Interview

ProgPower USA XV Interviews: SEVENTH WONDER Reveals Upcoming Album Hints and More

One of the major draws of the fifteenth ProgPower USA festival was the opportunity to get to see Sweden’s super-prog gents in Seventh Wonder perform their album “Mercy Falls” in its entirety (minus the awkward voice acting) for a live DVD. Judging by the crowd that they drew for that night, it was glaringly obvious that the fans had been wanting this. It was to be a fine performance, and neither Seventh Wonder’s first in the states nor their last of the 2014 festival. The band played again to a crowd of gold badge-holders and VIPs on Saturday morning, just hours later, which was also filmed for the DVD. These boys had some kind of crazy endurance!

During their first performance, members of vocalist Tommy Karevik’s other band Kamelot were in attendance, supporting Tommy’s first love in a gesture of solidarity and genuine enjoyment. After Seventh Wonder were through, MetalUnderground.com writer Frank Serafine was able to sit with them for a short time to get some answers that fans have been eager to dig up: Is the new record going to be a concept album and is “Inner Enemy” going to be on it? Will the new songs be more like “Inner Enemy” or is it just an exception? Will you come to Chile? How about an American tour? Charismatic bassist Andreas Blomqvist, eager drummer Stefan Norgren, quiet keyboardist Andreas "Kyrt" Söderin, guitarist Johan Liefvendahl, and the ever-smiling vocalist Tommy Karevik gladly revealed a few things while lunching backstage.

Frank Serafine (Progressivity_In_All): You guys broke into moonshine last night?

All: No, this morning!

Andreas Blomqvist: We have a friend from Kentucky who is the bass player for Kamelot. A recently… famous American band. (joking)

Stefan Norgren: Yeah. Which one of the members of Seventh Wonder may or may not be a member of … as well. Without giving too much away! (laughs)

Frank: Weren’t all of the guys from Kamelot except for Casey Grillo here last night?

All: What? NOOO (again, joking about keeping Kamelot’s appearance a secret)

Andreas: Ah, let’s settle on half! Thom and Sean -- Half of the members were here last night.

Frank: It’s good to see that kind of support for a bandmate.

Andreas: It’s not a given, so yeah.

Stefan: It was really cool to finally meet them, yeah.

Frank: How has the split of time been between Seventh Wonder and Kamelot?

Andreas: Uneven. (laughs) It was clear to everybody that Kamelot was going to have to be the top priority, and that’s just the reality. Then you’re forced to bend yourself and work around it, but it was given as it was expected. Of course, it has consequences in terms of slowing things down, but I feel that his heart is still very much into this.

Stefan: Obviously, there are benefits as well, with him being like a big commercial campaign for us -- with everybody finding out about us through him. It’s been really cool. The support has been insane. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen “Oh, I’ve been a huge Kamelot fan -- I looked into Tommy’s other band and they’re amazing.”

Frank: So, last night, you did the “Mercy Falls” set. I had heard that there were a few backstage incidences. Were you aware of them and can you explain any?

Andreas: I really don’t know.

Frank: On-stage, I heard that the candle that was lit during the show by Heather [Musgrave, actress] fell off the drum riser and broke, as well.

Andreas: There were a few hiccups here and there. At a festival, you never get a chance to do a soundcheck or a safe setup. You just go in and you plug in the instrument, and if there’s sound, it’s all good, which, of course, with our genre, makes it pretty challenging. There were a few things that happened that we had to try and bend ourselves backwards to try and figure out. That was one. It was just a little thing we threw in there to do something fun, story-wise. But it fell down and broke - nobody died!

Frank: One guy actually fell down off the stage and water spilled everywhere…

Andreas: Yeah! I only heard that afterwards, but apparently I think that was a keyboard tech that fell down a flight of stairs.

Stefan: WHAT?!

Andreas: I heard that afterwards!

Stefan: Hmm… He didn’t say anything!

Frank: Apparently water was getting near electronics and everyone backstage was freaking out.

Andreas: Oh yeah! There was, like, a storm while we were playing. But we never noticed it!

Frank: That’s good! That makes for a better DVD. What made you guys decide to do the “Mercy Falls” DVD instead of a whole DVD of other songs?

Andreas: It was the other way around. I was looking for an outing to do the “Mercy Falls” thing front-to-back, and with the new album dragging behind a little bit, we owed it to our fans to give them something new even though we didn’t have time for that to be a new record. We could at least bring them what a lot of people have been asking about for some time, which would be hearing the whole “Mercy Falls” on a live DVD. We were just trying to figure out what setting, what scenario, where to do it. So I talked to a couple of promoters, but Glenn stepped up and made a really good deal for us.

