (Laugh)

Yeah but let’s release this one first (Laugh)

Sure! How do you feel about that?

Well this album has been done since May and we’re really waiting for the release, to show the world what this is about. On Friday next week it will be out in Europe and a couple of days later in the USA and the rest of the world. We’re very excited to see what our fans think of the album because we pretty much know what the reviews in general think now.

You can be proud of it! Actually there’s a nice contrast on this record: the work of Rikard Zander on keyboards, it brings a lot melodies in EVERGREY’s universe. Have you worked deeply or stronger on the keyboards?

Yeah Jonas wrote a lot of keyboards part. Actually the whole thing is that Jonas plays keyboards, I play keyboards, Rikard plays keyboards, I play guitar, Jonas plays solo guitar, and everybody play everything but the drums.
We’re all very involved and interested in the instruments to make the best of each one, concentrating of everyone’s strength instead of being proud to play everything yourself. Do you understand it?

Oh yeah totally! You’re really working as a band, united. And we can hear this on “Hymn for the Broken”, especially on songs like “The Grand Collapse” or “The Aftermath”, where we have all elements of EVERGREY music, and even more.

Exactly, for this record we were very united and that was something we needed to show to the world. And now we got it! We did it differently; we’ve been involved in each and every stuff all the way. Yeah we’re just fuckin’ happy! It’s the same for us to see all these reviews and “Album of the Month” comes from everywhere! So we really hope the fans will also appreciate it.

This could be the start of a new era, after these periods of line-up changing, where it was hard to see a stable period. Do you think these changes were an inspiration for EVERGREY, to have so many faces in the band?

Actually a lot people always think about the negative aspects, but we should also remember that changes create new links and keeps you on your toes. And EVERGREY, not only ourselves but also the fans, deserve the best that we, all five, can deliver. And we need to change personally to be able to deliver the best.

And you chose to show it to the fans by releasing the song “King of Errors”. Why have you chosen this particular song?

Well we have chatted by email saying “Ok what should be the first single?”. And everybody wrote “King of Errors”.
The “King of Errors” lyrics are about feeling the sense of insecurity at all times and I think that the video shows it very well. We present ourselves to the worlds of kings today, on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or whatever, we always present the best side of the world, but nobody’s showing when they’re not feeling good, nobody’s showing when life sucks.
That’s also unfair because we present a false world to people that are down today, maturing themselves with people who life’s successful. And it’s not healthy at all and that’s what we tried to display in the video: we’re being on top of the world and the next image you see is me drawing in this river and for me it’s like a river of doubt or insecurity.

I haven’t imagined it this way but yeah it makes sense… Patrick Ullaeus did a really great job on this video. How have you lived this experiment? Up there did you also feel insecure?

Honestly, for some minutes I felt like “Oh my god I’m gonna die here!”. On the take 2 I was really really scared, but Patrick really make me look the best, and I think he also made the music looks better and sounds better with these images, it’s fantastic!

I totally agree on that point… And now that the album will be release, what’s coming next? Any tour planed yet?

First of all we want to be sure of what we have. We’re waiting for the album to come out, so we can hear what the fans think. And then we could properly plan a tour, knowing that the world hates us or likes us.

So you’re really doing things step by step…

Exactly !

One question out of EVERGREY now, Samuel Arkan is working on a third record. Do you know if you will be a part of it? After your great performance on “Fantasmagoria” do you have any clues?

I don’t think so… He’s writing now so I don’t want to step in too much but I would love to be. We spoke today so I hope I will! (Laugh).

(Laugh) Ok I see…

(Laugh) Or maybe he didn’t like me so maybe I’m not. We’ll see. Nooo I hope so man, I’d really appreciate, it would be a pleasure I’d love that.

Well I really hope so man!
And I guess we’ve reached the end of the interview I leave you the final words if you want to conclude or leave a message to the French fans…

Through the years we’ve known that EVERGREY was an important fact of some people’s life. We’ve appreciated this, and it’s a blessing for us to able to participate and been involved in people’s life, it’s a blessing and we’re super grateful and we hope to see them on tour!

Thank you for that and for the time you’ve given me! Enjoy your evening Tom!

Thank you man! Good evening too! Bye!

Bye!