Oliver: There was no masterplan to this, there simply were too many ideas to lay them down on just one CD. Doing a double CD actually never was in discussion, that may be okay when doing a concept-album where both CD's are linked with each other, but that is not the case here. "Bridge" and "Flesh" are two totally separate albums, both in Everon-style naturally, but at the same time exploring different aspects of our music. There will be people that totally like "Bridge" but get bored with "Flesh", or the other way around. Bringing them out as a double-CD would mean, urging quite a lot of people to possibly buy one CD they don't enjoy. As for the recordings, all songs were recorded in the same period, so to us actually the two albums are like one really long one anyway, since everything was produced in one continuous recording-session from November 01 to February 02.

Oliver: Originally my idea was to have one really heavy album and a second one focusing only on the more mellow tracks, but we dropped that plan pretty soon. To our opinion, one of the typical trademarks of each album we did, is that they all have a healthy balance of heavy and melodic moments, so we decided to keep it that way also on the new CD's. So on "Bridge", which is the clearly harder edge CD, you also find a little melancholic piece like "Traveling Shoes", or more balladesque material such as "Harbour" or "Still Mine", naturally accompanied by some really heavy rockers. On "Flesh" these melodic, less guitar-oriented songs, get a lot more space, but still in tracks like "And Still It Bleeds" or the title-track "Flesh", there are also plenty of heavy guitars to be found, just to give the albums a good balance and make sure they don't turn out one-dimensional or boring. So we did not make too many differences in the songwriting for the two albums actually, but we made much clearer differences in the mix-sessions. "Bridge" definitely has a focus on the guitars, while on "Flesh" we gave more room to the piano and orchestral elements and sometimes put the guitars a bit lower in the mix.

Oliver: I wouldn't say there is anything like a formula, but still you have a point there. We all believe in good hooklines and catchy melodies to be a lot more important than over-the-top solo-playing and five twiddly bits per measure; actually we always saw ourselves as a band that plays music for "normal" people, we never had the ambition to be a highly technical progressive band, that only applies to a small specialized audience that approaches music rather intellectually. Music should be all about emotion, or at least, that is what it is for us. There are technical moments in our music as well, but usually very functional to support the flow of the song, we are intent on reaching people emotionally, not on impressing anyone with fancy licks or weird breaks. Maybe we're just rather simple minds after all.

Oliver: I usually do so indeed. I guess I was never much good at writing fictional lyrics, when dealing with music in a very emotional way it happens naturally that also the lyrics are about things of personal meaning for yourself. It feels strange to me when singing about something which I cannot relate to as a person, I believe my interpretation as a vocalist is a lot stronger when the lyrics are really personal. Again I don't think there is a general rule or method, that would be valid for every singer, only for myself I figured out that is what goes best for me. There are plenty of other singers that are great at doing fictional stuff and also at interpreting, what works for them doesn't have to work for me, and the other way around.

Oliver: I don't know actually, and I don't mind much. In all these years we have been compared to so many different bands, and quite a lot of them I didn't even know. In your list at least I know all the names. We're not intent on sounding like anyone else, still it naturally happens that some things you do will remind of something else, nothing wrong with that. Only it's not done on purpose, so if you're question is, whether it was our plan to sound like a continuation of any of the bands you mentioned, then the answer is clearly No. But naturally I admit that there may be parallels with bands like Kansas or Rush, both are bands I like a lot. As for Yes or Dream Theatre I find very little similarities actually, but however, if you feel reminded of them, who am I to say that you're wrong about that. After all, I don't really care a lot; one thing I am really happy with, is that for many years already the common opinion in most of the major magazines seems to be, that we developed a very individual style over the years, different from any other band in the scene. But then again, we didn't reinvent music in general, so there will always be something in it that may remind someone of something else, and that is perfectly fine with me.

