Sometimes a time-out is just necessary. In the case of the Swedish retrorocker Graveyard, in conjunction with a personnel change, it has provided an enormous boost that the new studio work "Peace" has produced. A milestone in the band's history that delivers signature songs with tracks like "The Fox" and "It Ain't Over Yet" that are at least as good as the classic "Hisingen Blues".
The band shocked their fans with a Facebook note on September 23, 2016: "Dark clouds above the graveyard today", they headlined, only to announce: "With the classic reason 'disagreements within the band' we announce that the cemetery is officially closed as of today. This is the sad, final decision we had to make after going through a troubled phase of internal problems. We're almost out of power now. As a direct consequence we have to cancel all further planned concerts. Graveyard was always about the music and not so much about talking about it, so we choose this way to inform about the situation. What we can say is that we don't know if and when Graveyard will continue at full speed,
" the band announced with a shaky Youtube video featuring a hard to read letter just four months later, on January 26, 2017. For drummer and founding member Axel Sjöberg, who continues with the band project Big Kizz, came Oskar Bergenheim, who already played with Graveyard bassist Truls Mörck and was supposed to bring a breath of fresh air to the cemetery moderator. eclipsed asked guitarist Jonatan Larocca-Ramm what had happened during the times of upheaval and wanted to find out more about the new album.
eclipsed: Congratulations to the new drummer Oskar Bergenheim! When did you know he was the one and Graveyard's story could go on with him?
Jonatan Larocca-Ramm: Thank you! He's a great drummer and a great guy. We actually knew right after the first jam with him that he was the right one. Truls is good friends with him and has already made music with him in the past. He asked Oskar if he had time to drum with us. And now we're very grateful he's doing this. He's a perfect match for us.
eclipsed: Why did you even take a break? And did you seriously want to stop completely?
Larocca-Ramm: The dynamics in the group were no longer there, for all sorts of reasons, and we really didn't know exactly if we would go on - until Oskar showed up. It just had to feel right in every way to go on, and with Oskar it was like that.
eclipsed: What did you do when Graveyard paused?
Larocca-Ramm: Nothing that would have been as great as playing with the new line-up - be it on stage, in the studio or in the rehearsal room.
eclipsed: When did you start working on the new album?
Larocca-Ramm: Immediately after our time-out . Since we all write songs ourselves and always have some riffs in our backs, we were able to finish a good number of songs quite quickly. The process of tackling it was gentle and easy. As soon as we had started our tools, we started.
