Andreas Blomqvist is one of the great virtuoso bass players in the world today. He is one of the founding members of the prog metal band Seventh Wonder, where he functions not only as the bass player, but as a songwriter, producer, and lyricist. Seventh Wonder is one of the great bands of the genre, and in this fans opinion their musical pedigree stands toe to toe with just about any album falling under the category of progressive metal. After somewhat of a hiatus for the band, greatly in part to vocalist Tommy Karevik taking over as the singer for the truly world renown metal band Kamelot. Seventh Wonder has returned and have joined forces with a new label Frontiers records to release a brand new live DVD/CD box set entitled Welcome To Atlanta: Live 2014, with a brand new studio album looming on the horizon. Metal Exiles had the privilege of interviewing the bassist extraordinaire to discuss the details behind the formation of the band’s first ever live release, as well as their two new studio tracks, and lastly the progress being made on their first full length studio album in more than 6 years.
Interview with Andreas Blomqvist of Seventh Wonder
By Michael Knowles
Metal Exiles: What is it about Frontiers Records that made them the ideal label for you and your bandmates?
Andreas Bloomqvist: Well we were kind of…we had a bit of a hiatus and then we are really trying to pick up pace again. We pretty much decided that we were going to do this live thing with or without a label pretty much, because I wanted to just get something out there, everybody has been waiting far too long for anything and then all of a sudden this one label approached us, and shortly thereafter Frontiers did too, so we were like ok all of a sudden we went from zero to a couple and we just thought…we talked things through and went over the details, and we… you also get an impression from the people you are dealing with and at the end of the day it seemed that Frontiers had the sweetest deal. They also have an impressive roster, many of us in the band like other bands on their roster. I mean they have the big bands for instance Toto is signed to them, the whole band went to go see Toto live actually not too long ago. That was a fun night. They also lately they managed to harness all of our pears basically. The other bands you know we end up playing shoulder to shoulder to like Circus Maximus, DGM, Withem, and what not so it felt like…I think it’s the right place to be for us.
Metal Exiles: What was it like rehearsing for such an ambitious performance? Mercy Falls is such technical monster of an album, and I believe you said before that you had not even performed a good majority of the songs live before?
Andreas: Oh yea it was quite an ordeal for sure, I mean…first of all everyone had to do their homework before we even got to the rehearsal room together because everybody had to learn their parts well enough before we could even start otherwise it would be a waste of time. I wouldn’t say that we haven’t played most of the songs before but a handful had never ever been played live. I mean some for good reason because it would be weird playing that Overture by itself and others because frankly some of those songs are very difficult to play and difficult to get to come out right in a live setting so for a couple of different reasons a couple of those songs never ended up being played but that was a great and fun challenge to see what we could do with those tracks and that was a big part of the practice, the routine of going through the songs we had never played before
Metal Exiles: You had mentioned that night 1 of the Welcome To Atlanta DVD recording definitely had its struggles, and I believe you jokingly said you and Tommy were almost in tears halfway through, what were the difficulties that you guys were facing during the performance?
Andreas: Right I remember it was probably around the time of A Day Away and I was close to taking a dive off stage and I would break my neck or something and by the looks of it Tommy was about to join me, I think we were all kind of in tears afterwards too. But you know it’s a struggle I actually did another interview and they asked how do you feel if you mess up on stage and stuff like that. In terms of the little things here or there the wrong chord or wrong note, I don’t bother too much for the most part the whole of it usually comes out anyway. What really is the struggle that’s when you don’t have a good sound on stage. You can’t really hear what you’re doing, and for instance you can’t hear the kick drum or the snare, I mean anything that’s missing really, it’s kind of a delicate thing, and if you can’t hear yourself properly or you only hear yourself, it gets extremely difficult to play so I really think that it did hamper our performance when it came to engaging the audience and what not, and being more fun to watch but I think that it also…I actually just got the box set, the case of the DVD’s and I was watching it yesterday, I think that it’s still a testament to the fact that we actually did our homework and I think that we played very well, and I am very happy with my own performance for sure and Stefan was a beast so I was very happy but knowing yourself and watching it I know it’s so much focus going in and just pulling it off so that was a bit of a struggle.
