Hot on the heels of their highly anticipated and well received performance on September 8th at ProgPower USA 2018, Redemption brought an unforgettable experience to a few lucky fans on September 19th as they graced the world-famous Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood, CA. This performance, and that of ProgPower USA 2018, are in support of the band’s latest release, Long Night’s Journey Into Day, released July 27th on Metal Blade records. This record marks a lot of “firsts” for the band. Most notably for most fans is the introduction of Evergrey’s Tom Englund on the mic. Before the show, guitarist/band leader, and creative force Nick Van Dyk was gracious enough to lend us some time to discuss this amazing new album as we explored various themes and the inspiration behind it.
An Interview with Nick Van Dyk of Redemption
By John Knowles
Metal Exiles: Looking at the album’s title and cover…what inspired those aspects and what story are you trying to tell here?
Nick: Two threads will come together on this. The first is that all of our lyrics really are about the human condition. They are lyrics about relationships – our relationship with ourselves, our relationships with others, or our relationship with the world. And if you’re honest about the human condition, it can be challenging at times. It can be dark, and fearful, and painful, and full of loss, and anger, and regret, and all sorts of horrible things. But it’s also – I mean, having survived a fatal cancer diagnosis you learn to appreciate every day, and you see the beauty in everything. And I can choose to be frustrated that it took an hour and half longer to do our sound check than I thought or I can consider that I’m here at the Whisky A Go Go playing with great friends and having a wonderful time tonight. The struggle, and it is a struggle, is ultimately worth it. And that’s really the lyrical motif behind a lot of what we do. I had in my head a notion of a very famous play, Long Day’s Journey into Night which is by the playwright Eugene O’Neill. I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve read it, and it’s bleak. It’s an autobiographical account of his mother’s morphine addiction and all the horrible problems they had in their family as he was growing up. So, not the happiest thing, and that has nothing to do with our subject matter, but I like – the inevitability of Long Day’s Journey into Night, the sort of bleak trudging into darkness – I like the idea of flipping that on its head. And Long Night’s Journey into Day sort of ties into our lyrical motif that I was describing.
As far as the cover, we’ve worked, really, since inception with a wonderful artist named Travis Smith. And there are times when I say, like on Snowfall on Judgement Day, I said I want to show a guy ice fishing, and the landscape with fire coming out of the hole in the ground, and snowy mountains in the background, and I actually drew a little stick figure of what I wanted. And on This Mortal Coil, I said I want a play on the caduceus and having these snakes wrapped around this guy who looks like he’s tormented, etc. With this [record] all I gave him was the title, and he came up with this fantastic sort of dreamscape of these stairs descending from darkness into this uncertain light beyond. And then I came up with the idea on the back of showing a cross section of a guy going down the stairs with these hands trying to pull him into oblivion…which seemed a little bit “metal.” And it worked. Travis is an incredibly gifted artist and he’s an important creative partner in everything we do.
Metal Exiles: It sounds like you may have already hinted at it, but did you go into this record with a particular concept in mind, and do you see it has one big concept?
Nick: Not really, sometime those things just sort of emerge. This Mortal Coil is the closest thing we’ve done to a concept record and even with that, I was influenced by my diagnosis and the confrontation with my own mortality, but if you think about it we all have to come face-to-face with our own mortality at some point and it’s jarring when it happens. So even that was something everybody could relate to. Those we’re sort of thematically intentionally related. Here they’re a collection of songs. Our last record, The Art of Loss, not a concept record, but as I was writing the music I had this reoccurring theme about choices in life coming down to ones based on love or fear. Are you doing what you’re doing because you love doing it, or because you’re afraid you won’t be successful with what you really love doing? Are you in a relationship with someone because you love them, or you fear being alone? All those big choices coming down to that point, and that ran through several of the songs. Here, there’s no one unifying concept other than the very general idea of what I just described earlier, that life is full of struggle and ultimately, it’s worth it. And not every song deals with that directly so it’s not a concept album, but we don’t sing about werewolves, and trolls, and penetrating mists of Carpathian forests, so at some point when you sing about reality…the concept is it’s a concept album about life (laughs).
Metal Exiles: Sure, I can definitely see that. Now not to take anything away from previous releases, THIS RECORD sounds especially fantastic. You had Jacob Hansen on board to mix this record. How did your partnership with him come about?