That’s the story behind it! It’s something that people asked for a lot, so we tried to listen to that and deliver!

Frank: Is there at all a wish to do an acoustic album, by any chance?

Andreas: I haven’t heard anything about that.

Stefan: We hadn’t discussed that.

Andreas: Nah, I’d probably say no. It’s something that we’d like to do live. I think our music lends itself pretty well to it. With Tommy’s vocals, our music, despite this genre being very song-oriented, lends itself very well to be performed that way. Do an album of that? Probably no for two reasons. One: We’re a rock band and that’s what we want to do. We give people treats, and that’s fine, like we did today. Secondly, We don’t want to redo old stuff and charge people for that -- that’s not cool. So that means we’d have to write new songs and we write songs very slowly, and if we write new songs, it would need a proper production, so probably not.

Frank: I’ve gotten a request to ask about “What influenced the song, ‘Angelmaker’”?

Andreas: Lyrically, or musically?

Frank: Lyrically.

Andreas: You wrote those lyrics, right? (looks at Tommy Karevik) Did I give you the topic?

Frank: Was it about the näcken, the Norwegian folk tale?

Andreas: That was “King of Whitewater,” actually. When Tommy came into the band, usually I was doing the lyrics, and Tommy gradually did more and more. We’ve been doing that too, without even touching base on it -- The folklore-ish thing.

Tommy Karevik: “Taint the Sky”, “Banish The Wicked”...

Andreas: It was a cool concept that I stumbled upon while reading. The word, in Swedish, sounded very similar and intriguing. I read about it, and it was a pretty eerie concept. I threw it out there and Tommy started working on the melodies for it and it turned out pretty well!

Frank: So what was the creepy influence of that song?

Tommy: It was the seventeenth century, maybe the eighteenth. The government actually paid women to take care of orphans.

Andreas: People, back then, if you were out of wedlock, you just basically dropped the kid in a basket somewhere, right? So the government paid people to take care of them. You got money per capita, right? So if they happen to die off, all the better for you -- you didn’t have to spend anything on them and you still got the money, right? So there was a couple of them. One that was famous -- I can’t remember her name. Basically, the character just treated them to death. Making little angels, so she was an “angelmaker.”

Frank: Aha. That makes perfect sense. What are some tentacle… oof, tentacle? (laughs) What are some TENTATIVE LYRICAL directions for the next album?

Andreas: Yeah, that was weird. (laughs)

Tommy: We have really talked about doing something like a concept thing again. We can’t really spoil what it is, but more in the style of “Mercy Falls,” more than just a couple of songs put together with random topics. We can’t really say anything more about it, but a more cohesive thing.

Andreas: Thought-through from the get-go, basically.

Frank: That’s how you guys work, of course! Nice. So, is “Inner Enemy” related to that, or is it separate?

Andreas: Yes, it is.

Frank: AHA!

Andreas: It will not be in the way that people think now.

Stefan: It will make sense when the album comes out.

Andreas: That’s the intention! Otherwise we have to add a disclaimer! (laughs)

Frank: Are there any plans to tour the US in the future?

Johan Liefvendahl: Not at the moment.

Andreas: A band at our level… that’s not really a choice for us. It’s not something that we have a means of putting together, basically. You’re kind of at the mercy of these one-off things. Festivals usually are the places where they have the kind of economy to bring bands in from all over the world, like Glenn’s been doing here, which is a great favor.

You basically need a booking agency or somebody behind you with big financial muscles to pull that together. You can’t just sit down with a 9-hour time difference, call random joints in Kansas City, and ask them. “Yeah, send the money, guys! I’ll be waiting!” So that’s something that we’ve wanted to do since forever and ever. We’d jump on the opportunity to do it.

People always say “Come to Chile,” or “Come to” wherever… Most times it’s Chile. (laughs) A friend of mine in another band says that the two things you hear most from prog fans are “You sound like Dream Theater” and “Come to Chile!” (laughs) The answer is always “Yes, we would love to!” But we can’t do it on our own. At this level, usually you just have someone that’s an amazing enthusiast that puts something together by himself or get a couple of friends together and they book two or three gigs and you can go.

It’s how it works these days -- with album sales being low and record companies dying down, you only have the big ones that don’t deal with this type of music, it’s tricky. You can tell. The bands that are touring, most of the time they started releasing albums in the days before the age of downloads. Like Kamelot -- they were there in the mid-’90s before everybody. Few bands that are not just thrown out there by a big label get to do that. That’s just the state of things right now.

That’s why I took the time to elaborate on that, because it’s important that people understand that it’s not our unwillingness to tour that prevents it -- we would love to. We’d jump on every opportunity we have. As an opener or whatever, just throwing that out there, but no, no plans right now, unfortunately.

