Escape of the Phoenix
Label: AFM.
There are plenty of melodic metal bands but very few can bring the listener in with a perfect blend of dark, cathartic lyrics, sonic excellence, melodicism and progressive metal elements. Earlier in the year, Swedish band Evergrey achieved just that with their fantastic twelfth album Escape of the Phoenix. As per usual, the level of quality in their music ranges from very good to exceptional. Since their genesis over two decades ago, they’ve managed to carve out their own sound with a heavy edge. In light of this latest release being something of a landmark after a well-received trilogy project, Loud Online spoke to Evergrey front man, co-guitarist and co-songwriter Tom S. Englund to discuss the creation process and overall inspiration behind the latest album.
Escape of the Phoenix is simply brilliant. You must be proud of the album?
I am, absolutely. It has been hard work but it is finally out for people to hear it. It is great period to be a member of Evergrey.
How much input did producer Jacob Hansen have this time around?
This is the fourth album that we have worked with him and Jacob has become one of those guys in our team who is invaluable for us. He is coming in at the end of things and making sure that our audio ideas are going to sound like we know they will when he has had his fingers on them. It is just a great safety to know that whatever we produce here, that it will sound the way that we want it do in the end. At the same time, Jonas [Ekdahl – drummer] and I both write and produce the album, we are also audio nerds. So, we are not sending him dog shit to produce either. Yeah, he is great, and is important; he is part of the Evergrey family now.
Did you all have a different approach given the previous three albums [Hymns for the Broken, The Storm Within and, The Atlantic] all represented a trilogy?
For us it was different, but how shall I put this? Going into this one, it was nice to write eleven different stories, smaller postcards of art, instead of a huge painting, in a way. In a sense, also, it gave me a sense of freedom. But, it was also challenging because being involved in this trilogy that we were before was also something very safe for us and something that we knew with a sort of sonic landscape was familiar to us. For this one, we had to do something new which, you know, or we are always eager to make the best songs possible. So going in with something that feels fresh is somewhat nervous always too. But yeah, in one word, free.
Did any of the songs on the latest album come from any of the previous three album song writing stages? Even just ideas that were shelved?
No, we never work like that, we have so much material that we write that never gets used because we think that some material just needs to be written but never used, in a sense, you know, in order to get to the really good stuff that is supposed to end up on an album. For us, no, we have like 150 songs lying around that we probably could release when we are poor and need the money at the end of our career. But, not a chance for now, ha-ha.
A song like In the Absence of Sun starts out quite eerily with piano, all very soft and then turns around. There is a lot of spatial dynamics going on. How much pre-production goes in to works like that?
That’s funny that you ask about that song because that is the first thing I wrote, on piano, for this album. I have another project called Silent Skies where I do this piano based music together with an American piano player [Vikram Shankar]. So, going into starting to write for this Evergrey album, I thought, ‘Oh, it is going to be one of those albums, very moody and piano based.’ It didn’t come out like that at all. So, then it just turned and flipped to being very guitar driven and energetic in a sense. At least, that is what I feel on listening to the album now, it sounds hungry in a way, energetic and powerful.
Do you have to think a lot about instrumentation and the overall mix when you put in heavier drums against different or softer parts?
I mean, this song took on a life of its own, starting with this piano piece and then it sort of developed into something that I didn’t really expect at all. No, I don’t have any… it’s usually like this; it works. The music brings me somewhere, it is not like I have a schedule planned for it, other than it being a great song. Then I just sort of let myself go and just go with the flow of the song.
The title track is interesting with the way the drums are set up because there are a lot of heavy, barrelling drums. I’m just curious how it works when you get the bass and rhythm sections going against it?
Ah, this is one of the first ideas that we had for this album – this guitar riff. For me, it is just obvious that the drums should be played like the guitars, in a sense. So, since me and Jonas are the key writers for Evergrey, I pretty much know how it will sound for the drums when I make the guitar riff. Then I just leave it to him, then it comes back and pretty much sounds like I intended. I don’t know though, we don’t really have any big plans in the production. It just happens automatically and is quite inexplicable, in a way. Maybe that is where the magic is in music. It is hard to plan it.