Nick: We had actually considered working with him before, and we almost did This Mortal Coil with him, but our schedules did not line up, and subsequent to that we did our last record with Tommy Hansen, who I love very much and did a great job with both records, but Jacob was still in my mind, and he had done recent work with Evergrey. Tom [Englund]was like, “we have to use Jacob.” And as a matter of fact, he was on the list anyway, so [I said] let’s talk with him and his schedule was clean this time. I’ve always had the sound that I want, in my head, and it’s never quite there, and this is still not quite there, although it’s the closest we’ve been. We’re a hard band to mix. Even a band like Evergrey, most bands as an example, they’ll use the bass to follow along the guitar and add heaviness. We don’t do that, the bass has six strings, and its counterpoint, and the low-end of the bass steps on the kick-drum frequency and the high end of the bass steps on the down-tuned guitars, and the drums are very complicated. And some bands will use a piano to add a little bit of atmosphere, but we’ve got 70 tracks of orchestra on two of our songs, so it’s a mess! And it’s hard to mix to begin with, and then you consider that we want it to be punchy, but not over compressed, we want it to be glossy but not too artificial sounding, you have to have separation between instruments but it can’t be cold sounding, so it’s really a tiny little bullseye that you’re trying to hit through trial and error. And I think when we first started with Jacob, to be honest, his signal chain was not constructed with this type of music in mind and we had to go back and forth several different times over a period of two to three weeks before we could even isolate some things that we knew were cluttering the mix up. By that time, he had to move on to another project so Vic [Shankar] and I went back and analyzed all the spectrums to figure out where overtones of the drums are getting in the way, etc. and we went back and forth with Jacob, and then ultimately he sent me some things that I then sub-mixed, so long story short, or long story long, it took almost four months to get from start to finish. But the result I think is by far the best sounding record we have and I think it’s a testament not just to Jacob’s talent but to his patience and his flexibility. He’s a great guy to work with and I’d love to work with him again. Hopefully we’ll start from our finishing point rather than having to backtrack. But every record is different.
Metal Exiles: And I’d imagine he learned something from this process as well.
Nick: I think so, yeah.
Metal Exiles: So getting into the track listing here, “Someone Else’s Problem” is possibly one of the most on the nose “end of a relationship” tracks out there. Was there a personal experience?
Nick: Yeah, but it’s not a romantic one. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I will say that’s its disguised as a romantic relationship because that’s a very accessible one, but really it could apply to a work relationship, and business partnership, a creative partnership, a family relationship, any type of relationship where you sort of power through the things that you know are problems but they are not worth allowing to ruin the rest of the relationship or you’re getting enough out of it…it could be a roommate who’s a slob, and pays his rent late but is a good friend. It’s not worth destroying your friendship over that. But when that relationship falls apart, all that is lifted off you and you realize that now you don’t have to deal with it and its someone else’s problem. At the same time, you might still miss what was good about that relationship and that’s what the companion piece to “Someone Else’s Problem” is, “And Yet.” I know this was a bad situation, I know I got out of it, I know I should be relieved by that, and yet I still miss what it brought to my life.
Metal Exiles: “And Yet” could have followed “Someone Else’s Problem” in the track listing as it mirrors the sentiment. Why do you feel people take advantage of others knowing they are going to toss them out later?
Nick: I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I mean, sometimes people are motivated by their baser instincts, and sometimes people are able to overcome that and do the right thing, not everybody’s able to do that all the time. Sometimes people are, and I even refer to this in “And Yet,” it may or may not even be intentional. You might be a narcissist, you might be completely unaware of your influence on somebody else or you might underestimate the degree to which that person is emotionally or otherwise invested in you. Or – I wrote a couple of songs on The Fullness of Time about being screwed over by a friend in business who put a knife in my back for his own personal gain. And he’s able to sleep at night, good for him, I wouldn’t be able to do it if I were him – But sometimes you run into the occasional bad apple.
Metal Exiles: With “Indulge in Color” I know there is a connection to “Black and White World.” What motivated the musical aspect and did you plan to pick up where that one left?
