Andreas Nergard
Nergard
Hi Lior, it's an honor to be featured in your magazine. I've been doing great despite of Covid-19. I've had a lot of time on my hands throughout the past year to work on songwriting for Nergard as well as writing music for commercials and small independent films. I've been a touring musician throughout the past four years. That is obviously not possible anymore but I'm of high spirit and hope that we can get back to playing concerts sometime during this summer.
Eight years indeed. God I feel old haha…I actually remember your review, meant a lot to me. Well, after A Bit Closer To Heaven I was not completely sure where to go. I remember writing material that was leaning heavily towards AOR instead of metal, wanting to focus on one direction instead of having such a varied sound on every album. We put out the song "One of these days" in 2016 that really showcased what the new style was going to be like but then I faced a writing block, couldn't squeeze out any proper ideas. In the same time, I started touring with a cover band called Melody Market which became my main occupation up until Covid-19, doing close to one hundred gigs every year. The Nergard project was basically put on ice as you say. I wanted to get back into working on Nergard material when I was properly motivated and had figured out what direction to go for. In the meantime, while working on material for the new album Eternal White I re-wrote and re-recorded my debut album Memorial For a Wish.
I remember Tony as a warm-hearted man with a great sense of humor. He always had a funny remark ready. I especially remember the first time meeting him, way back in February of 2011 when I was 22 years old. We had just finished writing and recording "All I Ever Wanted". He was staying at a friend's house in Stjordal, Norway, less than an hour from where I was living so I went to meet him. We ended up drinking beer and talking about everything for seven hours. I was basically drunk when I left haha. Tony had a huge impact on Nergard during the first three-four years. He even came up with the band name. "Nergard, that sounds metal, like a guard or something". The direct translation of my surname Nergård is Downfarm and we both concluded that it wasn't very metal haha. It was a lot of fun working with Tony and I learned a lot from both studio and live sessions with him.
I actually got back to writing "Eternal White" in 2019 alongside "Under Fire" so there was no direct motivation from the recording process of that song to keep going. But the amazing reception the single got when released was definitely a motivational boost and pretty much laid the foundation to further work in the fall of 2020 and throughout the spring of this year. I will definitely be working permanently to keep releasing music with Nergard. Fourteen sketches for the next album are ready so I'm pretty sure we get to record the follow-up to Eternal White in late 2021.
Andi Kravljaca has been with Nergard since the release of Memorial For A Wish. We began working together in 2012 and since then he has sung on at least half of my song catalogue, we even wrote some tracks together. I've always enjoyed listening to Andi's singing. He has a characteristic voice, an incredible mid-range and is a great songwriter. And his guitar skills are beyond anything I've heard. I never doubted a second that I needed to have him in the line-up.
I heard about Mathias Molund Indergård's incredible vocal skills years before we actually got to work together. We were doing a show in 2018 and Mathias stepped in on short notice as one of the singers had to cancel his performance. Mathias' insane high pitched range and great stage performance is a great fit for the line-up. One of the very best singers in this genre in Norway.
Stefani Keogh came into the Nergard camp in the fall of 2020 when I posted on Facebook that I was looking for a female permanent singer for the band. I received two emails only. I'm very thankful that Stefani was one of the two. She is a powerful recourse to say the least. Her vocal skills are very diverse and are centered in different areas from the other two. The blend of the three together is just amazing and I can't wait to start working on the next album with this line-up. Eternal White was originally written for an all-star ensemble and not only three singers. We pulled it off in a great way but working on new material with only those three singers in mind will be a lot different.
I was absolutely fed up by seeing several new all-star projects pop up every week. There's nothing unique about it anymore and many of them have the same line-up. I also realized that I connect a lot better with bands I like instead of projects. To me, projects lack the identity that a band can create and I wanted to see if Nergard can reach out to people in a different way than before by becoming a band. Another important reason for changing the direction was that doing the all-star thing is incredibly expensive. I realized that if I put together a band instead of hiring ten singers for every album I can probably release music more often as the expenses are only centered around mixing/mastering and not payment to guest performers.
