BANDBIOGRAPHY & FAQ.
THE ORIGIN OF SEVENTH WONDER & BANDMEMBERS...
Seventh Wonder was formed in 2000 by bass player Andreas Blomqvist,
guitarist Johan Liefvendahl and drummer Johnny Sandin after their previous
band fell apart. The music turned towards the progressive side of metal and
as the band was joined by keyboard player Andreas “Kyrt” Söderin late 2000,
the new sound was cemented further.
Two demos were recorded (2001 & 2003) and the latter caught the attention of
label Lion Music who signed the band in 2004. This collaboration spawned the
first release of Seventh Wonder and ‘Become’ saw the light of day in June
2005.
Become was well received by the press and top scores were given everywhere.
However, the band and singer Andi decided to part ways shortly after the
recording process had ended and once more the search for a singer started
once again… The brilliant Tommy Karevik (ex: Vindictiv) was spotted and he
joined the band in 2005, actually prior to the release of Become.
The next album entitled ‘Waiting In The Wings’ was recorded in 2006 and was
mixed and mastered by legendary Tommy Hansen. This being a huge leap forward
in song complexity and maturity and received outstanding reviews all over
the world.
2007 was spent playing live all over Europe including sharing stage with
great bands as Queensryche, Testament, Redemption and many others in
England, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
A sequel to Waiting In The Wings was also written during 2007 and the band
hit the studio in May 2008 to record the third full-length album entitled
Mercy Falls.
Mercy Falls is yet another step towards even more intricate and complex musical structures, but always maintaining that strong sense of melody which we have come to expect from the band. Mercy Falls is a full-blown concept album which brings yet another dimension into the music with countless details for fans to dive into. Mercy Falls sees Seventh Wonder going faster, heavier, softer, happier, angrier and simply larger than ever before!
Andreas Blomqvist
Born: August 10, 1978
Instrument: bass
Influences:
Steve Harris, Marcel Jacob, Thomas Miller, Cliff Burton
Johan Liefvendahl
Born: March 13, 1980
Instrument: guitar
Influences:
Nuno Bettencourt, Paul Gilbert, Pontus Norgren,
Yngwie
Malmsteen,
"IA" Eklundh, Pete Lesperance.
Tommy Karevik
Born: November 1, 1981
Instrument: vocals
Influences:
Jorn Lande, Tony Kakko, Glenn Hughes, Sebastian Bach
Andreas Söderin
Born: August 4, 1979
Instrument: keyboard
Influences:
Jordan Rudess, Michael Pinella, Kevin Moore
Johnny Sandin
Born: October 29, 1977
Instrument: drums
Influences:
Ingo Swichtenberg, Jason Rullo, Uli Kusch
FAQ. I The frequently asked questions...
Q: When and how did Seventh Wonder come to life and how did the members hook up?
Andreas Blomqvist and Johnny met in a Pantera/Machine Head type band called Blue Man Down with Björn Grönqvist and Micke Ingelin 1996. Johnny later left that band to start in a power metal band called Euphoria with Micke Ingelin, Magnus Lindblom and Jocke Borgman. While both of them still played in Blue Man Down, Andreas asked Johnny to help out in Andreas’ own band, Explicity, because they had a gig coming up and no drummer –this was in 1997. Andreas continued with Explicity after that with Carl-Johan Sillén (now in Slowlife) on drums and Marcus Sundquist on lead guitar and Jonatan Karlman on rhythm guitar through 1998. Johnny went off to play with Euphoria for a while but that band fell apart due to the band members’ different levels of ambition.
Magnus Lindblom started a new band called Mankind, to carry on what was started with Euphoria and that started to take form sometime around the end of ’98 or early ‘99. He recruited Jon Björk, a very skilled guitarist who had studied at Musicians Institute in Hollywood earlier. Magnus brought Johnny with him from Euphoria and also recruited Johan Liefvendahl. Johan studied at Rytmus at that time which was around the start of 1999, a high school with focus on musical education. Johan had earlier put together a project at Rytmus which was called Kinky Hotpants for which Magnus had auditioned. That’s where they met and for the formation of Mankind Magnus remembered Johan and got him to join Mankind.
In the early spring of 1999, while Andreas B was doing his military service, Johnny called him up and asked if he wanted to audition for the position as bass player for Mankind, as they had tried out a couple of bass players earlier that weren’t quite right.
