October 23, Ann Marie & Dave of BeyondEarCandy.com had the opportunity to interview Henrik Danhage, lead guitarist for Evergrey while he was in New York City visiting his girlfriend, Tara. After endlessly circling Gramercy Park looking for a parking spot, we finally managed to squeeze into a “semi-legal” position and made it to the lobby of the apartment building only ten minutes late. Henrik came right down and suggested it would be much better to go for coffee than hang out there, so off we went to Starbucks. After settling ourselves in a corner with a couple of café grandes, we proceeded to enjoy a thoroughly entertaining chat with only minimal distraction from the cappuccino machine.

DAVE: I guess one of the things we’re curious about is the whole DVD you just did.

AM: Yea, that was recorded on the 9th in Gothenburg, (Sweden) right?

HENRIK: Yea, that was on the 9th, Saturday. The pressure has just been tremendous. We’ve been planning this whole big thing.

AM: How long have you been planning it?

HENRIK: Like, three months, probably. Always with Evergrey, we started like working with all the guys like three months in advance, but it was like, ok, we can wait with that and we can wait with that, so like the last weeks before there was a lot to do. But it turned out really good. We played in an old theater with a ground floor and three balconies. There was 150 or 200 in front and then the rest were seats, but they all stood up. It’s just an really old beautiful theater and it’s just gonna look great with the three balconies and it was just so loud.

DAVE: Have you gotten to see how the video turned out?

HENRIK: No, since I left the 11th to go here, I was like, “Ok, I’m outta here.” But I heard it looks really good and it sounds really good. And the guy that did the last video (Patric Ullaeus, Revolver Film Company) he was in charge for all the shooting. So we had like 15 cameras going on.

AM: Is that distracting at all?

HENRIK: No, no, it was really cool. And he is a really nice guy to work with and he has his whole crew; he always has a good crew. They weren’t in the way they were just there. I talked to Tom, like every other day here and he says it looks really good.

DAVE: We’re looking forward to seeing it.

HENRIK: Right now there’s coming together the new video. It’s going to be “More Than Ever”

AM: Is this your fourth video?

HENRIK: No, this is our sixth video but this our the fourth if you look at the last 2 cd’s. It’s gonna be like the fourth one going on MTV here.

AM: That’s just amazing that you’ve got three of the videos on MTV. How did that come about?

HENRIK: I think we should give a lot of hands down to Eric (Corbin) at InsideOut Music He is a good buddy with one of the producers there, so I would really say that it has a lot to do with Eric. I’m very glad that he’s working on InsideOut because he’s a great guy.

DAVE: The fans are just floored that finally a band they like is actually on MTV

HENRIK: The whole support was like… this is unbelievable. At that point there weren’t any Swedish bands that were on there. Now I don’t know. It’s cool.

DAVE: From the concert, you’re going to have a live album coming out?

HENRIK: Yea, with that releasing the live cd and then of course the DVD.

AM: Oh, so DVD will come out second.

HENRIK: Yea, of course, (laughs)

AM: Oh, damn we have to wait. (laughter)

HENRIK: We have some ideas there as well, as far as we would really like to do like vinyls, of the live one. A couple of like very, very limited additions. It looks good and I like having it limited. Some are like “We have a limited addition of like one hundred thousand,” What is that? But having like five hundred thousand that wouldn’t make sense. Right now, when we’re looking around, most of the record presses are out of business so the little people that still do vinyl, it’s really fucking expensive, the price of the stuff like that. That is what we are working on.

DAVE: That would be cool.

HENRIK: Yea just having that big vinyl. It looks better. I mean all the covers just look better.

AM: You can actually read the lyrics. They’re not tiny.

HENRIK: Yea, exactly.

AM: For the live performance, you used the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, right?

HENRIK: Yea, we had a quartet from there. We had a cello, two violins and one, I believe you call it like a viola, it’s like in the middle, about this big. (demonstrates the size with his hands.) They were the four we had.