Nick: I had written a couple of the more straight-forward songs and I had given them to the guys first. And Chris, our drummer, pushed me, he said “you can do better than this.” Not that the straight-forward songs weren’t good, but he didn’t want us to fall into the trap of just being one-dimensional. I think the first one I sent him was “Little Men,” and “Eyes You Dare Not Meet in Dreams,” both of which are pretty straight forward, heavy, fast, songs. And he wanted to push me to do something a little bit more out of the box. And I thought, you know, I was thinking back to other bands that have done sequels to songs, and sometimes they work out better than others, and I look at “Black and White World” as a high point in our catalogue, and I thought let’s just see what happens if I take this as inspiration and try and write something else to it. And after the first little fingering on the guitar, which is of course the keyboard part that’s now been rearranged, it sort of took on a life of its own. The way I write I’ll write the music first, and then I’ll write the melody, and then I’ll put the lyrics in last. And sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle. I knew when I was writing that chorus, which is a major key and it’s got this cool little earworm, and it’s got this great sort of step-up, which I love, which ads a sort of melodic tension to it, and it’s so different from what I’ve heard Tom sing before, and I thought if he pulls this off its going to be really special. And the harmonies started showing up and it was getting this wall of sound thing going on, and it just turned out awesome. But it’s not like you start out saying “normally I just write a good song, but I’m going to write a really good one now.” Sometimes you get lucky and you come up with something pretty neat.
Metal Exiles: You’ve already talked a bit about various personal struggles in your life, and you’ve been very open about a lot of those things. I think with “Indulge in Color” it’s a good testament to that, and your perspective on it. How do you tend to stay positive in those difficult situations?
Nick: You know, it ain’t always easy. I do a lot of cancer outreach to people that are diagnosed with the disease that I was diagnosed with. Because there’s so much misinformation, and it’s terrifying. And I’m always cognizant of how lucky I am that my treatment worked. It’s real easy to look courageous and optimistic when stuff works out…if I stayed sick, and got worse, and deteriorated I might not have the rosy disposition that I do. But that, and having kids…I’ve got two wonderful kids. It’s hard not to see how amazing life is when you see a little version of yourself growing up and laughing, and experiencing stuff. So…I dunno. On any given day I might not be as happy as I am, but really the 2X4 to the head…you know I’m a type A personality and I was trained at work by a guy who expects perfection and is unbelievably upset and the tiniest little thing that deviates from his expectation. It’s not just in my work for him. We went out to dinner with him and if his food is 3 minutes late he’s screaming at somebody. And you get a cancer diagnosis and you realize there are a hundred things a day that could piss you off, maybe one of them makes a difference to you in the grand scheme of things. And there’s a grace to learning to let go of those other 99 things and you focus on the one that matters. A guy came in during sound check and yelled at me because I parked in an unmarked spot that he didn’t want me to park in, and I could have gotten bent out of shape about it. Instead I just went out, over-tipped the guy, and just let it go. Because tomorrow I’m not going to remember that that happened – until I read this – I won’t remember that had happened. But that used to be the type of thing that I could stew about and all that’s gonna do is compound it and you know ultimately you become a negative kind of downer person that people don’t want to be around. And I have found that when you are a positive person and you exude positivity and positive energy, you attract opportunities. People want to be around you, people want to spend time with you, give you opportunities whether they be work or a relationship or whatever. Positivity begets positivity.
Metal Exiles: Absolutely. The moody make the world worse, and you’ve got to act happy more so for the benefit of others than yourself.
Nick: Exactly. But it’s also not a fake, Dale Carnegie Win Friends and Influence People you know, big plastic smile of bullshit, because life is hard.
Metal Exiles: It’s perspective.
Nick: Yeah, its perspective that’s exactly right. Which is why we use that wording in “Indulge in Color.” Its, “life is hard, but it’s also what you make of it.”
Metal Exiles: Awesome. The last track I want to ask you about is “The Echo Chamber” which again can be taken several ways and I’ve heard you relate it to some of what’s going with political and social discourse these days. Here again Metal Exiles has an easy time relating to this track on a relationship level, like when you find yourself with someone who’s too close minded to hear another point of view. On a personal level to you why do you think it is so hard to take someone else’s view point and be empathetic towards it?
Nick: I think there’s a natural cognitive dissonance that arises when people tell you that you’re wrong. And in a normal society, particularly if you have views that are a standard deviation away from the middle, most of the time you might be considered wrong by most people. And it is human nature to not want to have to admit that, and if you have an excuse to sort of step away and cloister to the side with people that have your point of view and to think everyone else is crazy…there’s a comfort in doing that. I think this would have happened anyway, but we have an unusual political climate in this country that I think exacerbates that. Really, the last…you probably saw it a little bit under Clinton, but the last three administrations increasingly – it’s not, these are people I disagree with, its these people are evil. There’s a chart that was sent out to describe a Leftist “snowflake,” but it could just as easily describe a lunatic on the Right. And it’s one of those carefully constructed 2X2 political matrices and the point of view is like “Me,” – and then anyone outside of my square – “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, etc.” First of all, on Yom Kippur its incredibly insulting to the Jewish community around the world who actually went through the f*cking Holocaust, to just call someone you disagree with a Nazi, that actually means something. And it stands for something horrific. But Social Media, and before that Talk Radio, gave people an excuse to disassociate themselves from people with whom they disagree. And it made holding these previously outlandish opinions more acceptable, or at least you were less aware that they were unacceptable. And I think we’re seeing the logical conclusion of that right now. I guess it could get worse, I’m not sure how. Short of civil war it’s gonna get a whole lot worse.
