German progressive rockers Everon release ‘Shells,’ their first new album in 16 years, via Music Theories Recordings. To celebrate they have revealed the lyric video for their latest single, “Until We Meet Again.”

“Until We Meet Again” stands up as one of the most heart-on-sleeve songs on the album. The lyrics refer to the passing of Everon drummer, Moschus. “Musically, this song is rather uptempo and positive in vibe, so in a way, the lyrics make a bit of a strange fit here,” Oliver Philipps reflects. “But the truth is that this was the last song I wrote for this album, and while I was working on it, I got the news that Moschus, our lifelong friend, had been found dead in his home. The words came automatically; in this case, I even tried to argue with it because I wasn’t sure the topic was fitting with the music, but I couldn’t find anything else, so I suppose the lyrics just belonged with the song.”
 
“It was completely out of the blue,” Philipps sighs. “He wasn’t sick or anything. He was just found dead. It was a cardiac arrest or one of these things. The reason I chose to finish the album at all was that he’d already recorded drums for eight of the songs. If it had happened half a year earlier, I wouldn’t have chosen to make an album. I’d been pondering over should I, shouldn’t I for quite some time.”

Talking about music and its ability to relate, he considers, “At the core of it, I think every song is an emotion transformed into a piece of music; you cannot break it down to notes or words only; there is more to it. I believe this emotional content that a song carries, makes a listener resonate or not resonate with it. The same song may make one person cry,  another won’t feel a thing when hearing it. I don’t think there is much you can do intentionally to make sure people will relate to it; the best that I can do is to be true to my emotions and put that into the music so there is emotional content in there that somebody can relate to. Once you put the music out there, you have to let go of it; how people respond to it or who will get to hear it is not in my hands.”
 
Following Moschus’s passing, US drummer Jason Gianni entered the fray, guesting on the drum tracks that Moschus did not complete.

The recently revealed previous single “Guilty As Charged” where the song “Lyrically deals with self-judgement/regrets,” Philipps explains. In December, the band announced their return with, “No Embrace.” “That made a good opening track because it is straight forward and accessible, it has a more positive energy than some of the other songs that are darker in tone or mood,” he adds about the first taster from the album.
 
‘Shells’, an album bristling with energy and verve, encapsulating everything that made Everon such a force to be reckoned with in the first place. With songs like the ebullient opener ‘No Embrace’ and the complex patterns of ‘Broken Angels’, the quirk of ‘Pinocchio’s Nose’ and the more heartfelt tones of ‘Monster’, or the epic 14-minute grandeur of closing track ‘Flesh’, Everon have rarely sounded so good. Defiantly old school packed full of progressive flourishes and Philipps’ innate sense of melody set the band apart from many of their peers all those years ago.

“The band never quit. It was a hiatus,” Philipps explains as he is sitting in his recording studio, talking about the new Everon Record. “Everon didn’t retire or anything, and we never even talked about it,” Philipps reasons. “I always wrote all the music and the lyrics. So that would mean if I didn’t do anything, we wouldn’t do anything. After ‘North’, it just didn’t happen.”
  
“I’ve been working as a producer with other artists through all the years,” explains Philipps, working with artists such as Delain, Charlotte Wessels, progressive metallers Ad Infinitum and Wolverine, Italian progressive outfit THE ONEIRA, LEAH, Angel, and Imperia—the latter vocalists appear on the new album.
 
It’s been sixteen years and now we have ‘Shells’ – Twelve tracks of quality, highly melodic, progressively inclined rock for people to enjoy. It’s certainly good to have Everon back.
 
“I had a list of ideas. I’d been writing hundreds of songs between these albums, but there was not one thing I had in mind to fit with Everon. I blocked February to April, and once I started writing, it all came naturally. It was an enjoyable process. I didn’t know what to expect because I didn’t have a plan. It was no use trying to make it match what we did before. It was so long ago. I just thought I’d see what came out. And that’s what came out. But it was not by intention.”

Hurt and regret run in the veins of the album. “I think it is a bit in the nature of the kind of music we’re doing that it is rather the darker type of emotions that will find a place on an Everon album,” he considers. “Feelings of hurt or loss are very intense emotions, and for some reason, in music, I was always more gravitating towards the darker stuff rather than happy songs. The song ‘Shells’ is an example of that and comes from one of the darker corners of my mind. It is a very sad song. It would feel inappropriate to explain the background story, but it doesn’t need the background story to be able to relate to it. “
 
It’s been sixteen years and now we have ‘Shells’ – Twelve tracks of quality, highly melodic, progressively inclined rock for people to enjoy. It’s certainly good to have Everon back.

Track Listing

1. No Embrace
2. Broken Angels
3. Travels
4. Pinocchio’s Nose
5. Monster
6. Shells
7. Grace
8. Guilty as Charged
9. Children of the Earth
10. OCD
11. Until We Meet Again
12. Flesh

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