NEVERMORE's reactivation has moved from stages to song files. Guitarist Jeff Loomis says material for the band's first album since 2010's "The Obsidian Conspiracy" is beginning to take shape, though the writing started later than he would have liked.
Speaking to Germany's Moshpit Passion, Loomis explained that assembling the lineup consumed the energy that would normally have gone into demos. "I've got a late start on it, actually, because we spent so much time getting the band together," he said. "I don't wanna say that Van and I got burnt out or anything, but Van really wanted to get back on tour again. He was, like, 'I wanna get back out and play again, man. I wanna play in front of people.' So it's kind of been backwards as we've approached this. But the demos are now starting to flow a little bit."
He put a number on it. "I've got about six ideas going, some in the very infantile stages, some kind of complete."
The current NEVERMORE pairs Loomis and drummer Van Williams with three new members: Jack Cattoi on guitar, Semir Özerkan on bass and vocalist Berzan Önen. The lineup made its live debut on April 1 at IF Performance Hall Beşiktaş in Istanbul, and the band has since signed with Reigning Phoenix Music.
Önen's arrival in the United States in November is the hinge. "It's gonna be huge, because when you're writing something, man, in today's age, you can easily send demos back and forth via the Internet," Loomis said. "But I ultimately love to work in person with people. You can really feel it and get more energy out of each other that way. We wanna really utilize the six months that we have completely to make the best album of our lives. And that's coming up between October and March."
On finding a singer to follow the late Warrel Dane, Loomis was clear that impersonation was never the goal. "Berzan is his own person vocally. He just is able to sing Warrel's parts almost perfectly. But at the same time, we wanna give him his own identity as well. We wanna give him that opportunity to be his own person and not just have to sing like what Warrel did."
He also wants the new members writing, not executing. "We don't wanna have NEVERMORE just be the Van-and-Jeff show. We wanna have Berzan contribute lyrics. We want him to contribute lyric melodies. We want Jack and Semir to contribute riffs. Will that change the core sound? I don't really think so. I think it's just gonna add to the dynamic and make it cooler."
Dane died in December 2017 in São Paulo while recording his posthumous solo album "Shadow Work".
Source: blabbermouth.net