Oliver: Songwriting is a very strange thing, to be honest, I don't even think there is such thing as "songwriting" in general, or at least not as a voluntary occupation, a song is nothing you can come up with on purpose. At least to me it rather "happens" than that it gives me a feeling of writing anything at all. In that respect, to me songwriting never was a painstaking experience, the songs come to my mind naturally; usually they suddenly pop up inside my mind, with complete arrangement, melodies, you name it. Sometimes there is just a part of a song and it takes a while til it's complete, sometimes it's a complete song from the very beginning. Actually the only thing I do is writing it down as soon as it is finished inside my head. To my experience the less we interfere into the creative process, the better the outcome will be. Music is a lot bigger than us musicians, so I believe we should treat our inspiration gentle and with decency, it's a gift we receive, and not a thing we create. The safest way to spoil a piece of music, is trying to be smarter than the song by voluntarily adding extra-parts to a song to make it sound more progressive, or to add a heavy part to a ballad to make sure it's not too cheesy, or to add an extra guitar solo to impress your fellow musicians. I absolutely believe, whenever writing songs, the best you can do, is not doing anything at all. Just let the inspiration grow naturally inside your mind, and when the process has come to an end and you feel a song is complete, then sit down and play it exactly the way it came to your mind. Inspiration doesn't make mistakes, but us musicians do.

Oliver: Actually it seems you are rather referring to the solo-and lead-parts aren't you? In that case it is actually me you hear, I do all the lead-guitars from the early days already, Ulli is mainly focusing on the rhythm-guitars. Nonetheless, when he joined the band, that gave us a lot more possibilities. Ralf Janssen, his predecessor, was a good player as well, but Ulli is a lot more versatile, so he simply covers a wider range of expression and styles. As a band naturally you can only operate within the limitations of each player, and with Ulli we could do things we couldn't do before. So for instance Ralf wasn't good at heavy riffing at all, Ulli is great at that, so since the Fantasma-album you have a lot more heavy parts on the albums. Ralf was really great at playing open-chords, pickings and all that. This is stuff Ulli actually had to learn first when he joined the band, nowadays he adapted all that to his playing, but in the beginning that gave him quite some headache. Both players had their strong and weak points, but after all Ulli turned out the clearly more versatile of these two.

Oliver: That is hard to say, since the influences are too many and too diverse to give you a clear impression. I try to approach music not as a professional, but just as a listener, so also there I try to focus only on the emotional aspect. So in case a piece of music reaches and touches me inside, I don't mind the style or genre, and the emotion it transports may be just about anything from sadness and melancholy, to brutality or aggression. To me it is important, that it HAS emotion, not which emotion it transports. Thus I have favourite bands or artists in just about any style there is, I like bands such as Type O Negative or Death the same as much as Tori Amos or Billy Joel on the other extreme. Also I highly appreciate good pop-music like Alannis Morissette, Sting or Nik Kershaw, but also like modern classical composers like Kenji Bunch or Michael Nyman. After all as a musician just about anything can be an influence and inspiration, not only music, but just as well any other form of art or simple things of everyday life have an impact on my work as a musician. In a way, as a musician it seems more or less everything you go through sooner or later transforms into music. Also my work as a producer for other artists opened horizons for me, I would have never come to see any other way. I owe all these musicians for sharing their visions, their dedication and their creativity with me, I learnt a lot from each of them and hopefully managed to also give a thing or two to them as well

Oliver: I guess I am the last person to ask that question to, since of all genres there are, progressive rock is the one I pay the least attention to. That my sound irritating to you, but when you think of it you may understand it actually. When working at the fish-market all your life, you will not necessarily like to have fish for dinner, if you know what you mean? It's just a fact, that it is a lot more inspiring to listen to music all different from the music you're into with your own band.