Metal Exiles: Let me transition to a bit about Tom [Englund]. What made Tom a major factor in the decision to have him on board this album?
Nick: A couple things, first of all we’ve been friends for a long time and I’m a tremendous fan of Evergrey. And I think Tom is at least aware of the work that we did. We’ve stayed in touch. We would see each other every year in Atlanta, and then if Evergrey was coming through LA we would usually hang out. He and Henrik [Danhage], who’s another buddy of mine, came over for the NAMM Show, we spent a few days together here and there. When it became apparent that Ray [Alder] was not going to be able to be our singer anymore we sort of took a step back. First and foremost our music, it is based on the human condition, and it works or doesn’t work depending upon our audiences ability to engage with the emotions that are coming behind us. So if we had a passionless singer, even if he had a great voice, there are any number of operatic power metal vocalists, some of whom are among my favorites, but if you didn’t convey…what made Ray great with us is not just that he has an iconic voice, but he has this wonderful, smoky, earthy, emotionally powerful way of conveying lyrics like he has experienced them, and Tom has been doing that for 20 years in Evergrey. So the fact that he’s a good vocalist, and a good friend, and comes from that same little subset of vocalists where it’s not about how high you can sing it’s about how much emotion you have dripping from your words. And how much can you make that audience believe that you’re going through the pain that we write about. So then I flew over to Gothenburg and hung out with him, and after I supplied him with enough booze I asked him if he wanted to do it. And I love telling this story, he said, “If it sucks can I tell?” and I said, “You’re my friend, if the music sucks you better tell me.” So I sent him demos, and I guess he thought the music didn’t suck and once we cleared his schedule and made sure that we’d be able to do it, then he was all in.
Metal Exiles: Considering you have Tom on board and that has his following as well, will there be additional shows to support this magnum piece of work?
Nick: We had hoped to do more in the States between these two dates, but things don’t always work out. We have been discussing the possibility of doing some shows in Europe next year, and then we’ll be hopefully in a position after our next record to do something a little bit more extensive.
Metal Exiles: You’re obviously a very busy individual. As one working professional speaking to another, how to you balance your work life with family and your art? And out of curiosity, how much sleep do you try to get each night?
Nick: Its stressful, and not very much, are the simple answers to that. So this morning I get up at 6:00, I had meetings until about 11:00. I ran home, I picked up Vic, we drove down town, picked up the equipment, came over here, I did phone calls from my car both ways in, we get set up, I do another phone call, I’ve been interacting with my assistant all day on stuff, and I came back here to do a sound check, and that’s in a week where I’m not that busy. So I try to manage the stress better, I think the stress of dealing with all that stuff when I was at Disney, which was an extremely demanding place to work, may have contributed to my cancer so I try not to be too stressed. Sleep is hard. Both because there’s not enough time, and because there’s so much going on – your brain is running a million miles an hour even when your body is exhausted – so for the last 6 months it’s been tough to get more than 2-3 hours at a time. So I’ll go bed at 11:00, get up at 3:00 in the morning, I’ll get up and do an hour and half of work, fall back to sleep for an hour and half, then I’ll have to get up again. Its been brutal. But I’m hopeful that with these two shows behind us, and our DVD recorded, and everything in good shape, that I’ll be able to start getting some rest, which is good.
Metal Exiles: And balance the family time in there too?
Nick: Well family comes first, and they’re very, very, very understanding and forgiving. And it helps also that this band is all friends, and they’re good people, and I’ve had the whole band at my house the last week. My wife has the patience of a saint, but it’s made easier because they’re really fun, warm, delightful people to be around. And it’s good, my daughter is about to turn 16, but she’s got friends in Sweden and Italy now, which is a neat thing for her to learn about other cultures and that sort of thing. It’s all good.
Metal Exiles: Nick, it’s been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Nick: Thank you, I really appreciate it.
Editors note: Long Nights Journey Day is the epitome of what a metal record should sound like. The feel and the power that this album delivers is unparalleled in todays scene and therefore it stands above the rest. The lyrical content of this record hit home in more ways than one and it is a rare record that can honestly touch how a person really feels without coming off pious and cold.
