Well first of all the reception has been overwhelming and far exceeded our expectations. We were quite honestly not very sure at all that people would actually take to this style and the concept thing so it’s been great. I am starting to be able to enjoy the album now without getting too annoyed by all the little things that pissed my of right after it was finished so I think it is safe to say that it is indeed a great album!

I played with Johnny and Johan in another band which we started back in ´99 and after that band fell apart we continued to play and write songs for what eventually turned out to be Seventh Wonder.

The main difference is Tommy I believe. True, there is a lot of immature stuff on Become, but I honestly believe that with the playing skills of today and the production of today –a few of those songs would need all that much fixing to sound a lot like what we sound like today, given that Tommy sings on them. I think that we have all developed and grown as musicians from the youngsters who wrote the first tracks on Become to the men we are to today.

My feeling is that this time around all songs were conceived closer in time to each other to convey a more uniform entity –like a whole. I also believe that the whole concept thing added new dimensions and that we explored different feels to a greater extent on Mercy Falls than before.

-It took forever, man!  We wrote the first song for Mercy Falls during the summer of 2006 and finished the last song sometime February-March in 2008… We always work very slowly even though we devote thousands of hours of work –the progress is slow, but in my mind that makes for good quality. This time around we also had like a blue-print for each song, what the feeling should be, what story it was to tell and roughly which function it had in the whole concept so that was a new challenge too.

It constantly varies but I really like “Hide and Seek” because the verse is one of the best I have ever heard. And the outro kicks serious ass!

Yes it does. Not so much the greater concept of the story but this was personally the most horrible time of my life. It was a huge pressure on everyone in the band, but especially me and Tommy and we almost cracked. That is why I believe people can feel so much honest feelings in this album because me and Tommy poured out of ourselves and into the lyrics. So yes, it will always be very special to me.

We have a lot of plans but unfortunately a lot is still too early to talk about. We will play ProgPower Europe and Sweden Rock festival and are also working on one or two legs of a European tour.

It has to be the Italian tour of last year that we did together with Circus Maximus. It was outstanding from day one and the gig in Rome was probably the pinnacle even though I feel that we perhaps did the best gig ever on the last date of the tour.

Without a doubt the HORRIBLE experience at the Dutch Headway festival in 2007. I don’t have the energy to list all the shit that went down, but here is some of it: -no bass sound AT ALL (not only on stage, but anywhere!), no distortion on the guitar during solos, Tommy was so sick he couldn’t speak, my laptop got stolen...

I can do whatever I want and I love that and I would love for other people to see that as well.

Ten years ago I practiced technique ferociously. Got up before school, set the metronome to a slow pace and practiced alternate picking for an hour or so before school. Nowadays I play too little and every time I sit down I feel the pressure to write new music so that has kind of gotten in the way of the basic practicing, but it is never too late to pick that up again and I encourage everyone out there not to get sloppy with the basic stuff.

I was 18 years old and borrowed a bass from my friend. I had played some guitar before that though so I didn’t start out from absolute zero, but pretty much.

Yes, both Johan and Kyrrt (keyboards) have had formal training and Johan, I would say, is the most proficient when it comes to music theory. I have studied some of my own and it’s a great tool to use.

Actually it has no reference to the bible or anything else for that matter. We were looking for a name and I threw out that as a suggestion and the others liked it. Unfortunately nothing cooler than that! ha ha!

I think we have the best songs in the business. Perhaps Symphony X still kicks our asses but aside from them I think we out-write most other bands out there. I also think that my bass playing is unique and not found in other prog metal bands. It would also be wrong of me not to mention Tommy who is the best singer and writer around these days.

I think that Dream Theater and Symphony X pretty much are the only bands that everyone in the band likes or at least have liked at some point in time. Both bands concept albums “V –the new mythology suite”, and “Scenes from a memory” were great sources of inspiration but intentionally I didn’t listen to anyone of them a single time when creating Mercy Falls to make sure we didn’t get biased and were still true to ourselves.

I can appreciate technical death and thrash metal even though I feel they are few and far between. I still love Death a lot and listen to their old albums frequently, like “Human, Individual Thought patterns” and “Symbolic”. I like the technical riffing and the energy but after a while it all comes down to the fact that I start to miss the great melodies and hooks that are present in melodic metal. In fact, I don’t listen that much to prog metal, well at least not the more metal prog bands but I listen to softer, like prog rock like Spock’s Beard, Mind’s Eye and stuff like that, but not that much prog metal. I listen mostly to classic melodic metal or hard rock, like Jorn Lande, Europe and Talisman and stuff like that. When it comes to playing however –it’s a different story! I like to play metal because I like to headbang! I would get bored instantaneously from playing bass in a band like Europe even though I love the songs. To me, the style we are playing ourselves is the only style that keeps me motivated, interested and challenged enough to continue.

Everything I guess. Movies, historical events or simply personal feelings or interesting dilemmas that may occur in life –you own or someone else’s.

We are already working on it and we have a couple of songs more or less ready. Other than that we hope to play a couple of live shows here and there. For instance we will be playing the prestigious Sweden Rock Festival as well as the ProgPower festival in the Netherlands.

Hmmm… I guess at kindergarten listening to Twisted Sister and Kiss and then later when Final Countdown was released and subsequently Paradise City by Guns n’ roses. My first real own metal experience I guess, came with m first album which was Trash by Alice Cooper which I got from my sister. From that day on the path was set!

Hm... I don’t know if I have any favorites from this year... 2007 was easier!

Dude, I really don’t know! I hope Daniel will do some more Mind’s Eye stuff but you never know. I have also heard rumors that A.C.T has a new album on the way –that would be cool!

Thanks for the interest in the band and thanks for supporting us so that we can continue do create music. Hope to see you all on the road! /Andreas Blomqvist