Metal Exiles: Of course fans had to wait patiently for 2 years for this great release to see the light of day, what were some of the obstacles you guys faced that prevented it from being released sooner? Was it more the challenge of post-production or merely finding a distributor?
Andreas: It was both you know we were…to back track a little there, after The Great Escape we did some shows on that and then a bunch of stuff happened, Tommy joined Kamelot in 2011 and I relocated to America with my family for 2011 and most 0f 2012 so that was a bit of a break and coming back there we really started aiming for a release in 2013 and it was just so hard with Tommy being away so much to get anything done, so finally I had to accept the fact that ok we’re not going to make an album right now, so that is when I said ok then let’s at least do something, that was when I came up with the idea ok let’s record two songs do videos and lets just release those and give the fans something while we finish this album, and well it turns out we only got one of them done and that was Inner Enemy, but the other thing from that session was The Promise which is going to be released now. So that’s what we spent some time on then, and then in the middle of that kind of void or vacuum environment I thought to myself maybe I should try to bring this old idea of playing Mercy Falls live back to life again, so I started talking to some promoters, we got Glenn and that was in late 2013 at the same time that we were doing these songs so ok we get the practice done and play that thing in late…well basically 2 years ago in September 2014. And then you know we headed straight in to writing the new album but then also it actually came as somewhat as a surprise I must say being the producer of that thing, you know we did 2 shows, the first one was about an hour and a half and the another hour the day after with what five HD cameras or something which is 12 and half hours of music to go through and it… you know we did have a guy do the actual video editing for us but I was very very much involved in that and reviewing everything and it’s you know you have so many degrees of freedom, you want to make it like…what do people want to see, in this type of music people want to see you play, they don’t want something that is too many fast clips that you can’t really keep up or visual effects or something like that, they want to see the band play because that’s really what was missing before and you know you have to find that sweet spot like how often should we change the cameras, which camera is the best right now, and that just took a whole heck of a lot longer than I ever could have foreseen and for the engineer too unfortunately so we spent a lot of time doing that. And then it was the mix since Frontiers wanted to release it as a CD we really spent some time making sure it sounded really really good and I’m super happy with the mix. And then it was the artwork getting done and dealing with the 2 record companies so writing the album…I mean we are recording it right now so everything is done and arranged so these things just stacked up and you know took the time that it did, I mean we were done in May or June with everything. And also I should say that I just felt that it was really important that we include this new song, I mean once we knew that it was going to be released as a CD too, I didn’t want to be one of the guys who just release a bunch of stuff, and make the fans buy more stuff than they really want and you know I don’t like that, so I wanted to make for damn sure that if we do this I want a new song in there so ok that meant that we had to go back to the sessions we did with Inner Enemy, we dug up The Promise which was always intended to be Inner Enemy 2 if you will so and we redid the entire vocals for that so Tommy and me had to get together and rewrite the lyrics, and he had to record everything so that was another mixing to be done and another mastering so that also added a couple of months at the end so you know just a bunch of stuff.
Metal Exiles: I feel your new drummer Stefan Norgren fits in perfectly with this band, how would you assess his playing style, and what do you think he brought to these live performances?
Andreas: Well he is such an accomplished drummer and he has the foundations down I mean Johnny our previous drummer he was fireworks, I mean I remember I had my friend the late Marcel Jacob, he came out to see a show once and after seeing Johnny play he came to me and he said, you should lock this guy up in a room and force him to just play AC/DC songs for six months because I mean he’s all over the place and when he gets to playing some power metal stuff like that he’s awesome but for Stefan he’s just…he’s a complete drummer much more meat and potatoes you like to say, whatever beat he plays, he doesn’t need to put all the ornaments and fills and stuff because it sounds awesome anyway, he’s got that groove and just sounds great whatever he’s doing. And then learning our entire back catalogue and just going through that and he played it better than anybody else so I mean he does that stuff too, so I think that combo makes him unbeatable, and it’s just so comfortable…I feel so safe having him behind me on stage, and I’ve never ever experienced that before.
Metal Exiles: One of the highlights for me was the show closing acoustic medley, how did that idea come about?