Andreas did so and got the gig around March of ’99. During the spring of 2000 Jon quit the band due to differences in musical preferences and later that year Magnus quit the band, and since he was an instrumental part of the band Mankind was officially over.
Johan, Johnny and Andreas decided to stay together and initially called Neverland they wrote Day by Day, what was later to become Walking tall and the track Seventh Wonder during the fall of 2000. With just the three of them and only one guitarist the need for a keyboard player became more evident. Around the same time Andreas Söderin had quit a previous band because the band members weren’t much into the more technical stuff which was absolutely what Andreas wanted to do since he had quite recently fallen in love with Dream Theater. Through a mutual friend of his and Johnny’s, Zoran Kukulj, Andreas came to the old rehearsal room in Bromma and liked what he heard enough for him to want to come back again. Since there was already another Andreas in the band Andreas S was promptly named Kyrt, after his keyboard which was a Kurzweil at that time. Seventh Wonder was born.
After searching for singers for ages, and after first frontman Andi had come and gone, the band was lost again. Kyrt remembered a singer who had sung just a few phrases on a project he did with a friend. That was Tommy who had just recorded his first hard rock/metal recordings ever with the band Vindictiv. When the guys in Seventh Wonder heard the vocals on the Vindictiv demo they knew that they had struck gold, if they could only convince him to come and join the band. An audition was set up and Tommy sung In the Blink of an eye and Temple in the storm. The chemistry was definitely there and Tommy joined Seventh Wonder in February of 2005, four full moths before Become was even released. The rest is, as they say, history…
Q: What is the meaning behind the band name ‘Seventh Wonder’?
There is none! The band name Seventh Wonder was a suggestion from Andreas Blomqvist after the band had found out that the band name Neverland was already taken. It was one suggestion among a few others and it was the one that the rest of the band liked the most –so it was adopted as the new band name.
Q: Does Seventh Wonder have any messages in their lyrics, like an overall theme?
No, every song is it’s own entity with a few exceptions. There are no hidden meanings and no agenda that the band pushes for. There are no political or religious views that the band as a whole stands for.
Q: Is Seventh Wonder a Christian band?
No. Again, different members of Seventh Wonder have different views on both politics and faith and the band is detached from any such labels.
Q: What is the song “Waiting In The Wings” about?
It is the continuation of the story
that started on the song “Like him” from the band’s first album. As Andreas
Blomqvist describes on the band’s forum:
“Ok, the long one...
It is the continuing story I started in the song "Like Him" off of the first album. In so many words that song was about a boy, or a prince or something growing up in his father’s castle in small country somewhere a long time ago, and his father is an evil oppressor. He was of course raised the same way, not to care for the "commoners", but an encounter with a girl in rags outside the palace walls made him swear "I won't be like him!". So he chooses a different path and emerges as a light in the darkness.
In WITW we again join this boy, now a man, his father dead and he himself in rule of the kingdom. However, nothing turned out the way he wanted. The first verse tells us how he suppressed the feelings of the somewhat naive boy he once was and how he is troubled by that, the young boy accusing him in his mind "you have broken your word!". He tries to explain to himself and justify his actions by pushing the blame away on circumstances and others. Like that the grown up world is never as simple as a child's world. The real world is filled with compromises, deals, expectations, policies etc and subdued by those circumstances he became his father in some sense, albeit with a conscience.
Bridge: Every time he looks in the mirror he sees his father and that just tears him up. And when growing up, starting down this path he was pushed by his father’s old councils etc and time and again he said to himself "ok, but only this time! Later, I will fix it -I promise" and that's what is referred to in the bridge with the line "time is no longer on your side". Like, he's there now, he did become his father and he's just as bad as him.
Chorus: Still the legacy of his father rules, and he is just a frightened child crying in solitude, not knowing how to break free.
In verse two, he recollects his upbringing and thinks about his old promises. Again he just cries that he was an ignorant fool, oblivious to the ways of the world, "only a fool thinks he can control his destiny", so this is the part where he feels really sorry for himself...
<loooong music passage>
He then realizes that he's just been pushed around and been too weak. He now rages against his father’s memory and that his father has always been lurking there in the shadows, or waiting in the wings, ruling him even after his death.
-But he won't follow him, enough is enough!
The line "closer to heaven I fail" means simply that he is older and with less time to live, he still fails to shake off his past.
How it turned out?
We'll see.... ”.
Q: Is there an overall theme on the album Waiting In The Wings?
No. All songs were written separately and the lyrical duties were shared by Andreas B and Tommy.
