Q&A With Tom S. Englund

With eight studio albums, beginning with 1998’s seminal “The Dark Discovery,” Sweden’s Evergrey has become one of the foremost names in the burgeoning melodic metal scene.

The lone member remaining from the original lineup is singer, guitarist and principle songwriter Tom S. Englund.

His rich baritone voice and clarion guitar tone have become to Evergrey what Mick Jagger’s strut and Keith Richards’ drug habit were to the Rolling Stones.

We gave him a call to chat about his influences, his place in the metal world and his striking similarity to Bruce Springsteen.

WEEKEND How did a young Tom Englund become interested in metal?
ENGLUND Various reasons, but the main reason was that I was watching a Def Leppard concert when I was a kid and I saw this line of beautiful girls lining up to get backstage with the band. I said, “That’s what I wanna do!”

But as far as playing the guitar, I got into that from a band called Dire Straits.

WEEKEND So you started playing guitar before you got into metal?
ENGLUND Yeah, definitely. And I won a single of “Radio Ga Ga” by Queen at an amusement park, and that sort of sealed the deal for me.

WEEKEND So you’ve got Brian May and Mark Knopfler. Who were some other important influences for you growing up as a guitarist?
ENGLUND Yngwie Malmsteen. Iron Maiden, for sure. Metallica, of course. Queensrÿche. So many bands that I’ve met now, and when I did, I was drooling and shaking. Which is a cool thing. It’s like living childhood dreams all the time.

WEEKEND When did you start playing in metal bands?
ENGLUND ’90 or ’91. I started playing death metal, actually, because that was sort of the only thing I could handle at the time. I didn’t start to sing until a few weeks before we recorded the first album, which is weird.

WEEKEND You’ve worked in a number of genres. You’ve done guest work with Nightrage and Dragonland, and you’re obviously best-known for Evergrey, but do you feel like you have a certain place in the metal world?
ENGLUND I try to participate and widen my views of music and metal and life itself by doing as much as I can while I’m here. We’re here for a very short time, and I try to make people happy and myself happy by doing interesting things, and if it’s in death metal or jazz or harmonica music, I don’t give a damn.

WEEKEND Putting Evergrey in a category is tricky. There are those who want to call you strictly progressive metal, some people want to call you power metal, some people want to call you progressive power metal. Do you think that we’ve overdone it with subgenres and sub-subgenres in today’s metal world?
ENGLUND I think we overdid it like twelve years ago. When Evergrey started, I remember the first review I read. It said, “I don’t know where to put these guys.”

Well, so, just leave us where we are, you know? We play metal. End of story. People are so keen on putting people in different small boxes and genres and corners. I’m not interested. We don’t even play progressive music as far as I’m concerned.  

WEEKEND That’s interesting. You’d find a lot of critics who would disagree with you.
ENGLUND Yeah, and at the same time, it’s also very unfair to the progressive genre to label Evergrey as a progressive band because the kid who’s 12 years old who discovers Evergrey and finds out that this is progressive music and he dislikes Evergrey, then he has the totally wrong perception of what progressive music is. And of course it works the same way on the other end as well. I think we just play metal. I’ve had this discussion since I started, so I’ve just lost interest.  

WEEKEND There’s a certain Evergrey sound that no matter who rotates around you never really changes. Do you just have such a strong vision that no matter which musicians you have around you’ll keep creating Evergrey music?
ENGLUND Oh, yeah. Evergrey has never been about compromising. I don’t care if you’re my best friend, and I don’t care if you’re my wife. Music, for me, is not about making people happy because it’s comfortable. The music comes first in every aspect, and in every decision the music is most important.

Then I start caring about the people around the music. It sounds cold, it sounds weird, and it probably makes me out to be a tyrant, and if that’s what I am, then I am.
I watched a documentary about Bruce Springsteen the other day from when he recorded some album from after “Born to Run,” and he was the same way as me. I watched him and I thought he was an asshole, but at the same time, I understood that that’s the way I am as well, and at the same time I appreciated what comes out of that.