Andreas: Well it was also about doing something special of course, doing something fun so we talked about doing something acoustic, so once that idea came about I thought well what I want to do seeing how this is going to be released for a bunch of people and maybe a lot of people have come in quite recently because of Kamelot and maybe with the last album or so and maybe they don’t know our back history so much so that was when I came up with the idea to do a Seventh Wonder Odyssey to take us through. So we picked out a couple choruses or nice parts that we liked form each album starting from Become and going to The Great Escape, so that was the idea I had to take us through our history kind of summarize that so then after I got the guys to agree to that then I think I made a couple of requests or suggestions, but in the end Tommy was the one that got to single out which pieces to choose because basically it’s just…there’s a lot of focus on the vocals, there’s not as much music wise so that made sense, and then we just worked on the keys so they would fit playing in a more mellow or lower register and yea so that’s it.
Metal Exiles: When I first heard the new studio track Inner Enemy I immediately thought this is the song that will reveal Seventh Wonder to the world definitely very catchy and radio friendly, could you talk about the songwriting vision behind the song? And do you see the band writing another song in a similar style to appeal to fans outside the prog world?
Andreas: Oh no that’s a chapter in its own I don’t think any song The Great Escape included took as long to create and arrange as Inner Enemy. It was clear beforehand we had decided ok we’re going to do something it’s going to be something we’ve never done, it’s going to be super short, no unnecessary embellishments just to challenge ourselves, just to do it, just to be different than what we’ve done before, let it be vocals driven, and be short and catchy, but we’re not very good at that so it took forever and ever, I don’t think we’ve ever been so angry and annoyed with each other after that process. It was funny, The Promise that is coming out right now that was kind of the antithesis or yin and the yang related to Inner Enemy where went back to just…I wouldn’t say no holds barred but basically just doing what we do so that ended up 10 minutes of what’s more like us, and they were…they were written and recorded together aside from the vocals that we redid so they were originally and still are connected in the sense that they carry over the same story it’s about…it’s basically Inner Enemy part 1 and 2, but very different musically.
Metal Exiles: The other new studio track titled The Promise, is just an epic prog metal masterpiece, I love everything about this song, could you talk a little about how this song came together, and how it felt for the band to release new material after almost a 6-year absence?
Andreas: Well first of all the idea was to release it back when Inner Enemy was released as a little mini story together, but that didn’t happen because of lack of time, but I’m just happy we get it out, and I just feel less embarrassed about releasing a live thing now that there is at least something new on it, I think people have been waiting for that and it’s long overdue, so I’m just excited and you know it’s always hard when you live with yourself to…is there any difference is there a new direction or whatever, I don’t think so, I think that’s a fair statement of where we were maybe had we worked on it for this album some pieces would have been cut away maybe but no…I’m just happy because the one thing that makes me feel good about having it released is that we got some…you know the Inner Enemy we got some…the inner Enemy being the type of song that it is and also the video looking like it did, we took some heat for that, and I think that’s fair, it’s just that was never the idea for that to be our soul statement for 2 years so that was cool as a one off but I never felt comfortable with that being ok so this is what the band is like, looks like, sounds like right now, because that wasn’t really fair I mean I like it, I love it and I love the video too and everything but it was definitely a bit out there for us so it felt weird that that was the only thing that was released for such a long time, so that makes me happy too that we show this and then people know that ok there’s still going to be a little bit of both so I guess that’s how I feel about that.
Metal Exiles: Can you talk a little about the progress of the new album and what fans can expect from it? And are you still shooting for a January release?
Andreas: So we’re making good progress, everything is written and arranged, we have recorded all the drums, basic keyboard tracks are down, I’m 3 or 4 songs in bass wise, there’s rhythm guitars on at least 1 track, so we’re making good progress and I know Tommy is starting to work any day so the idea is to have it wrapped up mixed, mastered, and ready to deliver to Frontiers right around New Years. And that’s what I know, seeing how this is our first release together, what their time line is beyond that, but given how long it’s been and after we have delivered it, it’s going to be with the artwork and everything I can’t see that they’re going to keep it for much…for any longer than they need, of course it is going to be there for some time afterwards but it’s definitely going to be an early 2017 release, probably January would be pushing it because they need a couple weeks but you know early 2017 nonetheless.
