“It wasn’t just you; many people missed the United album,” says Nordström. “That was the album when Snowy left the band and I figured it was going to be the worst album in the history of music but we managed to save it. In a way it is a miracle that we’re still together, but when Snowy left we were working in the studio with Patric (J. Sten / drums) already, so he was like the sixth member of the band. In fact, it was me and Patric that came up with this idea for a heavy metal band called Dream Evil at the very beginning. The idea was to make metal as good as we could make it and have a laugh with the lyrics. Patric is the one that came up with the title for the first album, Chasing The Dragon, for example, which everyone knows is a reference to smoking drugs, but we saw a picture of a knight with a sword up against a big fat dragon with small wings (laughs).”
“It took a long time to do In The Night,” he continues. “It was actually written in three parts because we have a lot of kids between the members of the band. In total there are 12, and we couldn’t have a kindergarten in the studio (laughs). Peter recorded all his bass tracks at his house in the evenings, Niklas recorded all his vocals at home as well because he had a newborn baby and wanted to be home. I think it was a little bit harder for him because he would record his vocals and have to wait a day to get feedback on his performances, which really annoyed him sometimes. It was kind of weird for me as a producer to have to make my own album in that way. But, the guys needed to be with their families which is totally understandable. It was hard for me to collect everything because it got pretty messy sometimes, but in the end it wasn’t that bad.”
Asked if he satisfied with the end result, Nordström’s producer persona has a few unresolved issues with In The Night. Those problems are offset by the band’s level of creativity during a skewed recording process.
“I was actually thinking it should have come out a little bit better (laughs). Like the song ‘In The Night’, I think the demo is so much stronger, but no matter how I mixed the song it never sounded as strong. It’s just one of those things that happens during the mixing process. On the other hand I’m surprised the song ‘Bang Your Head’ came out as good as it did because it was made over a telephone call and a cup of coffee (laughs). Peter wrote the song, we were talking about it over the phone I told him I thought ‘Bang Your Head’ was a strong title but the song itself didn’t fit it. He came up with an idea about the riff, I played it to him on guitar over the phone as I thought it should go, he liked it, so I hung up and called him back 10 minutes later after I’d sent him the guitars for the verse, pre-chorus and chorus. The day after he sent it back to me with his changes. The composition of the song including recording the rhythm guitars took half an hour.”
Nordström and his bandmates have maintained their sense of humour through the ups and downs, something that’s readily apparent on In The Night thanks to the use of stage names – Nordström is now known as the unstoppable Ritchie Rainbow – and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. Like all good power metal bands Dream Evil sing about the glories of their chosen walk of life, but they’re not above making light of it when the opportunity presents itself.
“I think many people are like me when they listen to music; they don’t give a lot of attention to the lyrics. I mean, on this album we have ‘The Ballad’, and I’ve played it for people and they don’t laugh because they don’t understand that we did it in fun. People don’t understand that sometimes we do this just to have a fucking laugh. This is something in the band, though, where we don’t do funny lyrics on purpose. They just come out that way. For example, I wrote all the music and vocal melodies for ‘The Ballad’ and I brought it to the guys saying that I thought it had hit potential, then gave it to Niklas so he could write the lyrics, and what you hear is what he came up with. I was laughing my ass off.”
As for adopting stage names, Nordström explains:
“Every time a new member comes into the band we force them to take a stage name. Peter, he calls himself Pete Pain, but his real name is Baldy Bass. I had that name for him and I told him it was brilliant, which it is, but he was saying ‘No! No!’. I told him ‘Of course you’re Baldy Bass; you’re bald and you play bass. You can have a skull on each shoulder and look evil that way…’ So yeah, it’s an ongoing war in this band. But the picture of Baldy turned out really well, though.”
Nordström still devotes his time to producing albums outside of Dream Evil but he admits that technology has changed the way the job is done, and not for the better. There’s no lack of work for the man responsible for tweaking bands including Dimmu Borgir, Soilwork, Arch Enemy and Opeth, but he’s faced with more than just running out of tape or 80 tracks worth of overdubs.
“There’s a Pro Tools program called Beat Detective that can be used to fix drum recordings, and it makes you sound like a fucking drum machine,” he explains.”Over the last few months I’ve discovered that people have been using it on guitars and bass also. There’s an English producer (who will remain nameless) that I think infected the whole metal scene with these guitar loops; if you need a riff 12 times, just record it once and copy it over and over. People have been doing this all over the place and it sounds like a fucking robot playing. So, people who are recording at home, please don’t do that shit. Try to at least make a good guitar performance. Don’t play one fucking note and paste it. I try to keep things as organic as possible, and if I have ever done that looping shit it’s because it was absolutely necessary. I hate it, though. I prefer to keep things real. I’ve spent two weeks getting the sound right for the drums before I even hit the record button and it was a pain in the ass, but it was worth it.”
“I don’t see myself as a guitar player,” he adds. “I can’t even play a clean A-major chord without falling off the stage. These days we don’t have any plans or dreams of being rock stars, so I see Dream Evil as a hobby that’s also a privilege for me. You’re supposed to have fun with a hobby, and we do.”