Q: What are the band’s influences?
Very different for all the members
of the band but this is a fairly good list
Johan: Europe, Extreme, Freak Kitchen, Harem Scarem, Talisman, Yngwie Malmsteen, Dream Theater...
Tommy: Jorn Lande, Sonata Arctica, Michael Jackson, Dream Theater...
Kyrt: Dream Theater, ACT, Spock’s Beard...
Johnny: Helloween,
Symphony X, Dream Theater
Usually Andreas, Johan or Tommy brings and idea to the rehearsal room. Ideas are tried and either kept or discarded as the band works together to arrange the music and make it interesting. The degree of completeness varies a whole lot when a new idea is brought before the band. Sometimes almost all parts for all instruments are written already and sometimes it’s merely a collection of riffs. In the earlier days, more work was done together but with recording schedules and time being a limiting factor the band has been forced to do more work individually. This is not necessarily something they prefer though.
Q: Will Seventh Wonder tour __________ (place any country here)?
We don’t know –but we certainly want to!
Today with record sales plummeting due to illegal downloading, the smaller bands that are on small labels can hardly ever get any financial tour support. This means that the most likely way you can get Seventh Wonder to come and play where you live is to write to festivals and similar to make them book Seventh Wonder. That is the most probable course of events, unless a spot as an opening act for a larger band opens up.
You can make a difference!
Q: What gear and effects does the band use?
Andreas. B: EBS Fafner 600 W bass head, EBS 4x10, EBS 1x15. I have three bases but only use two of them. My touring bass is a Yamaha John Myung signature model (6-string) which I bought in 1999 and have used for countless hours since then. My second bass is the one I use for recordings these days. It is a custom made Michael Tobias bass with Buzz Feiten system and both active pickups and a piezo bridge. I use rather low string action and medium light strings. The gauges are (low B to high C, or with our tuning low Bb to high B): 125, 100, 80, 60, 40, 25.
Johan: Guitar: Musicman EVH, Amp: Mesa Boogie Rectifier, Efx: Line6 Pod X3 Live (and he has stolen my old 4x12, the bastard! –Andreas. B)
Johnny: DW Custom Collector’s set. The toms are 10”, 12” with a 16” floor tom. The bass drum is 22”. Iron Cobra double pedal and Sabian cymbals.
Kyrt: Roland Fantom X6 as primary rig for both live and recording, Kurzweil 2500 XS, Mackie DFX12.
Q: What are the band member’s jobs and/or previous jobs?
Tommy is a fire fighter and also deals with traffic accidents and similar. Kyrt is in IT support and repairs hardware such as cash machines and laptops. Andreas works with pacemaker research including algorithm development and project managing. Johan works with musical equipment including setting them up and delivering them to events. Johnny works in a warehouse and handles the incoming goods, ordering and logistics.
Q: How does Johan practice from a technical standpoint?
Johan: Use a metronome and start very, very slowly. A lot of people think they know how to play fast but if you take a closer look how they play a certain lick/riff at a slower tempo they can’t play it at all. So I think it’s very important to synchronize your left and right hand, I mean try to focus on both your hands together. Take 2 note close to each other (let say we take C and D). The first note we will play will be a C followed by 3 D´s. Repeat. The important thing when you play this is to exaggerate the C with your right hand (if you’re right-handed i.e.) so that you will hear the rhythm clearly. And be sure that you don’t change your way of holding your pick when you start to play the "lick" fast. Remember to start the exercise in a slow tempo. It’s a quite boring exercise but it will help you to develop a great technique.
Q: Can you describe your right hand technique, Andreas?
I've been getting somewhat more sloppy over the years, but my goal when practicing is always to use strictly alternate picking. Especially when playing descending lines!
I always use ring-middle-index-ring-middle-index etc when I use three fingers. The only exception is when I play arpeggios during which I use my thumb, but that's another story.
I always anchor my thumb at a lower string or the pickups and I change its position when changing strings, that is, I don't always keep the thumb at the pickup and stretch my hand but try to keep it in as similar position as possible always.
The other important thing when
playing with three fingers in "non-triplet" parts is to make sure to move
the stress so that it always is on the same note. That is, if you are
playing 16th notes you need to make sure that the emphasis is not always on,
let's say the ring finger as that will rotate throughout each group of four
notes, thus making the 16th note pattern unclear and muddy. That is however
awfully difficult and very boring to practice but still a necessity.