Metal Exiles: Will this album feature an appearance by Tommy’s sister Jenny?
Andres: Good question, to be honest I don’t really think we know that, we never know until…the first time we had discussed it from Banished the Wicked from Waiting in the Wings actually the idea was to bring his sister and my wife in…we didn’t end up doing that Jenny ended up taking the whole deal, but the parts in Mercy Falls Tommy just did that on his own, I was like oh…me producing the album I had no idea it was about to happen. You know they have a great working relationship together, I hope she will be in there, she always does an amazing job coming in there, if she wants to and we can find the right place sure. Nothing has been settled or said about it, I would like to see that happen, seems like a lot of people would dig that too.
Metal Exiles: What would it take for Seventh Wonder to do a small tour in the United States, I know there are many fans that would love to see a Seventh Wonder/Circus Maximus bill on the west coast, any chance of that happening?
Andreas: Right, 2 things, first of all it needs to work with Tommy’s Kamelot schedule, that’s always going to be somewhat of an impediment for us right now, I mean it’s a blessing and a curse, sure it brings in a lot of new fans though so you know we’re happy about that. Seeing people learning about us that didn’t have a clue before so that’s great. The downside is it’s hard to find time to work together and also fit in tours, because they tour a lot and they have albums in between so that’s one thing. The other is we don’t really have a booking agency or someone to go to and you know juggling everything as it is with the bands and families, and jobs and what not, none of us can really ourselves be the booking agent and make a tour happen, I don’t think we have those connections oversees anyway so you know I think it’s pretty much hinged upon somebody else setting it up and inviting us or if we’re lucky and catch a break and maybe run as an opening act for somebody else, so even in Europe those things that have happened, the Italian tours or Norway and Finland tours, have usually been you know some dude pretty much just an enthusiast who ok I’ve got 2 or 3 club dates you can do on these dates, and they set everything up, and we basically come and play. So since we don’t have a big booking company behind us I can’t really say. I know that we would love to go it’s the best thing we know to gout and play, so that’s what we want to do, and we’d jump on any chance to go if we could make it work out, but unfortunately I can’t make any such promises today because frankly I don’t know. I mean there’s going to be some live shows for sure in Scandinavia and Northern Europe I’m pretty sure of that, above that I don’t know, we would love to that’s a message for sure, so anybody who has any leads just reach out and we’ll come.
Official Seventh Wonder Site
BUY Welcome To Atlanta: Live 2014
Interview with Andreas Blomqvist of Seventh Wonder
By Michael Knowles
Metal Exiles: What is it about Frontiers Records that made them the ideal label for you and your bandmates?
Andreas Bloomqvist: Well we were kind of…we had a bit of a hiatus and then we are really trying to pick up pace again. We pretty much decided that we were going to do this live thing with or without a label pretty much, because I wanted to just get something out there, everybody has been waiting far too long for anything and then all of a sudden this one label approached us, and shortly thereafter Frontiers did too, so we were like ok all of a sudden we went from zero to a couple and we just thought…we talked things through and went over the details, and we… you also get an impression from the people you are dealing with and at the end of the day it seemed that Frontiers had the sweetest deal. They also have an impressive roster, many of us in the band like other bands on their roster. I mean they have the big bands for instance Toto is signed to them, the whole band went to go see Toto live actually not too long ago. That was a fun night. They also lately they managed to harness all of our pears basically. The other bands you know we end up playing shoulder to shoulder to like Circus Maximus, DGM, Withem, and what not so it felt like…I think it’s the right place to be for us.
Metal Exiles: What was it like rehearsing for such an ambitious performance? Mercy Falls is such technical monster of an album, and I believe you said before that you had not even performed a good majority of the songs live before?