Frank: That’s okay -- I think North American fans will be more than happy to pick up the “Mercy Falls” DVD and be happy with that. I think they just love you in any form that they can get you. That’s good for now. “Inner Enemy” sounds more concise than your previous writings. Is the version that was released the radio edit or the full version?

Tommy: It’s the full version. It’s also intended to be. We have other songs that make up for that being so “radio-friendly.”

Frank: I don’t say that as a bad thing.

Tommy: We intended to take everything unnecessary, “fiddly-diddly-doo” stuff” away and make just something that we think is the absolute most simple thing that we could do. That was a challenge for us, really.

Andreas: Simplicity was a challenge in itself! We probably had more a of a challenge putting that together than any other song. It took a year! It took forever. Sure, it’s not “The Great Escape,” but the bridges are in 5/4 and the key changes… It’s still not your everyday country single! For us, it was definitely intentional. We wanted to try it as a fun thing. It’s equally challenging, if not more, to write something really short.

Having said that, that is not a way of saying “So now we’re gonna do that.” That was the oddball, but it served the purpose very well of something you could record a video for and have people have the energy to listen to.

Stefan: We have to admit that the response has been really great. One or two comments that we’ve seen have been along the lines of exactly what we just spoke about -- “This is too short” or “this is too simple.” The rest of the album is going to be more intricate and long. That was the only tiny bit of criticism that people have come up with -- oh, and the clothes and the hat!

(all laugh)

Stefan: “The record company made them wear those clothes!” That cracked me up. (laughs)

Johan: For me, when you play progressive music, you are allowed to play any kind of music. If you want to play jazz or funk or whatever, we are allowed to do it, so long as it’s some kind of rock thing. That’s progressive music for me!

Frank: Yeah, that’s the whole idea with progressive music -- no borders between the genres you’re blending.

The guys: Yeah.

Andreas: It’s not like we’re going to go, when we hear these comments, “Oh really? Maybe we did make it too short when we left off all the noodly parts…” No, it’s clearly intentional. At least people can rest assured that we knew what we were doing. People might not agree, but, quite frankly, we reserve the right to do that. (laughs) But the rest of the music is the way it usually sounds.

Frank: I think it (“Inner Enemy”) goes down like a shot of vodka -- it’s very concise, quick, and you feel it right away.

(the guys agree)

Andreas: You got to remember that the last thing we released had a 30 minute song in it, so we had to go the other way! We want to try the extremes sometimes.

Stefan: You just drop the zero in the number and… (laughs)

Andreas: 3 minutes!

Tommy: The funny thing about this song… Many people are actually criticizing our clothes in the video. It’s not the majority of the people, but many of them should understand that we’ve had stage clothes for every single one of our releases since “Mercy Falls.” We have put some thought into why we’re wearing certain pieces of clothing. This is the case for this video.

Andreas: It has to do with the concept that we alluded to earlier. There is thought behind this. I think Tommy’s getting at… would you like to watch Braveheart and see everybody running around in Hawaiian shirts? That wouldn’t work very well. So we’re trying to present a picture -- of course, it’s not obvious or evident yet, but give us the benefit of the doubt.

Frank: Here’s the real question -- would you like to see Braveheart re-shot with Mel Gibson in the Mad Max clothing?

(everyone laughs)

Andreas: As long as everybody else is naked, yeah!

Stefan: That’s an actual question you brought? That’s an awesome question! (laughs) Never gotten that question so far! I, for one, would actually love to see that. That would be funny. Any movie would work with Mad Max costumes.

Frank: When you guys decided on the tracklist for the second set of the “Mercy Falls” DVD, did the fans pick any or did you sit down as a crew and pick the songs?

Andreas: It’s trying, to the best extent of what we can do, bring the fans what they wanted. We didn’t take a popular vote because, these days, you’ll have some jackass go in there and click the vote button 600 times or write a script to do it, but we tried to gauge what people wanted to hear. Glenn posted it as a “Show No MERCY” gig, so we could finally do a set where we’re not required to play any “Mercy Falls” songs, which usually constitute half the set list at least.

Stefan: Exactly, that’s the challenge. “Mercy Falls” has always been a big part of our gigs.

Andreas: I think that was a labor of love, because there are a lot of songs that you want to give people and a lot of songs that people want to hear that we normally can’t fit in, so that was fun. Then we did a little acoustic medley at the end. It was a fun way of doing something different, kind of giving historical perspective of where we’ve been and also highlighting a few things from the “Become” album that people have heard, so that was a fun thing, too. We tried to listen to what people wanted and combine them into what makes a great whole. That was really what went into designing the set list.