AM: They were on “The Inner Circle” too, right?

HENRIK: Yea. That was kind of fun having the same guys live. They just came in and did it. Just like they did for the recording. They came like the same day and Jonas had written down all the notes and shit this time as well. So, yea we did like a rehearsal during the day with the cameras and all that shit and that was the first time we played together with them and the guy tells me that it sounds really good. I’m really excited.

AM: That really adds a special element.

HENRIK: Yea, we’re doing a lot of things. We have Cary (Carina Englund) now and this girl Tina and Andy Engberg (previously) from Lion's Share, doing like choirs as well. So it’s gonna look really good. I hope so (laughing) cause it was like really fucking expensive!

DAVE: So what are the touring plans now and for next year?

HENRIK: I think I’ll be home about a week and then we’re gonna start doing Europe. They’re going to be nice. And we’re having some other things going like for February in Europe, but I really think that we should go back here.

AM: Yes, absolutely!

HENRIK: The thing is to find a tour that really fits, because we’ve had like two offers so far and…(pause)

AM: Not sure they’d draw the right people?

HENRIK: No, I think it’s ok, I don’t care. I think that like when we worked with Arch Enemy and Hate Eternal and (The)Black Dahlia(Murder), that was good because we got a whole bunch of new fans that would never have seen Evergrey, so that was kind of cool, but I’m not sure that I would jump on a tour like that now when we have done the Iced Earth tour because it just comes down to how much we are paying for it and maybe we could use that money better. We only have that much money (showing small amount with his hands) to spend so sometimes it’s better to wait and get something like with the Iced Earth tour.

AM: What was it like touring with Iced Earth and Children of Bodom too?

HENRIK: I really liked it. Since we shared a bus with Children of Bodom, there was like this special thing there. I was lucky enough to see them here. They played like a week ago, something like that, with Lamb of God and Fear Factory. So, they are very good buddies. Iced Earth’s, Ralph (Santolla), the guitar player, at that time, he was at the show as well. He was on the bus with Children of Bodom. Richard (Christy) was there as well. You know he’s working with Howard Stern now.

AM: Oh yea?

HENRIK: Yea, it’s amazing. I just got a mail from Jimmy (James MacDonough), as a matter of fact, as well. You know that he’s in Megadeth now.

DAVE: Yea, absolutely. It’s pretty exciting.

HENRIK: They (Iced Earth) were all really nice guys. We heard a lot of things before that (Jon) Schaffer was not cool with bands, but we didn’t have any problems at all. So that was really good, because we were kinda worried you know, but I actually liked him. He was really good to us, I mean, very honest and I have a lot of respect for him and them because they are a big band in the States. All the guys were great. It was a good tour.

DAVE: You just did the Scorpions show. You know you see them as a kid and now your playin' with them.  How was that?

HENRIK: That was really something special. Even though it wasn’t like when I was a kid. It was cool, though. When you go to see a band, I know I always want to hear the old songs. I don’t care, who gives a fuck if they were hits 20 years ago, (laughs). But they were good. We didn’t see that much of them. Of course, they’ve been doing this for 30 years, so they’re probably sick and fucking tired of something's, I can understand that. It was nice that they wanted us.

DAVE: So we need another U.S. tour and you guys back at ProgPower.

HENRIK: Prog Power is a really cool thing. It’s good that he’s (Glenn Harveston) smart as well. Not getting like greedy. And like, "Maybe we should go to a bigger venue." It’s probably one of the most well organized festivals that we’ve been on.

AM: You’ve been there three times to play.

DAVE: Yea, we saw you last year.

HENRIK: With Jonas?

AM: Yea.

HENRIK: Ok, great.

AM: Yea you had to come late because of another show so we never really saw you backstage or anything.