The guitar solos are impressive. For Eternal Nocturnal, it starts with your solo and then you’ve got Henrik [Danhage – guitars, backing vocals] playing a tasty solo. Is that generally the way you like to trade solo parts or do you sometimes prefer to harmonise or double the solos?
Through the years, of course, we have done it all. For this album, I sort of missed that aspect of having guitar solos back to back so that was intentional, at least for that song. I think that we have another song on there where we do that as well. But outside of that, I mean, today we pretty much know where I will make the best solo and on which parts where Henrik will sound the best too. So that is sort of a given already, going into when we are deciding who is going to play on what. There are a lot of harmony parts on there as well. But, I don’t have a full grasp on the album yet because I haven’t listened to it that much. I have to sit and think now about how much guitar there is but we do 50/50 pretty much for the solos. Henrik is doing more of the speedier, tapping stuff and I am doing more of the Pink Floyd, feely stuff.
Indeed, the interludes have some delay affected guitars parts that go into harmonies such as at the end of Stories and In the Absence of Sun. You mentioned Pink Floyd, You From You has the deep reverbs and big sustained, long notes with massive snare hits. I mean, that is Floyd all over.
Yeah, I mean it is pretty much stolen out of David Gilmour’s drawer but he is my go-to guitar player and if I can sound something like him in a modern metal way, it is a great way for me to introduce people to Gilmour’s guitar playing. I get that a lot, ‘Oh, it sounds like this,’ and I’ll say, ‘Oh, but listen to the original,’ and I’ll send them on their way to Pink Floyd. For me, albums like Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell are my favourite albums of Pink Floyd because his guitar playing is so prominent on that.
The purist would say, ‘You cannot use a Caparison guitar for that sound, it has to be a Fender Stratocaster,’ but you still pulled it off.
Yeah, apparently it works. But, if I would be coming from the outside, I would probably be saying the same, ‘Ha, you’d need a Strat for that,’ but at the same time, a Caparison sounds so amazingly great on these higher notes with the bridge that I am using on it. It works really well and I don’t even own a Strat, to be honest. Maybe it is time to buy one.
Backing vocals are used well on the album and also the entire band is quite skilled at it. Do you intentionally push that with the layering in the studio and doubling of vocals?
I guess vocal production is one of the things that I have gotten best at within the last seven or eight years because I know how to get there, I have the equipment to do it and I record, and produce, everything in my own studio. So, of course, I put a lot of weight on spending time with the vocals and we usually always write all of the music first and only when all the music is recorded first do I actually start doing the vocals. I have to be very confident in the parts that we have written for the music knowing that I will be able to make vocals on it. Then I work hard on having, like you said, layering and the harmonies for these stereo tracks of vocals where it is needed. But I also like the more stripped down, only one voice production too. I enjoy that quite much, actually.
When it comes to having a guest vocalist like James LaBrie [featured on The Beholder], how do you approach it?
It is actually pretty funny. We were sitting in our Evergrey studio together, listening to the song, I guess this was in the later phases of song production where we sit down as a band and try to figure out where we’re going with it, if we should cut something down, of what we should have where and where there should be solos and whatever. When this part came that Jonas wrote on the keyboards, everybody sort of turned silent and I said, ‘We should have a guest vocalist here,’ and then pretty much, everybody in the same voice said, ‘Hey, it needs to be James,’ and it was like, I don’t know if it was something in the harmony or something in the vibe but, yeah, something told us that it should be James, basically, and it was just a remarkable thing that later that evening just sending him an email telling him about my lyrical idea for the song, which is about having a role model, and then asking him if he wants to do it. He just listened to the song and said, ‘Hell, yes,’ so it is one of those great things you can look back at and feel that, yeah, I closed the circle. When I started Evergrey, Dream Theater was one of the reasons why, you know. Then we quickly realised that we couldn’t play like them and we weren’t as talented on our instruments as they were so we quickly had to find our own identity, which is so important. Dream Theater is responsible for our Evergrey sound today. James is also the soundtrack to my career at that time, being in the background, all the way up to today. He is still doing stuff with Dream Theater that I listen to now.
