Evergrey: With use of melody and acoustic interludes!

Evergrey have a new record, A Heartless Portrait (The Orphean Testament), and this is their thirteen album. This band is power prog band. Darkness reigns in the themes and atmosphere of their sound. However, the band achieves tremendous beauty by the use of melody and acoustic interludes!

The mind child of Thomas Englund (vocals, guitar) when he got together with Dan Bronell (guitars) to write material for a debut album before recruiting Daniel Nojd (bass, backing vocals), Patrick Carlsson (drums), and Will Chandra (keyboards). Although the debut The Dark Discovery was written in 1996, difficulties in finding a label meant it wasn’t released until 1998, on local label Gothenburg Noiseworks, with modest production quality. By this time, much of the material for the follow up had been written; resulting in both albums being released within a little over a year.

Both The Dark Discovery and the sophomore Solitude + Dominance + Tragedy (1999) enabled Evergrey to blaze their own trail as a melodically inclined dark progressive metal band, juxtaposing heavy, crunching riffs from the twin guitar and bass attack, with delicate moments of tender vocal reflection, wrapped up in the King Diamond inspired, tortured and angst-ridden persona of talented front man, Englund.

Although neither release could be described as having a concept, the track themes, often centering on loss, betrayal, paranoia and emotional pain, were harbingers of things to come, as Evergrey forged their image and identity.

Tracklist:

01 Save Us

02 Midwinter Calls

03 Ominous

04 Call Out The Dark

05 The Orphean Testament

06 Reawakening

07 The Great Unwashed

08 Heartless

09 Blindfolded

10 Wildfires

Line-up:

Tom S. Englund – vocals, guitar

Henrik Danhage – guitars

Rikard Zander – keyboards

Jonas Ekdahl – drums

Johan Niemann – bass

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