HENRIK: After the gig, Sunday, we went straight to Iceland and did a couple of gigs there. (Before ProgPower) Glenn was like, “What day you want to play? What time you wanna play? ‘Cause you’re my fucking boys ya know.” I just like the idea of just going up and playing then just letting the headlines play. That’s the way to go.

AM: Let’s talk about the new album a bit, The Inner Circle. How would you compare that to what you’ve done before, like “Recreation Day?”

HENRIK: I think for “Recreation Day” we had a good idea. We had started getting some tours at that point and we really started to look at the audience and when we were sitting and doing the set lists and saying, “Yea that is a great song, but maybe that isn’t a great song playing live.” And we just figured that we needed more like rhythm songs and we had that pretty much in mind when we did “Recreation Day” as far a guitar up front, some more of an up tempo going on especially for Evergrey. Unfortunately we didn’t have that much time. “Recreation Day” was written and it was like all over in 3 months. I think we had like 8 weeks in the studio, which is nothing. We just all shared the fucking couch up in the studio, sleeping in shifts there.

AM: Why was there such a compact schedule?

HENRIK: Some of it, was, you know money. And some other bands were going to come into the studio. Then we had a deadline because we had Fredrik Nordström going to mix the cd and he had other projects going on in his studio. We went straight from the studio to the recordings. When I listen to that cd now, there’s a lot of good things on it that I really like a lot. I just wish that we could have the time to make it “right” you know? Make all the songs just as good, but we didn’t have the time. So, sometimes I can feel that it’s just a little bit rushed. Even though, considering the amount of time we spent and the time we had to do that cd, I think it’s an amazing cd. Where as when we did the “Inner Circle” it was like….well we have our own studio now. We’re like, “We’re going to start writing songs and we’re going to record them when we’re satisfied with them.” We spent like six months in the studio this time.

AM: That’s much better.

DAVE: Yea, big difference!

HENRIK: Yea. Most of the guys were in the studio all the time. I mean like the last two or three months me and Rikard and Jonas, we were living out there in the studio every day, so you can imagine that the girlfriends at that point were really mad (laughs) and of course none of them are around any more. Just the whole thing was like a bonding thing as well. We didn’t have like any arguments. If there was anything I don’t like, I could just …we could be professionals during the day and then have a couple of beers at night and just talk things through. Like me and Jonas, if Jonas had something against me or Rik or whatever, that really made us a tight fucking unit. Especially when you hang out THAT much. And Tom was there a lot too. The only guy, Mike was working a lot. He had a lot of other things going on, so he wasn’t able to be there as much as us. But it was a great time. It was very smooth even though there was a lot of work.

DAVE: Do you go to the studio with the theme in mind? Do you write the music and then come up with the concept? How does that usually work?

HENRIK: This studio we have is crazy big, just so fucking big. We have our own rehearsal space in the same building. There’s like a hallway between them. So we doing the pre-production in the rehearsal room. We had two of the ProTools Lite at working stations where the songs were written off and then we had the big one up in the studio together with like the real recording stuff. So we had like three things going at the same time. I remember one time, I hadn’t talked to Tom for like two weeks recording the music. He was sitting on one side and I was sitting over there trying to put another song together and then before lunch we would come in and I would look at what he had done that day and he checked my stuff out. And that was cool, because he just came in as a fresh person. And he was like, “Oh, this is very good.” and “This is not that good, but that is great!” So we had like a bunch of riffs and then we just did like we did with “Recreation Day.” We started to glue together songs.

DAVE: And he (Tom) had like this whole story, this idea going on?

HENRIK: Yea, that was pretty much from kind of sitting backstage, you know, late hours. I remember we started talking about it sitting on the bus, we were like, “That would be a cool idea. Having like this little cult.” And the cool thing, ‘cause especially like me and Tom because we were really strong about this child abuse and stuff like that, I mean, you know, you have kids, but the thing…we were planning this big bash, doing a big fucking bash like the priests and Catholics and like that and the problem is, in order to do that good, because we knew we’d get a lot of heat and because we didn’t want to come out as ignorant assholes, the research and what we have to go into, you know, in order to do that justice, we just didn’t have the time, where this was a cool thing that didn’t require any research, because it was like views.