The story of the "Carolean Death March" is not very known in Scandinavia either as it is just a small incident in a bigger political picture during The Great Northern War. The incident took place only one hour from where I grew up, in the mountains of a small place called Tydal. Three thousand Swedish and Finish soldiers froze to death in a blizzard, poorly dressed for winter. I've always been fascinated by this story and have been thinking about writing music about it for more than ten years. It's a story that is just perfect for metal and deserves to reach a bigger audience.
It was Andi that came up with the title actually. I had already settled on the title "Into the white" when he wrote the lyrics for a song he named Eternal White. I thought that was a brilliant title and asked if I could name the album after it, making it the title track. I think it describes the darkness of the album in a perfect way.
I'd have to say that the sound is a result of both factors actually. Symphonic Metal is a very expressive and emotional genre that was the perfect tool for me to color this story.
The process of orchestrating the album was extremely time consuming and is the only reason that it took four years to finish the album. I bought a bunch of sample libraries for orchestras and sat down, trying to learn how to use them in a convincing way. Sampled orchestras can sound like plastic if you do it wrong. I had to rewrite ideas constantly in order to make them sound authentic and that killed the motivation to work on the album again and again. As time went by I got better and started to learn the most effective ways of using the sample libraries. Making the orchestrations fit the image of the album was quite easy actually, once I learned to use the samples properly. I've always loved to describe a story with music and writing dark, emotional and theatrical orchestral arrangements is something I really love to do.
Well, first of all it certainly lifted some sort of "writing block" that I struggled with for years. The last three songs to be written for the album (Pride of the North, Downfall and From the Cradle To the Grave) came to life easily within a couple of weeks. The rest of the album took ages to write as I had to work so damn hard for every little idea. Since writing those three songs in the first half of 2019 I've almost managed to squeeze out an entire new Nergard album + songs for several other projects and the inspiration is still with me. It also made me develop into a more confident writer and I think I've really found my style with this album after searching for years, doing a lot of different stuff.
Once I decided to go down the Symphonic Metal-road there were no real dilemmas actually, except for the orchestral arrangements which I mentioned earlier. That was a real pain in the ass.
First of all - thank you for your kind words. I'm very happy you like the song. It was a difficult song to write. I remember rewriting the intro at least four times and spent ages on getting the proper atmosphere for the verses. More importantly - the song wouldn't have worked properly if it wasn't for Mathias' emotional vocals. The musical atmosphere and lyrics are important but if you don't believe what comes out of the singer the song won't work. He really did an amazing job on this one and I'm really happy about the outcome of the song.
We are two different bands with different ways of writing music. I really like Mindtech, especially their latest album. There's some great songwriting there. When we got to work on "Under Fire" we had already done a concert together so I knew he was a competent singer. The first song we ever did together in the rehearsal room was "Where No One Would Shed A Tear", which was originally written for a woman. I remember laughing when he started singing, it was so damn good! He was an easy choice indeed.
That's a tough one. Every song is special to me but if I had to pick I'd pick God Forgive My Haunted Mind. It was the first song to be written for Eternal White and was also rewritten several times. I must have ditched 7-8 minutes of music for this one before it became what it is today. It was also the last song to be finished as I rewrote the intro for the fifth time a couple of days before the mixing began. Andi actually finished his vocal parts four years ago this month. It's just insane thinking about how long the process of making this album has been.
I was thinking about putting up a release show for this summer but we'll wait until next year when it's (hopefully) safer and we won't have restrictions all over the place. I'd also like to take Nergard out on the road. Now that it is a band, touring is possible. It never was when I was relying on guest-singers all the time, which would have been too expensive. We'll spend this year promoting the new album Eternal White and start recording the follow-up album. Plenty things to be done.
<
br />
Playing concerts! I miss that so much
The pleasure is all mine. Thanks for taking the time Lior. Much appreciated. Cheers, Andreas
More results...