Official Band website @ https://www.redemptionweb.com/
Official Facebook page @ https://www.facebook.com/RedemptionBand/
“Indulge in Color” Instrumental Playthrough @ Watch
BUY Long Night’s Journey Into Day @ Click Here
An Interview with Nick Van Dyk of Redemption
By John Knowles
Metal Exiles: Looking at the album’s title and cover…what inspired those aspects and what story are you trying to tell here?
Nick: Two threads will come together on this. The first is that all of our lyrics really are about the human condition. They are lyrics about relationships – our relationship with ourselves, our relationships with others, or our relationship with the world. And if you’re honest about the human condition, it can be challenging at times. It can be dark, and fearful, and painful, and full of loss, and anger, and regret, and all sorts of horrible things. But it’s also – I mean, having survived a fatal cancer diagnosis you learn to appreciate every day, and you see the beauty in everything. And I can choose to be frustrated that it took an hour and half longer to do our sound check than I thought or I can consider that I’m here at the Whisky A Go Go playing with great friends and having a wonderful time tonight. The struggle, and it is a struggle, is ultimately worth it. And that’s really the lyrical motif behind a lot of what we do. I had in my head a notion of a very famous play, Long Day’s Journey into Night which is by the playwright Eugene O’Neill. I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve read it, and it’s bleak. It’s an autobiographical account of his mother’s morphine addiction and all the horrible problems they had in their family as he was growing up. So, not the happiest thing, and that has nothing to do with our subject matter, but I like – the inevitability of Long Day’s Journey into Night, the sort of bleak trudging into darkness – I like the idea of flipping that on its head. And Long Night’s Journey into Day sort of ties into our lyrical motif that I was describing.
As far as the cover, we’ve worked, really, since inception with a wonderful artist named Travis Smith. And there are times when I say, like on Snowfall on Judgement Day, I said I want to show a guy ice fishing, and the landscape with fire coming out of the hole in the ground, and snowy mountains in the background, and I actually drew a little stick figure of what I wanted. And on This Mortal Coil, I said I want a play on the caduceus and having these snakes wrapped around this guy who looks like he’s tormented, etc. With this [record] all I gave him was the title, and he came up with this fantastic sort of dreamscape of these stairs descending from darkness into this uncertain light beyond. And then I came up with the idea on the back of showing a cross section of a guy going down the stairs with these hands trying to pull him into oblivion…which seemed a little bit “metal.” And it worked. Travis is an incredibly gifted artist and he’s an important creative partner in everything we do.
Metal Exiles: It sounds like you may have already hinted at it, but did you go into this record with a particular concept in mind, and do you see it has one big concept?
Nick: Not really, sometime those things just sort of emerge. This Mortal Coil is the closest thing we’ve done to a concept record and even with that, I was influenced by my diagnosis and the confrontation with my own mortality, but if you think about it we all have to come face-to-face with our own mortality at some point and it’s jarring when it happens. So even that was something everybody could relate to. Those we’re sort of thematically intentionally related. Here they’re a collection of songs. Our last record, The Art of Loss, not a concept record, but as I was writing the music I had this reoccurring theme about choices in life coming down to ones based on love or fear. Are you doing what you’re doing because you love doing it, or because you’re afraid you won’t be successful with what you really love doing? Are you in a relationship with someone because you love them, or you fear being alone? All those big choices coming down to that point, and that ran through several of the songs. Here, there’s no one unifying concept other than the very general idea of what I just described earlier, that life is full of struggle and ultimately, it’s worth it. And not every song deals with that directly so it’s not a concept album, but we don’t sing about werewolves, and trolls, and penetrating mists of Carpathian forests, so at some point when you sing about reality…the concept is it’s a concept album about life (laughs).
Metal Exiles: Sure, I can definitely see that. Now not to take anything away from previous releases, THIS RECORD sounds especially fantastic. You had Jacob Hansen on board to mix this record. How did your partnership with him come about?