AM: Did you have a certain direction you wanted to take the listeners in to? Was there a message you were trying to send to people?

HENRIK: It’s kind of hard. I think because even though it is a concept it just comes from different views. Like for instance when, like Hate Restored that was one of the songs that just Tom just had it. He was sitting around up in the studio fucking around with like a regular six-string guitar and he started to play and I was like, “That is great.” and he then just changed that. That was all Tom. He brought home like equipment and recorded it in his bedroom at home and pretty much like two days later he come up and he played the song and I was like, “Don’t… touch…ANYTHING !” (laughter) That was like the end of the recording and I realized I’d been there for almost six months, I was like, “Oh fuck, I have a girl at home.” And she was like really disappointed. So when I heard that song I was like, “Ohhh, he’s written that song for me.” you know? So that is a really special song. It’s very easy for the listener to make his own opinion or her own opinion. Because I know that song has nothing to do with me and my ex-girlfriend but still every time I heard that I always think of her in a good way, you know?

AM: You’re not getting to drink any of your coffee, We’re making you talk all the time. Take a few sips. I’m already done.

HENRIK: I guess they don’t have re-fills here? (laughter)

AM: No not at Starbucks!

DAVE: No free, but you can buy as many as you want! (more laughter)

HENRIK: Yea, that’s the deal. You pay us a shit load of money and we give you coffee.

AM: Nothing’s cheap in New York, that’s for sure. But you’ve been here a lot because your girlfriend lives here, right?

HENRIK: Yea. Well, I’ve been here three times now. I met her when we were doing the B.B. King’s show. She’s been to Sweden like two times now.

AM: She’s American, right?

HENRIK: Yea, it’s kind of different. It’s all good, just different.

AM: She must be a little more patient then the last one because she’s over here and you’re over there.

HENRIK: Yea, she don’t have much choice. It’s nice she has a life of her own here, I like it here a lot. I just feel you have to have a lot of money to really enjoy it (New York City). I don’t have that right now, so I’m staying home in Sweden.

DAVE: So what bands are you currently into?

HENRIK: Pretty much…. I’m not keen on the prog-thing. But I surely like some songs. For instance “Ashes” is one of my all time favorite songs from Pain of Salvation. I love that song. It’s not like my favorite band, but I like that song. They are amazing musicians. I really like the feeling they have in their music. Sometimes it’s just too much for me. I mean, I like “songs”, that’s what I like. And to me, “Ashes” is a song. As far a regular music, I like old Pantera, Meshuggah, I really like Meshuggah. Jeff Buckley is one of my all time favorites. Sting. Then I like all the regular…my favorite old-school band is probably Loudness. Razor X and a lot of “hair bands” that could play, you know? Like Winger, Dokken, all that. I always liked Ratt, all the gunslingers, ‘cause they could play. I don’t like the idea of people who can’t play, but I don't like people can only play and don't have any fuckin' songs.  I would rather listen to Kurt Cobain bashing out four chords, but doing it with the right attitude, then some guy doing like 500 chord changes just because they can.

AM: Oh, then you don’t like Yngwie? (joking) (laughter)

HENRIK: Oh yea, I like him. I still think to this day he’s the biggest rock star that we (Sweden) ever had. As far as that whole attitude. He can be like really funny when you hear things he’s said. But he’s consistent.

AM: I’ve seen him a couple of times. He’s really great to the fans.

HENRIK: Yea I like Yngwie a lot. He’s probably one of my top favorite guitar players even though I never play anything like him.

AM: So who were your influences guitar-wise?

HENRIK: I would say, the ones that I really enjoyed that I’m always kind of standing up listening to, Paul Gilbert, John Sykes, George Lynch, and others. And then we have Steve Vai whose just amazing.