Oliver: I used to do all of that on stage indeed. After Fantasma we brought in an additional keyboard-player so I didn't have to do any keys on stage. In a way that felt like a great relief, on the other hand it didn't sound the way we had hoped actually. So we parted with this live-keyboardist again, and have been searching for a replacement for quite a while already, but so far none of the guys we had invited for an audition totally convinced us. So it might really happen I go back to doing it myself, in a way I would actually prefer to only sing and play guitar, but on the other hand the most important thing is what we sound like on stage naturally. I can't help feeling a bit like being condemned to play keyboards in this band, so after all it might turn out that way again. I don't play too much guitar on stage anyway, I mainly take care of the lead-things, so that doesn't interfere with singing at all. When playing keyboards naturally that means you have to play and sing at the same time; definitely this is possible, but at least to me it feels better if I can focus totally on singing. We haven't finally made our mind up on that yet.

Oliver: We cannot really complain actually. From the early days our albums have got regular distribution in more or less the whole of Europe, and normally also in South-America and Japan, so things could have gone a lot worse for us actually. Still it is not the type of chart-breaking music that will make you a rock-star doing huge world-tours and all that. I am doing this for ten years now, so I have very little hope this will ever drastically change, but even if it stays the way it is, that isn't that bad after all. Everon is quite an established band, we're recognized not only by the specialized press but also by most of the major rock-magazines and usually received very friendly. We sell reasonable quantities with every album, so that whenever we feel in the mood for doing another one, there has been a record-company considering it worth to provide a budget for doing one more. None of us has to make his living on the income of the band, so in that respect we are financially independent from the success of the albums and simply play the music we want to play. It is good to know there are some people out there, to whom our music really means a lot, that alone makes it a rewarding thing already. Wether it is just a couple of thousands or a couple of millions is less relevant after all, we're not in it for the money, otherwise we would have stopped this long ago already.

Oliver: You have a point there indeed. Actually, the artwork of "Flesh" fits the title-track perfectly, since that one is a really heavy and complex song, with on our terms unusually misantropic and aggressive lyrics. Naturally in case of putting the artwork in relation to a piece such as "Missing From The Chain" it may appear kind of displaced. Then again, each of our albums covers quite a wide range of different styles and atmospheres, so it may be almost impossible to create an artwork that equally fits all of them at the same time. However, we simply liked this piece of artwork a lot and chose it for the album without thinking too much about it.

Oliver: That is not a question I can answer, it is rather up to the audience to do that. As a musician you're naturally always developing, but again it is usually an involuntary process without steering into a particular direction. When I play an old Everon-album, which I usually don't ever do to be honest, to me it sounds like a different band almost. Still I like some of it, but I cannot relate to it the way I could back then when recording it. I guess each album is like a snapshot of our lives taken at a particular point in time, when looking back on it with some years distance you notice how much has changed in the meantime and that it feels less natural and meaningful than at the moment of writing or recording it. It is not more than a memory actually, like reading old letters or viewing old holiday-pictures, or a bit like reading in a diary of your own life. Every person is constantly changing through all his life, musicians are no exception in terms of that, and thus also their music changes naturally. And personally I believe it is good and healthy, if it goes that way. Naturally sometimes fans would prefer a band to always come up with new stuff that sounds like their favourite album from ten years ago, but as a musician it would be highly disappointing to do so, change, growth and development is a necessary condition for every kind of artistic work, no matter whether being a musician, a painter, a writer or anything else.

Oliver: I don't think we did. It is a typical prog-rock thing to do so, and since we've never been much of a typical prog band, to us that wouldn't feel natural. We cover too many different elements with our music, to restrict ourselves to just one topic with the lyrics, I cannot imagine a topic that would go naturally with all the different kinds of songs. Personally, apart from a few exceptions such as "The Lamb" or "Operation Mindcrime", I usually don't like concept albums a lot, too much sounds forced to my ears on this kind of albums, submitting the music to a strict lyrical concept feels like putting it in a cage to me, it would be against my nature to work this way.

