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Nevermore.
Hell hath no fury like Nevermore. A decade after releasing their
self-titled debut, the band who survived the early '90s Seattle
grunge era, bouts with rehab and numerous lineup changes are
proud to not only welcome their fifth and final member, guitarist
Steve Smyth, but also announce their highly-anticipated masterpiece,
'This Godless Endeavor'.
Call it heavy metal, call it death metal, call it power metal, the fact is Nevermore are not the flavour of the month. "We have a singer who actually sings. But we've been titled so many different things. Number one, Nevermore is a very unpredictable, honest metal band. Number two, we've stayed above water all these years and never changed our style. Call it what you will, but it is what it is."
And it's something special. Fans and critics around the world are claiming Nevermore's brand new baby as the metal record of the year, some going as far as to compare 'This Godless Endeavor' with Metallica's 'Master Of Puppets'. Such praise both puzzles and flatters Loomis at the same time. "The record hasn't even been released yet, but there seems to be a huge buzz going on. It's just fucking unbelievable!"
Recorded in England with producer Andy Sneap ("I call him the sixth member of Nevermore"), who also worked on the band's 2000 mammoth of an album, 'Dead Heart In A Dead World', 'This Godless Endeavor' couldn't get any more personal. "Warrel [Dane, vocals] is very personal with his lyrics and he really wants to get to the listener and intertwine with their mind," Loomis explains. "It's not a concept album, it's about all different things, I mean we go from a song that's talking about the system that we live in here in the States, to the meaning of life... it couldn't get anymore diverse! It's not necessarily all negative issues either, we're just talking about the really simple things that bother you and that you want to clear up."
Another thing Nevermore wants to make clear is that "We're not getting another guitar player!" Loomis laughs. "Nah, we've had a lot of guitar players in the past, but having Steve Smyth in the band now is the best thing that's happened to Nevermore. The reason we made Steve permanent is because he's really helped us so much with his sound, opinions, arrangement ideas, writing, things like that. It's one of those things where he just adds a little more spice to the band, so to speak. We inspire each other to play guitar better and our songwriting is so much alike."
With the Gigantour coming up in the United States this September, and with only a thirty-minute set per night, Loomis is looking forward to some downtime in between travel to focus on writing and playing guitar. "The process never ends: you're always writing, playing, you've got to get better at your craft. So with the tour, I'm planning on spending a lot of my time writing and recording on my personal recording device. It truly never ends, we had three or four extra songs that we just couldn't put on this record, we didn't want to put out a 120-minute piece of... er, CD!", Loomis explains. "But with the Gigantour, we're also going to have a DVD that's been overlooked for such a long time now. It's our ten-year anniversary, so we've hired a documentary filmmaker by the name of Michael Rivera to document a video that we just finished in Los Angeles, and also to film a bunch of the shows at Gigantour and behind-the-scenes stuff which I'm sure the fans will be interested in seeing."
For now, Loomis is trying hard not to think about the predictions and expectations of 'This Godless Endeavor'. Despite the rave reviews the record is already getting, he'd just like to stay humble and keep a clear head, "'Master of Puppets', huh? Wow. If you think about things like that, what everyone is saying, it gets quite overwhelming, that's when things start to get strange. But it's great to be a part of this whole process, as far as being one of the biggest metal bands. Right now I'm getting, like, the hairs on my arms raising because it's really exciting."
Nina Bertok
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'This Godless Endeavour' is out now through Century Media/Shock.
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