Andreas: Oh yea it was quite an ordeal for sure, I mean…first of all everyone had to do their homework before we even got to the rehearsal room together because everybody had to learn their parts well enough before we could even start otherwise it would be a waste of time. I wouldn’t say that we haven’t played most of the songs before but a handful had never ever been played live. I mean some for good reason because it would be weird playing that Overture by itself and others because frankly some of those songs are very difficult to play and difficult to get to come out right in a live setting so for a couple of different reasons a couple of those songs never ended up being played but that was a great and fun challenge to see what we could do with those tracks and that was a big part of the practice, the routine of going through the songs we had never played before
Metal Exiles: You had mentioned that night 1 of the Welcome To Atlanta DVD recording definitely had its struggles, and I believe you jokingly said you and Tommy were almost in tears halfway through, what were the difficulties that you guys were facing during the performance?
Andreas: Right I remember it was probably around the time of A Day Away and I was close to taking a dive off stage and I would break my neck or something and by the looks of it Tommy was about to join me, I think we were all kind of in tears afterwards too. But you know it’s a struggle I actually did another interview and they asked how do you feel if you mess up on stage and stuff like that. In terms of the little things here or there the wrong chord or wrong note, I don’t bother too much for the most part the whole of it usually comes out anyway. What really is the struggle that’s when you don’t have a good sound on stage. You can’t really hear what you’re doing, and for instance you can’t hear the kick drum or the snare, I mean anything that’s missing really, it’s kind of a delicate thing, and if you can’t hear yourself properly or you only hear yourself, it gets extremely difficult to play so I really think that it did hamper our performance when it came to engaging the audience and what not, and being more fun to watch but I think that it also…I actually just got the box set, the case of the DVD’s and I was watching it yesterday, I think that it’s still a testament to the fact that we actually did our homework and I think that we played very well, and I am very happy with my own performance for sure and Stefan was a beast so I was very happy but knowing yourself and watching it I know it’s so much focus going in and just pulling it off so that was a bit of a struggle.
Metal Exiles: Of course fans had to wait patiently for 2 years for this great release to see the light of day, what were some of the obstacles you guys faced that prevented it from being released sooner? Was it more the challenge of post-production or merely finding a distributor?
Andreas: It was both you know we were…to back track a little there, after The Great Escape we did some shows on that and then a bunch of stuff happened, Tommy joined Kamelot in 2011 and I relocated to America with my family for 2011 and most 0f 2012 so that was a bit of a break and coming back there we really started aiming for a release in 2013 and it was just so hard with Tommy being away so much to get anything done, so finally I had to accept the fact that ok we’re not going to make an album right now, so that is when I said ok then let’s at least do something, that was when I came up with the idea ok let’s record two songs do videos and lets just release those and give the fans something while we finish this album, and well it turns out we only got one of them done and that was Inner Enemy, but the other thing from that session was The Promise which is going to be released now. So that’s what we spent some time on then, and then in the middle of that kind of void or vacuum environment I thought to myself maybe I should try to bring this old idea of playing Mercy Falls live back to life again, so I started talking to some promoters, we got Glenn and that was in late 2013 at the same time that we were doing these songs so ok we get the practice done and play that thing in late…well basically 2 years ago in September 2014. And then you know we headed straight in to writing the new album but then also it actually came as somewhat as a surprise I must say being the producer of that thing, you know we did 2 shows, the first one was about an hour and a half and the another hour the day after with what five HD cameras or something which is 12 and half hours of music to go through and it… you know we did have a guy do the actual video editing for us but I was very very much involved in that and reviewing everything and it’s you know you have so many degrees of freedom, you want to make it like…what do people want to see, in this type of music people want to see you play, they don’t want something that is too many fast clips that you can’t really keep up or visual effects or something like that, they want to see the band play because that’s really what was missing before and you know you have to find that sweet spot like how often should we change the cameras, which camera is the best right now, and that just took a whole heck of a lot longer than I ever could have foreseen and for the engineer too unfortunately so we spent a lot of time doing that. And then it was the mix since Frontiers wanted to release it as a CD we really spent some time making sure it sounded really really good and I’m super happy with the mix. And then it was the artwork getting done and dealing with the 2 record companies so writing the album…I mean we are recording it right now so everything is done and arranged so these things just stacked up and you know took the time that it did, I mean we were done in May or June with everything. And also I should say that I just felt that it was really important that we include this new song, I mean once we knew that it was going to be released as a CD too, I didn’t want to be one of the guys who just release a bunch of stuff, and make the fans buy more stuff than they really want and you know I don’t like that, so I wanted to make for damn sure that if we do this I want a new song in there so ok that meant that we had to go back to the sessions we did with Inner Enemy, we dug up The Promise which was always intended to be Inner Enemy 2 if you will so and we redid the entire vocals for that so Tommy and me had to get together and rewrite the lyrics, and he had to record everything so that was another mixing to be done and another mastering so that also added a couple of months at the end so you know just a bunch of stuff.