Nick: We had actually considered working with him before, and we almost did This Mortal Coil with him, but our schedules did not line up, and subsequent to that we did our last record with Tommy Hansen, who I love very much and did a great job with both records, but Jacob was still in my mind, and he had done recent work with Evergrey. Tom [Englund]was like, “we have to use Jacob.” And as a matter of fact, he was on the list anyway, so [I said] let’s talk with him and his schedule was clean this time. I’ve always had the sound that I want, in my head, and it’s never quite there, and this is still not quite there, although it’s the closest we’ve been. We’re a hard band to mix. Even a band like Evergrey, most bands as an example, they’ll use the bass to follow along the guitar and add heaviness. We don’t do that, the bass has six strings, and its counterpoint, and the low-end of the bass steps on the kick-drum frequency and the high end of the bass steps on the down-tuned guitars, and the drums are very complicated. And some bands will use a piano to add a little bit of atmosphere, but we’ve got 70 tracks of orchestra on two of our songs, so it’s a mess! And it’s hard to mix to begin with, and then you consider that we want it to be punchy, but not over compressed, we want it to be glossy but not too artificial sounding, you have to have separation between instruments but it can’t be cold sounding, so it’s really a tiny little bullseye that you’re trying to hit through trial and error. And I think when we first started with Jacob, to be honest, his signal chain was not constructed with this type of music in mind and we had to go back and forth several different times over a period of two to three weeks before we could even isolate some things that we knew were cluttering the mix up. By that time, he had to move on to another project so Vic [Shankar] and I went back and analyzed all the spectrums to figure out where overtones of the drums are getting in the way, etc. and we went back and forth with Jacob, and then ultimately he sent me some things that I then sub-mixed, so long story short, or long story long, it took almost four months to get from start to finish. But the result I think is by far the best sounding record we have and I think it’s a testament not just to Jacob’s talent but to his patience and his flexibility. He’s a great guy to work with and I’d love to work with him again. Hopefully we’ll start from our finishing point rather than having to backtrack. But every record is different.
Metal Exiles: And I’d imagine he learned something from this process as well.
Nick: I think so, yeah.
Metal Exiles: So getting into the track listing here, “Someone Else’s Problem” is possibly one of the most on the nose “end of a relationship” tracks out there. Was there a personal experience?
Nick: Yeah, but it’s not a romantic one. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I will say that’s its disguised as a romantic relationship because that’s a very accessible one, but really it could apply to a work relationship, and business partnership, a creative partnership, a family relationship, any type of relationship where you sort of power through the things that you know are problems but they are not worth allowing to ruin the rest of the relationship or you’re getting enough out of it…it could be a roommate who’s a slob, and pays his rent late but is a good friend. It’s not worth destroying your friendship over that. But when that relationship falls apart, all that is lifted off you and you realize that now you don’t have to deal with it and its someone else’s problem. At the same time, you might still miss what was good about that relationship and that’s what the companion piece to “Someone Else’s Problem” is, “And Yet.” I know this was a bad situation, I know I got out of it, I know I should be relieved by that, and yet I still miss what it brought to my life.
Metal Exiles: “And Yet” could have followed “Someone Else’s Problem” in the track listing as it mirrors the sentiment. Why do you feel people take advantage of others knowing they are going to toss them out later?
Nick: I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I mean, sometimes people are motivated by their baser instincts, and sometimes people are able to overcome that and do the right thing, not everybody’s able to do that all the time. Sometimes people are, and I even refer to this in “And Yet,” it may or may not even be intentional. You might be a narcissist, you might be completely unaware of your influence on somebody else or you might underestimate the degree to which that person is emotionally or otherwise invested in you. Or – I wrote a couple of songs on The Fullness of Time about being screwed over by a friend in business who put a knife in my back for his own personal gain. And he’s able to sleep at night, good for him, I wouldn’t be able to do it if I were him – But sometimes you run into the occasional bad apple.
Metal Exiles: With “Indulge in Color” I know there is a connection to “Black and White World.” What motivated the musical aspect and did you plan to pick up where that one left?
Nick: I had written a couple of the more straight-forward songs and I had given them to the guys first. And Chris, our drummer, pushed me, he said “you can do better than this.” Not that the straight-forward songs weren’t good, but he didn’t want us to fall into the trap of just being one-dimensional. I think the first one I sent him was “Little Men,” and “Eyes You Dare Not Meet in Dreams,” both of which are pretty straight forward, heavy, fast, songs. And he wanted to push me to do something a little bit more out of the box. And I thought, you know, I was thinking back to other bands that have done sequels to songs, and sometimes they work out better than others, and I look at “Black and White World” as a high point in our catalogue, and I thought let’s just see what happens if I take this as inspiration and try and write something else to it. And after the first little fingering on the guitar, which is of course the keyboard part that’s now been rearranged, it sort of took on a life of its own. The way I write I’ll write the music first, and then I’ll write the melody, and then I’ll put the lyrics in last. And sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle. I knew when I was writing that chorus, which is a major key and it’s got this cool little earworm, and it’s got this great sort of step-up, which I love, which ads a sort of melodic tension to it, and it’s so different from what I’ve heard Tom sing before, and I thought if he pulls this off its going to be really special. And the harmonies started showing up and it was getting this wall of sound thing going on, and it just turned out awesome. But it’s not like you start out saying “normally I just write a good song, but I’m going to write a really good one now.” Sometimes you get lucky and you come up with something pretty neat.