Oliver: We have been thinking about that, and in a way with each album we get a step closer to this. So on "Flesh" you do not only have a cello-player, but also a complete string-section in some of the songs. Usually the orchestrations you hear are made of a mixture of real players and samples used in addition to this. I`d like to one day do something only played by an orchestra and without a band at all. Whenever bringing heavy guitars and a real orchestra together, unfortunately the outcome usually sounds disappointing. The problem is, that classical instruments are highly dynamic and full and warm in sound, but when having to "fight" in the mix against a rock- or metal-band, usually 80 percent of the orchestra gets lost, since it is simply rolled over by the wall of drums and guitars. Usually in the end you are much better of, when using samplers instead of real instruments, since in the mix you still have access to every single line of the orchestration instead of having just a stereo signal of the whole orchestra. Many bands have tried with a real orchestra, like for instance Rage or also Metallica, to me the outcome always was disappointing, since the orchestra never cuts through in the mix. And when filtering the sound of the orchestra in a way that it finally cuts through, it sounds even less natural in the end than a sampler, so there doesn't seem to be too much point in doing that. But still I totally love classical instruments, but it might be wiser to once do a special album that completely builds up on working with an orchestra, but do without heavy guitars etc. for this one.

Oliver: She is a close friend of mine, and we have been working together a couple of times before. We got to know each other back then in 99, when we had her at our studio the first time, back then for recording guest-vocals for a German metal-band named "Dark At Dawn". We have involved here in plenty of other projects ever after, and it was predictable that sooner or later she'd "end up" on an Everon-album as well. It might happen, that we will do some more together in the future, I'm thinking of trying to write and produce a complete album with her, but then without me appearing as a vocalist. She is singing so much better than I do, so I'd gladly keep my mouth shut and leave the singing to her. But naturally that would be for a different project then, not for Everon. In this band people will have to live with my humble attempts of pretending to be a singer.

Oliver: I think the sound is undeniably good and of competitive international pro-standard. Actually the studio has gathered an excellent reputation meanwhile, we have had bands from all over Europe coming here to record their albums, so there have been bands like Ancient Rites (Belgium), Wolverine (Sweden), Avulsed or Mistweaver (Spain), Braindamage (Italy), Danse Macabre (Finland), just to name a few. Our studio offers high-end audio and an affordable price clearly lower than of most competitors, apart from that all the bands that have been here seemed to highly appreciate the fact that here at Spacelab they're working not only with technicians, but with dedicated musicians. It makes the whole work a lot different from other studios. Apart from being a great drummer, Moschus is also one of the most gifted engineers in the whole of Germany, so sound-wise no band ever had to be concerned about not taking a great-sounding album home with them. Since we have so many clients from abroad coming to our place, we added a guest-apartment to the studio-complex, that bands from abroad can use during the time of their recordings, so there are no extra-cost raised for accommodation.

Oliver: I don't know if I have any to be honest. Actually I guess I am not the type of person to ponder much about a general strategy or philosophy in my life, life always used to be rather chaotic for me. Whenever I made a plan, in the end it came completely different anyway. I guess this kind of chaotic living is very typical for many artists, it seems that creativity hardly ever springs from a well-organized and perfectly structured mind. If there is one thing I consider being very important in life, than it is to find a way to be yourself; in all the things life puts us through we lose ourselves very easily and start to only react to circumstances and social environment, and I guess it is not wise to give in to that. I believe everyone has the right to at least try to be what he wants to be, to live his dream in case he has one, and to try to reach for whatever he's aiming for, even if it may seem totally out of reach or over-the-top. Just acting functional and playing it safe maybe a good strategy to get through life without ever getting in major troubles, but it will provide little enlightenment and joy. Life is too short to play it safe at every time, sometimes it is better to at least try to win, than being happy with ending in a draw. But naturally whenever trying to win, naturally you may just as well lose in the end, it's a risk you have to take.

Oliver: No, I thank you, it was a pleasure to answer your questions.