AM: I understand there’s a side project in the works. Whose involved in that?

HENRIK: That would be me! (smiling) The thing is me and Jonas together with the former bass player of Hammerfall, (Fredrik Larsson) he’s an old buddy of mine, and we have this crazy little kid (singing), I mean he’s not little, he’s young. Anyway, it’s a good thing…. I had come from the previous band that I had before Evergrey, it was heavier. It’s just nice having an outlet for that. We recorded like eleven songs. Basically, me and Jonas did the whole cd as far as playing all the stuff on it. Then we brought along Fredrik and Jimmy, so we had a band, (laughing), It’s cool. It’s very, very, un-Evergrey. I would say if you’d take like the coldness you have in the black metal stuff and mix it with that Pantera kind of groove. The singer is AWESOME.

AM: Who is he now?

HENRIK: He was like in the next rehearsal room long before I joined with Evergrey. We just kind of stumbled on him. He sent us (Henrik & Jonas) some tapes and we were like, “Alright….”

AM: What’s his name?

HENRIK: Jimmy. I have a cd that I can give you. If you want to check it out there.

AM: Oh, that would be good.

HENRIK: It’s really good. It’s really cool, because Tom’s been around the whole time we recorded the cd and he’s come in and out. It's been a lot of fun. There’s a lot of things we don’t have to worry about like in Evergrey. It’s kind of serious, all the things. It’s been like, come in here and just press record and fucking go.

AM: I can’t wait to hear it. When is it going to come out?

HENRIK: We’re starting to pass out things now. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem getting that released, though. The guys from Children of Bodom were like almost starting to cry (laughs) when they hear that. They were like, “Oh my god! What the fuck! What’s up with this singer?!” Jonas is there with a lotta fucking blast beats. It’s very different. This is a cool thing as well, that probably attracts the Evergrey fan, I don’t know, maybe they’ll think this is good as well. Jonas and Tom have been recording like some pop songs, in Swedish, I think it’s like two or three. It’s very slick, very poppy and Tom sings in Swedish, that is very good. It’s kind of also very different from Evergrey, but I believe because Tom is singing it will be a lot more recognized and draw more parallels to Evergrey then with Death Destruction. We call it Death Destruction. It’s more like Damage Plan, Pantera playing-wise. The singer is great. Mike is like crazy. Every time he comes over he’s got Death Destruction cd’s with him. He gets up in the d.j. booth, puts in some Death Destruction and starts screaming. He’s like the number one fan.

DAVE: We play demos from bands on the radio. One is Tiwanaku.

AM: You gotta check out their guitar player, Rick Renstrom. He’s awesome.

HENRIK: I heard of him! He’s got like short arms or something?

AM: Yea, that’s him! He’s unbelievable!

DAVE: Wade Black’s on vocals. They got (Richard) Christy on drums, before he went to Howard Stern (USA Radio Show).

HENRIK: Christy has got to be one of the sweetest guys I met in my whole life. He’s just so fucking down to earth. I mean, you can’t say anything bad about him.

DAVE: Let's remember to do one of those station ids.

AM: Oh yea, whenever we interview anyone we like to have them record a greeting to be played on the radio. The listeners absolutely love that.

HENRIK: Sure, but if you have any more question, just go. Either I do this, or I go home and clean the apartment.

AM: That’s no good! Well, when we leave you we’re probably going to go out and drink beer.

DAVE: Yea, it’ll be past noon, we’ll be done working. Then we’ve got this party in Jersey. (Hosted by a fellow metal webzine, “That’s So Metal” in Linden, NJ. - Early night photo they took).

HENRIK: Yea that’s tonight. Tara was telling me. I thought it was really far.

AM: No, it’s just over the river.

