SOURCE – With the success and rave reviews of the last release, does that increase your expectations for this album Epigone?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – I’m sure it does, but we do whatever we can to not let that get to our heads, because that’s the sort of pressure that can quickly stifle inspiration and make it much more of an egotistical venture than a creative one. I think we just try to not compare our albums to each other too much. I don’t think any one Wilderun album is better or worse than another, at least in our eyes. They are just different chapters and explorations for us personally. ‘Epigone’ has a very different tone and atmosphere than our previous album, so we just try to leave it in its own world.
SOURCE – As a band you have undergone a couple of line-up changes recently: how this affected the writing and recording of your latest release Epigone?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – Actually not all too much, because our former lead guitarist Joe actually contributed his leads to ‘Epigone’ right before he left the band. So luckily this album is still technically a 5-man project, even though we are now a 4-piece. It was a really nice swansong for Joe (for this band anyways) to have him contribute his guitar work to this album, and we’re really happy with what he did. So I suppose we’ll have to wait until the next album to really see what the 4-piece in the studio feels like.
SOURCE – Nowadays in every album the person responsible for the sound production is strongly mentioned especially when he is a known one. How important do you think is the producer to the sound of a band?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – It’s definitely a pretty big factor. I’m not much of an engineer myself, so I can’t really speak to the technicalities of it all, but you can hear for yourself the differences between the sounds of ‘Sleep’, ‘Veil’ and ‘Epigone’. Same lineup, same basic instruments and such coming to the table (although orchestra libraries are always updating), but a lot of that change and progression comes from the different mixing engineers we’ve used. We were really excited to have Jens Bogren mix this record, because he has such a handle on both heavy and soft music, and we knew we needed someone who could easily handle extreme dynamics, given how these songs are written.
SOURCE – Tell me about the cover artwork. What inspired the making of the artwork, and how would you say it ties into the music?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – The artwork is a piece by the excellent Kim Keever. Kim does all (or most) of his artwork with paints in a water tank, so what you are looking at is a photograph of that water tank, even though at first glance it might feel more like a painting. This choice was a bit more abstract than previous artworks. Both ‘Sleep’ and ‘Veil’ had art that (roughly) tied in with some of the story of the lyrics, whereas our decision behind choosing this piece was honestly more visceral and emotional. A lot of the lyrics on this record are ruminations on art and creation itself, and all the frustrations and hypocrisies that go along with trying to inject ‘meaning’ into art. So in keeping with that spirit, we wanted the artwork decision to be more emotional than logical this time around.
SOURCE – How was the video shoot for Passenger and what is the plot of the clip?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – It was great! Zev and Brendon were a lot of fun to work with. We got to shoot on these old ruins in the middle of a park in Boston, but it was fairly secluded, and the way they shot the video makes it seem like we’re in some ancient forest out in the middle of nowhere. Even though if you turned the camera the other way, you’d see a lot of buildings. The magic of cinema! There isn’t any sort of plot to the video, just a general performance video in a location that felt atmospherically appropriate.
SOURCE – Could you tell us about Distraction I, Distraction II, Distraction III and Distraction Nulla songs?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – They were originally written as one song, but we decided to split them up into 4 tracks because the different sections felt so distinct, and we wanted the listener to really be aware of the 4 movements. The whole Distraction song took a lot of parts from an old song I had written a long time ago, but I heavily reworked a lot of it. Distraction I was actually more of an interlude originally, but I realized it worked better as an introduction, once I added a B section to the verse. Distraction II was a combination of new and old riffs, definitely made to be a lot heavier. Distraction III was almost entirely new, and most of that credit goes to Wayne for his beautiful orchestrations. Distraction Nulla was, oddly enough, a chord progression and melody that I had written a while ago (and pops up at other points on the record), but for this track we just made it as messed up and twisted as possible.
SOURCE – What has the band been doing to keep busy during the pandemic times, and what are you looking forward to as restrictions ease up?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – Well, for 2020, it really was just prepping ‘Epigone’ for the studio, which we entered in early 2021. That certainly took up most of our time. Besides that, we all have fairly normal lives and jobs, and luckily all of our day jobs transitioned (mostly) to at-home work, so I think most of us have just been doing the normal life, work-from-home routine. Not always exciting, but that’s how it goes. We fit in Wilderun whenever we can. We’re definitely looking forward to getting out there and playing more shows. We were really robbed of the ‘Veil’ touring cycle, so we want to make up for it as soon as possible. Luckily we had a good start to that with our recent North American tour with Swallow the Sun.
SOURCE – Any other news you’d like to share with our readers?
Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars, Piano) – Nothing at the moment, just please check out ‘Epigone’, and stay tuned while we try to book more shows, wherever it’s possible! Thanks so much for any and all support!
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