You’ve also done a lot of guest spots and collaborations so you obviously keep yourself very busy.
Yeah, I try and I mean, this is what I do, I’m a musician and especially now during the pandemic, I have offered my services to fans and to people who don’t have a vocalist. I mean, of course, yes, I charge them a fee but at the same time, they get one of their idols on their album and I get to explore great new music with people that I would never have had the chance to do it with before, you know. It is a blessing for me and I think I did like 35 songs last year so it has been my busiest year ever. It is just great.
Do you find that with progressive metal there is a temptation to go into the seven or eight string guitars thing?
No idea, I mean, obviously yes because people want to go lower and lower but the first song we recorded with a seven string was for Recreation Day back in 2003 or thereabouts, so we have been doing it for almost twenty years now. So, I can’t really answer for anybody else but I think there is an urge, and, I mean, that is the word progressive, trying to find new things and exploring new landscapes. I never played on an eight string guitar; I think I am going to stick with a seven string guitar. On this album, we have a new tuning at least so we play in drop G and our seven string guitars are usually tuned in A. So, that is already down one step and now we drop the A string to G. So yeah, it is a new tuning and I think that is really prominent on the album.
You whip out the old wah pedal from time to time. Have you gotten into the digital gear realm?
I mean, I have such great Bogner amplifiers [Bogner Überschall] and he [Reinhold Bogner] built it for me personally. So, I would feel stupid if I didn’t use one of the greatest guitar sounds in the world as he built amps for me, for Henrik and for Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather. I mean, it is ridiculous. I do use digital effects as well, I play through Neural DSP when I play in the box and I must say it sounds amazing but I use a combination of both. If I am not recording the Bogner, I want to have it in the room, playing for me, you know and then I can record a signal and give it to Jacob. He can then re-amp it with anything, with everything that he has got so I don’t even care what he does as long as it sounds good.
You mentioned Steve Lukather and that explains Dandelion Cipher because, to my ears, I can hear that Lukather and even Steve Vai style, certainly in some of the guitar tones.
Okay cool, I don’t know what I had in mind when writing that. That was also one of the early songs we wrote with the riff in the beginning there.
The album artwork explores the theme of an exhausted phoenix, and lyrics are about acceptance of fate. You clearly spend a lot of time on the lyrics as they are well constructed.
Oh fuck, a lot of time. I would say, yeah, I mean for me the lyrics are just as important as the music. I accept and know that it isn’t like that for everyone else. I spend a lot of time with it because for me it is like painting with the words and it is important to say the right thing with the right phrases at the right time. I’m writing small stories and it means that after I have written them and released it to the world, I discover that it means something to a lot of other people as well. That is just lovely in way even though I don’t have anybody else in mind except myself when I am writing them. But yes, I spend a lot of time on it. Months and months and months, and I collect lyrics during every day. I record them; read them in or write them on my iPhone and then I sort them. I can start a song from one sentence alone.
It is also the way that the words are sung to get a message across.
Oh absolutely, I haven’t had many encounters with dungeons and dragons so I write about myself, not slaying dragons. I leave that to people who have people experience at that. Ha-ha.
How do you think your vocal delivery has changed over the years?
Well, of course, I know myself better. In the beginning I wasn’t supposed to be a vocalist. So, it was first becoming a vocalist and then trying to learn how to sing. Now I am very confident with what I can do with my voice and how far it goes and what its limitations are and how I can make it sound. But, first and foremost it is about singing about something that you believe in and that is my thing where I always go and then it is not hard to sing convincingly if you sing about something that you have been through yourself. That means something.
Finally, this is album number twelve, is it something to look back at in a vinyl format? Are you into vinyl at all?
Ah no, for me, this album that we are talking about now is now old for me because I am thinking about the next album. That is the kind of person that I am, I am not nostalgic at all. Maybe I will be, in twenty years I might look back and say, ‘Ah, I did something good.’ Ha-ha.
Can we hope to one day see you back in Australia, after the pandemic disruption subsides?
Yeah, I would hope so, it is about that time, right.