HENRIK: I was there (New Jersey) once. On my birthday, June 15 to see Iced Earth. Tara told me it was a kinda of new venue. (Starland Ballroom, Sayerville) That was good. I really hung a lot with the guys from Beyond The Embrace. The singer, (Shawn Gallagher) he was a really good guy. He was into Evergrey a lot. I met him before at the Brave Words Bloody Knuckles Six Pack. It was kind of fun. You know, the more you’re out, the more people you meet.

DAVE: You also toured with Mercenary. We got to see them for the first time at ProgPower.

HENRIK: They’ve doing a lot of shows with us now with the new cd (11 Dreams).  They kinda have got they’re style, you know? I think they’re going to be doing a couple of shows with us when I get back home. For the European thing. Good guys. Not like swines, you know like Evergrey. (laughter)

AM: Yea, we met them.

HENRIK: Very good guitar player. We’ve been doing like 10 to 15 gigs. It looks like the company is going to be doing a push here.

AM: They could do well here.

HENRIK: If you’ve heard them a couple of times, you can definitely hear stuff you haven’t heard before and say, “Oh, this is probably Mercenary.” and that’s a good thing. There are too many groups out there doing like the same thing.  I don’t know all the names of them, but to me they sound very alike but hopefully if you go into them and check ‘em out you might hear a lot of different stuff. My dad doesn’t know the difference between Pantera and Meshuggah, because he’s like, “that’s just fucking noise”. That is probably like the same thing. I mean you don’t sell like 25 million cd’s if it’s like rubbish.

AM: Yea, but it’s a very fad oriented market over here. People say, “Oh is that what’s cool? That’s what I’m buying.”

DAVE: Yea, and they go that’s what’s cool this year, but not next year. For me I have to have substance.

HENRIK: Yea, that’s what I think is cool. Like Slipknot, you can say whatever you want, but they can fucking play.

DAVE: If there’s good musicianship, you can always go back and find something new to like.

AM: So how do you categorize Evergrey? What genre do you put them in?

HENRIK: I would probably say like, I don’t know that “metal” is fair, but like, I think we are more hard rock than we are metal so to speak.  Where as Nevermore is a metal band hands down. Where as we are not that hard. So I would say something like hard rock. Some dark hard rock, something like that, you know? But I would definitely have like the melodic part in.

DAVE: I always like what I describe as the “chunkiness” of Evergrey. Those driving, pounding guitars.

HENRIK: Yea, you know Fred Nordström when he was mixing “The Great Deceiver”, this guitar part in the middle, like (demonstrates), he was like “Oh my god, you’re sending out fucking Morse Code.” (much laughter) He didn’t like that at all!

DAVE: Yea, that’s what we’re talking about!

AM: I love it!

HENRIK: I don’t think that we think about that. We just make songs. I don’t know which song is the hardest song or the heaviest song on the new cd. “Waking Up Blind” is like the same four chords going in a band for like four minutes. The same four chords, no real drums, no bass. It was recorded in there in the room, the guitar and everything was recorded in the first take. There were some difficult pieces making that song sound the same as the others. It was recorded in the studio. But you look at that song, and…. I don’t know, do we have any heavy songs? Probably a lot of people say that “Ambassador” is kind of dark but still, “Ambassador” is just as much Evergrey as “Waking Up Blind”. With Evergrey the strongest thing we have is Tom’s voice. That is the thing that really sets us apart. I mean you can be really fucking tone deaf and don’t have any musical knowledge whatsoever or musical memory either, and you would still be like, “Is that Tom?”

AM: You’ll know. It’s a very signature sound.

DAVE: Yea, when Evergrey did (Yngwie's) “Rising Force”...

HENRIK: That was before me.

DAVE: Yea, and in that song you hear Tom’s voice and it’s just very captivating.

HENRIK: Have you heard the things he did with Nightrage? Century Media. It’s kind of a death metal band. It’s kind of cool as well going from (Tomas) Lindburg, At The Gates metal singer, screaming his balls off and  Tom is going off.  They just recorded the second cd. They have (Per Möller) Jensen (Invocator, Konkhra, The Haunted) as the drummer. Have you heard the new Haunted?