Metal Exiles: You’ve already talked a bit about various personal struggles in your life, and you’ve been very open about a lot of those things. I think with “Indulge in Color” it’s a good testament to that, and your perspective on it. How do you tend to stay positive in those difficult situations?
Nick: You know, it ain’t always easy. I do a lot of cancer outreach to people that are diagnosed with the disease that I was diagnosed with. Because there’s so much misinformation, and it’s terrifying. And I’m always cognizant of how lucky I am that my treatment worked. It’s real easy to look courageous and optimistic when stuff works out…if I stayed sick, and got worse, and deteriorated I might not have the rosy disposition that I do. But that, and having kids…I’ve got two wonderful kids. It’s hard not to see how amazing life is when you see a little version of yourself growing up and laughing, and experiencing stuff. So…I dunno. On any given day I might not be as happy as I am, but really the 2X4 to the head…you know I’m a type A personality and I was trained at work by a guy who expects perfection and is unbelievably upset and the tiniest little thing that deviates from his expectation. It’s not just in my work for him. We went out to dinner with him and if his food is 3 minutes late he’s screaming at somebody. And you get a cancer diagnosis and you realize there are a hundred things a day that could piss you off, maybe one of them makes a difference to you in the grand scheme of things. And there’s a grace to learning to let go of those other 99 things and you focus on the one that matters. A guy came in during sound check and yelled at me because I parked in an unmarked spot that he didn’t want me to park in, and I could have gotten bent out of shape about it. Instead I just went out, over-tipped the guy, and just let it go. Because tomorrow I’m not going to remember that that happened – until I read this – I won’t remember that had happened. But that used to be the type of thing that I could stew about and all that’s gonna do is compound it and you know ultimately you become a negative kind of downer person that people don’t want to be around. And I have found that when you are a positive person and you exude positivity and positive energy, you attract opportunities. People want to be around you, people want to spend time with you, give you opportunities whether they be work or a relationship or whatever. Positivity begets positivity.
Metal Exiles: Absolutely. The moody make the world worse, and you’ve got to act happy more so for the benefit of others than yourself.
Nick: Exactly. But it’s also not a fake, Dale Carnegie Win Friends and Influence People you know, big plastic smile of bullshit, because life is hard.
Metal Exiles: It’s perspective.
Nick: Yeah, its perspective that’s exactly right. Which is why we use that wording in “Indulge in Color.” Its, “life is hard, but it’s also what you make of it.”
Metal Exiles: Awesome. The last track I want to ask you about is “The Echo Chamber” which again can be taken several ways and I’ve heard you relate it to some of what’s going with political and social discourse these days. Here again Metal Exiles has an easy time relating to this track on a relationship level, like when you find yourself with someone who’s too close minded to hear another point of view. On a personal level to you why do you think it is so hard to take someone else’s view point and be empathetic towards it?
Nick: I think there’s a natural cognitive dissonance that arises when people tell you that you’re wrong. And in a normal society, particularly if you have views that are a standard deviation away from the middle, most of the time you might be considered wrong by most people. And it is human nature to not want to have to admit that, and if you have an excuse to sort of step away and cloister to the side with people that have your point of view and to think everyone else is crazy…there’s a comfort in doing that. I think this would have happened anyway, but we have an unusual political climate in this country that I think exacerbates that. Really, the last…you probably saw it a little bit under Clinton, but the last three administrations increasingly – it’s not, these are people I disagree with, its these people are evil. There’s a chart that was sent out to describe a Leftist “snowflake,” but it could just as easily describe a lunatic on the Right. And it’s one of those carefully constructed 2X2 political matrices and the point of view is like “Me,” – and then anyone outside of my square – “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, etc.” First of all, on Yom Kippur its incredibly insulting to the Jewish community around the world who actually went through the f*cking Holocaust, to just call someone you disagree with a Nazi, that actually means something. And it stands for something horrific. But Social Media, and before that Talk Radio, gave people an excuse to disassociate themselves from people with whom they disagree. And it made holding these previously outlandish opinions more acceptable, or at least you were less aware that they were unacceptable. And I think we’re seeing the logical conclusion of that right now. I guess it could get worse, I’m not sure how. Short of civil war it’s gonna get a whole lot worse.