Metal Exiles: I feel your new drummer Stefan Norgren fits in perfectly with this band, how would you assess his playing style, and what do you think he brought to these live performances?
Andreas: Well he is such an accomplished drummer and he has the foundations down I mean Johnny our previous drummer he was fireworks, I mean I remember I had my friend the late Marcel Jacob, he came out to see a show once and after seeing Johnny play he came to me and he said, you should lock this guy up in a room and force him to just play AC/DC songs for six months because I mean he’s all over the place and when he gets to playing some power metal stuff like that he’s awesome but for Stefan he’s just…he’s a complete drummer much more meat and potatoes you like to say, whatever beat he plays, he doesn’t need to put all the ornaments and fills and stuff because it sounds awesome anyway, he’s got that groove and just sounds great whatever he’s doing. And then learning our entire back catalogue and just going through that and he played it better than anybody else so I mean he does that stuff too, so I think that combo makes him unbeatable, and it’s just so comfortable…I feel so safe having him behind me on stage, and I’ve never ever experienced that before.
Metal Exiles: One of the highlights for me was the show closing acoustic medley, how did that idea come about?
Andreas: Well it was also about doing something special of course, doing something fun so we talked about doing something acoustic, so once that idea came about I thought well what I want to do seeing how this is going to be released for a bunch of people and maybe a lot of people have come in quite recently because of Kamelot and maybe with the last album or so and maybe they don’t know our back history so much so that was when I came up with the idea to do a Seventh Wonder Odyssey to take us through. So we picked out a couple choruses or nice parts that we liked form each album starting from Become and going to The Great Escape, so that was the idea I had to take us through our history kind of summarize that so then after I got the guys to agree to that then I think I made a couple of requests or suggestions, but in the end Tommy was the one that got to single out which pieces to choose because basically it’s just…there’s a lot of focus on the vocals, there’s not as much music wise so that made sense, and then we just worked on the keys so they would fit playing in a more mellow or lower register and yea so that’s it.
Metal Exiles: When I first heard the new studio track Inner Enemy I immediately thought this is the song that will reveal Seventh Wonder to the world definitely very catchy and radio friendly, could you talk about the songwriting vision behind the song? And do you see the band writing another song in a similar style to appeal to fans outside the prog world?
Andreas: Oh no that’s a chapter in its own I don’t think any song The Great Escape included took as long to create and arrange as Inner Enemy. It was clear beforehand we had decided ok we’re going to do something it’s going to be something we’ve never done, it’s going to be super short, no unnecessary embellishments just to challenge ourselves, just to do it, just to be different than what we’ve done before, let it be vocals driven, and be short and catchy, but we’re not very good at that so it took forever and ever, I don’t think we’ve ever been so angry and annoyed with each other after that process. It was funny, The Promise that is coming out right now that was kind of the antithesis or yin and the yang related to Inner Enemy where went back to just…I wouldn’t say no holds barred but basically just doing what we do so that ended up 10 minutes of what’s more like us, and they were…they were written and recorded together aside from the vocals that we redid so they were originally and still are connected in the sense that they carry over the same story it’s about…it’s basically Inner Enemy part 1 and 2, but very different musically.
Metal Exiles: The other new studio track titled The Promise, is just an epic prog metal masterpiece, I love everything about this song, could you talk a little about how this song came together, and how it felt for the band to release new material after almost a 6-year absence?