AM: No, not yet.

DAVE: Something to add to the list of gotta listen to.

HENRIK: Well you know the old singer (Peter Dolving) is back in (The) Haunted. It’s good. There’s so many. Tara (Henrik's girlfriend) is like, she’s a complete metal geek. I love her, but she’s a geek. (laughter) She has like all the metal magazines. My son’s mother, she always hated me when I would like go into record stores. I stay in the metal section like 15 minutes. But going down to the east village in the record shops Tara is like….. I’m out the door, because I just get tired of it. She has like, some fucking vinyls but there are different presses that she has to have them. Even though I laugh at it, I don’t laugh at her or people who do that, I just think it’s amazing. Same thing with like people who go to a festival. Just think about that. Sleeping in a fucking tent? People get pissed and shit and they fall into your tent. You get your fucking gear stolen, but people do it. I mean that’s fucking hard core. And you’re on stage and there are like 20 thousand people there to see you. I mean they woke up hungover or whatever, that is fucking hard core and I have the fullest respect for all those people. The longest trip I have taken, I think it’s like five hours to see Kiss. That was on the fucking reunion tour. I was like, “Alright, I can do that.”

AM: Um, well, I flew all the way to Finland to see some shows. (laughter).

HENRIK: Yea, cool I like that. I think that’s fucking cool.

AM: Yea, well that’s why when we were thinking of coming to Europe to see some festivals we were first thinking of Germany, like Wacken, and my friends were like, “Yea, it’s cool. We sleep in tents and all that.” And I’m thinking, “I dunno this isn’t sounding fun to me.” I’m getting too old for that shit. Give me a fucking hotel.

HENRIK: You gotta go through a lot of fucking alcohol to do that. And not take a shower for four days.

AM: No, no. I can’t cope.

DAVE: Well, make sure we record the radio message before we run out of tape.

AM: Oh, yea, this is the name (handing him a BeyondEarCandy keychain/bottle opener). This is like our business card. Far more useful. Say whatever you want.

HENRIK: “So hi guys this is Henrik from Evergrey, check it out BeyondEarCandy.com...Metal!”

AM: Thanks! The listeners absolutely love those. We were recording everyone down at ProgPower and Timo Kotipelto definitely wins the award for funniest one.

DAVE: Yea he started singing it and purposely broke up his voice.

AM: It was hilarious.

HENRIK: Cool. Oh, here (hands us the DeathDestruction cd) I only have one.

AM: That’s ok, we can share it.

HENRIK: Yea, just burn a copy. So check it out, play a song. Oh, yea, (leans into the mike) “This is Henrik from Evergrey, check out me and Jonas’ new band, DeathDestruction.”

AM: Excellent!

And then the 90 minute tape runs out. Gotta get a digital recorder. So after snapping a few photos, and getting told off by the Starbucks staff, (no photo taking allowed in Starbucks!?) we chatted another 30 minutes and walked Henrik back to his girlfriend’s apartment. Then we returned to the car to check out DeathDestruction. It is a mind blowing barrage of powerfully raw vocals sewn neatly together with Henrik's crushing guitar riffs and Jonas’ strident drumming. Blew us away…and all the poor dog-walkers in the park. Keep your eyes open for this one! And listen to BeyondEarCandy.com internet radio for greeting from Henrik, Evergrey music, and our favorite DeathDestruction song, “Hellfire!” 

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Hear Evergrey albums & recorded station id he did for us on BeyondEarCandy radio!

Find out more about Evergrey on their official web site
Evergrey's latest album "The Inner Circle" is available at CDInzane.com
Evergrey's record label is InsideOut Music, visit them for more great artists

Thanks Henrik, it was fun hangin' out with you.
Thanks to Eric Corbin from InsideOut for arranging the interview.