Metal Exiles: Let me transition to a bit about Tom [Englund]. What made Tom a major factor in the decision to have him on board this album?
Nick: A couple things, first of all we’ve been friends for a long time and I’m a tremendous fan of Evergrey. And I think Tom is at least aware of the work that we did. We’ve stayed in touch. We would see each other every year in Atlanta, and then if Evergrey was coming through LA we would usually hang out. He and Henrik [Danhage], who’s another buddy of mine, came over for the NAMM Show, we spent a few days together here and there. When it became apparent that Ray [Alder] was not going to be able to be our singer anymore we sort of took a step back. First and foremost our music, it is based on the human condition, and it works or doesn’t work depending upon our audiences ability to engage with the emotions that are coming behind us. So if we had a passionless singer, even if he had a great voice, there are any number of operatic power metal vocalists, some of whom are among my favorites, but if you didn’t convey…what made Ray great with us is not just that he has an iconic voice, but he has this wonderful, smoky, earthy, emotionally powerful way of conveying lyrics like he has experienced them, and Tom has been doing that for 20 years in Evergrey. So the fact that he’s a good vocalist, and a good friend, and comes from that same little subset of vocalists where it’s not about how high you can sing it’s about how much emotion you have dripping from your words. And how much can you make that audience believe that you’re going through the pain that we write about. So then I flew over to Gothenburg and hung out with him, and after I supplied him with enough booze I asked him if he wanted to do it. And I love telling this story, he said, “If it sucks can I tell?” and I said, “You’re my friend, if the music sucks you better tell me.” So I sent him demos, and I guess he thought the music didn’t suck and once we cleared his schedule and made sure that we’d be able to do it, then he was all in.
Metal Exiles: Considering you have Tom on board and that has his following as well, will there be additional shows to support this magnum piece of work?
Nick: We had hoped to do more in the States between these two dates, but things don’t always work out. We have been discussing the possibility of doing some shows in Europe next year, and then we’ll be hopefully in a position after our next record to do something a little bit more extensive.
Metal Exiles: You’re obviously a very busy individual. As one working professional speaking to another, how to you balance your work life with family and your art? And out of curiosity, how much sleep do you try to get each night?
Nick: Its stressful, and not very much, are the simple answers to that. So this morning I get up at 6:00, I had meetings until about 11:00. I ran home, I picked up Vic, we drove down town, picked up the equipment, came over here, I did phone calls from my car both ways in, we get set up, I do another phone call, I’ve been interacting with my assistant all day on stuff, and I came back here to do a sound check, and that’s in a week where I’m not that busy. So I try to manage the stress better, I think the stress of dealing with all that stuff when I was at Disney, which was an extremely demanding place to work, may have contributed to my cancer so I try not to be too stressed. Sleep is hard. Both because there’s not enough time, and because there’s so much going on – your brain is running a million miles an hour even when your body is exhausted – so for the last 6 months it’s been tough to get more than 2-3 hours at a time. So I’ll go bed at 11:00, get up at 3:00 in the morning, I’ll get up and do an hour and half of work, fall back to sleep for an hour and half, then I’ll have to get up again. Its been brutal. But I’m hopeful that with these two shows behind us, and our DVD recorded, and everything in good shape, that I’ll be able to start getting some rest, which is good.
Metal Exiles: And balance the family time in there too?
Nick: Well family comes first, and they’re very, very, very understanding and forgiving. And it helps also that this band is all friends, and they’re good people, and I’ve had the whole band at my house the last week. My wife has the patience of a saint, but it’s made easier because they’re really fun, warm, delightful people to be around. And it’s good, my daughter is about to turn 16, but she’s got friends in Sweden and Italy now, which is a neat thing for her to learn about other cultures and that sort of thing. It’s all good.
Metal Exiles: Nick, it’s been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Nick: Thank you, I really appreciate it.
Editors note: Long Nights Journey Day is the epitome of what a metal record should sound like. The feel and the power that this album delivers is unparalleled in todays scene and therefore it stands above the rest. The lyrical content of this record hit home in more ways than one and it is a rare record that can honestly touch how a person really feels without coming off pious and cold.
Official Band website @ https://www.redemptionweb.com/
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“Indulge in Color” Instrumental Playthrough @ Watch
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