Andreas: Well first of all the idea was to release it back when Inner Enemy was released as a little mini story together, but that didn’t happen because of lack of time, but I’m just happy we get it out, and I just feel less embarrassed about releasing a live thing now that there is at least something new on it, I think people have been waiting for that and it’s long overdue, so I’m just excited and you know it’s always hard when you live with yourself to…is there any difference is there a new direction or whatever, I don’t think so, I think that’s a fair statement of where we were maybe had we worked on it for this album some pieces would have been cut away maybe but no…I’m just happy because the one thing that makes me feel good about having it released is that we got some…you know the Inner Enemy we got some…the inner Enemy being the type of song that it is and also the video looking like it did, we took some heat for that, and I think that’s fair, it’s just that was never the idea for that to be our soul statement for 2 years so that was cool as a one off but I never felt comfortable with that being ok so this is what the band is like, looks like, sounds like right now, because that wasn’t really fair I mean I like it, I love it and I love the video too and everything but it was definitely a bit out there for us so it felt weird that that was the only thing that was released for such a long time, so that makes me happy too that we show this and then people know that ok there’s still going to be a little bit of both so I guess that’s how I feel about that.
Metal Exiles: Can you talk a little about the progress of the new album and what fans can expect from it? And are you still shooting for a January release?
Andreas: So we’re making good progress, everything is written and arranged, we have recorded all the drums, basic keyboard tracks are down, I’m 3 or 4 songs in bass wise, there’s rhythm guitars on at least 1 track, so we’re making good progress and I know Tommy is starting to work any day so the idea is to have it wrapped up mixed, mastered, and ready to deliver to Frontiers right around New Years. And that’s what I know, seeing how this is our first release together, what their time line is beyond that, but given how long it’s been and after we have delivered it, it’s going to be with the artwork and everything I can’t see that they’re going to keep it for much…for any longer than they need, of course it is going to be there for some time afterwards but it’s definitely going to be an early 2017 release, probably January would be pushing it because they need a couple weeks but you know early 2017 nonetheless.
Metal Exiles: Will this album feature an appearance by Tommy’s sister Jenny?
Andres: Good question, to be honest I don’t really think we know that, we never know until…the first time we had discussed it from Banished the Wicked from Waiting in the Wings actually the idea was to bring his sister and my wife in…we didn’t end up doing that Jenny ended up taking the whole deal, but the parts in Mercy Falls Tommy just did that on his own, I was like oh…me producing the album I had no idea it was about to happen. You know they have a great working relationship together, I hope she will be in there, she always does an amazing job coming in there, if she wants to and we can find the right place sure. Nothing has been settled or said about it, I would like to see that happen, seems like a lot of people would dig that too.
Metal Exiles: What would it take for Seventh Wonder to do a small tour in the United States, I know there are many fans that would love to see a Seventh Wonder/Circus Maximus bill on the west coast, any chance of that happening?
Andreas: Right, 2 things, first of all it needs to work with Tommy’s Kamelot schedule, that’s always going to be somewhat of an impediment for us right now, I mean it’s a blessing and a curse, sure it brings in a lot of new fans though so you know we’re happy about that. Seeing people learning about us that didn’t have a clue before so that’s great. The downside is it’s hard to find time to work together and also fit in tours, because they tour a lot and they have albums in between so that’s one thing. The other is we don’t really have a booking agency or someone to go to and you know juggling everything as it is with the bands and families, and jobs and what not, none of us can really ourselves be the booking agent and make a tour happen, I don’t think we have those connections oversees anyway so you know I think it’s pretty much hinged upon somebody else setting it up and inviting us or if we’re lucky and catch a break and maybe run as an opening act for somebody else, so even in Europe those things that have happened, the Italian tours or Norway and Finland tours, have usually been you know some dude pretty much just an enthusiast who ok I’ve got 2 or 3 club dates you can do on these dates, and they set everything up, and we basically come and play. So since we don’t have a big booking company behind us I can’t really say. I know that we would love to go it’s the best thing we know to gout and play, so that’s what we want to do, and we’d jump on any chance to go if we could make it work out, but unfortunately I can’t make any such promises today because frankly I don’t know. I mean there’s going to be some live shows for sure in Scandinavia and Northern Europe I’m pretty sure of that, above that I don’t know, we would love to that’s a message for sure, so anybody who has any leads just reach out and we’ll come.
Official Seventh Wonder Site
BUY Welcome To Atlanta: Live 2014