By Carl Begai
During a recent interview with Shadowside vocalist Dani Nolden for BW&BK (found here), it came to light that the band’s new album Inner Monster Out features a decent amount of Swedish input behind the music. Not what you’d expect from a band with Brazilian roots, but Nolden will tell you that the new music is better for it.
Inner Monster Out is most certainly a step up from Shadowside’s previous record, Dare To Dream, largely due to the band being able to deliver the songs on their terms. They chose to hire Gothenburg-based Fredrik Nordström to oversee the production, which proved to be a far better experience to being holed up in the studio with System Of A Down / Audioslave producer Dave Schiffman last time out.
“To be honest, working with Dave taught us a lot about following our instincts,” says Nolden. “Dave is great but he’s certainly not metal; his idea of metal is different than ours. The two words we heard the most during the production of Dare To Dream was ‘too much’ (laughs). Of course, sometimes musicians have to be ‘contained’ a little bit, as we 
get excited and want to use all our abilities and ideas at once and often need someone to filter that for us. I feel Dave filtered a bit too much, especially when it came to the drums. When you hear Fabio playing on Dare To Dream you might think he’s an average drummer because he did pretty much the basics, but then you hear Inner Monster Out and you’ll understand what Fabio’s identity as a drummer really is. He’s aggressive, extremely energetic, and when you compare both albums you’ll think he improved a lot, but no… he was always like that. He was restricted because Dave felt drums should be kept simple. Maybe it works great for a band like Audioslave, which is supposed to be more commercial, but we felt we could have done more as a metal band. So this time we decided to work with a producer who had a background more similar to what we like and listen to, and that man was Fredrik Nordström. We didn’t have to tell him what we wanted; it was an immediate match.” Continue reading SHADOWSIDE – In The Studio With The Swede Musketeers