Evergey - Monday Morning Apocalypse
Suggested by: MH
MH: Ok. I picked this album. I did because I have now seen these guys twice and I have enjoyed them live both times. I think the singer is very enigmatic and the music is very entertaining. Plus I also know QM likes them alot and wanted to give this new album a shot. But to be honest, I could not STAND this album. At all. It is so polished that there is no danger, spontinaeity, or from what I could tell, passion. By about the third song that was about how his father didn't love him, I was done. I like my metal to be a little scary or aggressive. Which while the riffs tried to be hard, they just for some reason weren't to me. Oh well. That's all I really have to say about that one. Tune in next week...
MJ: Interesting pick, BOM. That’s cool that you picked one from a band that I totally embraced and you think you should listen to more (probably due to my constant ramblings!).
I REALLY like these guys. They are one of my favorites of the new metal bands that we’ve discovered over the last few years. Definitely progressive metal (I say with confidence, however can’t really pinpoint what that means – I just know it is). Their album “The Inner Circle” was my favorite album of the year a couple years ago. They usually have good melodies, lots of tempo changes, nice riffage, and cool special effects (voiceovers, etc.). This was a band that made me proud to have a Swedish heritage…
Mark and I saw them for the first time when they warmed up for Iced Earth. I never heard a lick from them previously. I wasn’t completely blown away, but I remember being captivated. Rarely do I go nuts about a band on the first listen. I don’t think I ran out and bought anything by them after the show either. But I kept thinking about it, and soon got the goods and fully sunk my teeth into them.
I was really excited when this was coming out, as well as the previously released live DVD. But for some reason I didn’t play either of them all that much. I seem to be describing this a lot on this blog. I think I’ve been getting so much music this year that I’m suffering from audio ADD. There’s so much I want to listen to, and no time to really sink into any one thing. I need to work on that in 2007. So this was a very good call as an AOTW pick.
On initial listens, I didn’t feel this was as good as a lot of their other releases. I think I would still argue this, but by no means does this mean it’s a weak release. It sounded pretty damn good to me this go around. It could be that I haven’t been listening to that much metal lately so this sounded a lot heavier to me. And one thing that is still true is that I really dig Tom Englund’s voice. Very versatile and unique. He’s just got a really good chops, and is definitely not a stereotypical metal voice.
Which leads me to a sort of embarrassing story, but what the hell. When Mark and I saw Evergrey the second time (warming up for In Flames in Grand Rapids, Michigan – and the fact that we drove there for the show is not the embarrassing part!), we were up pretty close for their set. At my age, I don’t know why I should get a kick out of things like this, but sometimes I try to find a moment when I think I can get a bandmember’s attention and get some acknowledgement of my ability to rock. Usually I’m not that close so it’s not even an option, but this time I felt I had a shot. Everyone was kind of focusing on the band, rocking in their own fairly reserved way. I picked a moment when the singer was kind of looking our way and giving him full eye contact I rose up an arm with vigor and pumped the tried and true devil horns in his direction. Much to my delight, he kind of raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement while continuing to sing, as if to signal to me “yes, I know we (or I!) rock, thanks for noticing”. So I was way too excited about this outcome and nudged Mark who saw the whole thing. Pathetic? Yea, sort of, but screw it – I’m comfortable in my role as an audience member and what that entails. And sometimes it entails pumping your damn fist and showing the band what is up….
There have been a couple times Mark and I have gotten positive acknowledgement from a singer. One was from an Iron Maiden tribute band with a singer that looked like Eddie Murphy. The other was from a band that I think will show up here at some point. In both cases, the singer was quite pleased with the level of rocking that he was witnessing…
Sidenote: I didn’t actually follow this particular season of “Survivor”, but doesn’t the guy in the upper right hand corner of the album cover look like that one guy that was on the show? This guy:
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor7/survivors/bio/rupert.shtml
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