Dream Evil Tour Dates and Upcoming Concerts

Dream Evil is a melodic heavy metal band from Sweden, assembled and integrated by renowned musical producer Fredrik Nordström in 1999. Fredrik had the ambition of creating a band of his own for a long time, but was yet to find somebody with musical ideals similar to his. However, while on holiday on the Greek islands during the year of 1999, he met guitarist Gus G (from Firewind and Mystic Prophecy). The two musicians got along quite well, despite their age difference of over a decade. Plans for Dream Evil commenced, and shortly, Gus boarded a plane to Gothenburg, on which he and Fredrik began writing material for the band. In order for Dream Evil to become the band that they were idealizing, it would need to have musicians of exceptional talent. The person who first came to their minds was Snowy Shaw (from King Diamond, Mercyful Fate and Notre Dame), but the drummer initially refused their invitation. Later on he changed his mind and agreed to play on the band's debut album. Vocalist Niklas Isfeldt had done backing vocals for some of HammerFall's songs produced by Fredrik, and since Isfeldt was not involved in any major project at the time, it was decided that he was a good choice for Dream Evil. Niklas had shown a lot of promise in his test, and it was soon decided that he would become a definitive part of the band. He also brought along his friend Peter Stålfors, who assumed the bass. The fact remains that, up until the moment the promotional photos were shot, the whole of the band had not been in the same place at the same time even once. Some members did not even know each other. The band soon got a deal with Century Media Records, and intended to name themselves Dragonslayer due to the thematic of the songs which had been written by Gus and Fredrik, which had a strong focus on medieval and fantastical themes. However, their label did not find the name original enough, and thus the band settled with the name Dream Evil, inspired by the title of Dio's album Dream Evil. Dream Evil's debut album was released on April of 2002 and received positive feedback from the specialized press. At one point, the album — entitled Dragonslayer — reached number one on the Japanese import charts. The band proceeded to play a series of festivals and also supported Blind Guardian during part of their world tour. The members of Dream Evil got along well despite the seemingly random manner by which they had been brought together. Snowy Shaw then joined the band permanently and Dream Evil went on their first Japanese tour. During their stay in Japan the band was invited by HammerFall to support their 2003 European tour. Their label manager hinted that it would be a good idea to have a new album out by then. With little time on their hands, the band wrote the basis of most songs on the flight to Europe and on the day of their arrival entered the studio in order to record a new album. They took two weeks in total to record Evilised and most songs were recorded as they were written. It was released on the 20th of January, and one week later Dream Evil proceeded to tour Europe with HammerFall and the less known Masterplan. In June of the same year the band returned for a second Japanese tour and Gus G was featured on the cover of Young Guitar Magazine, a magazine well respected by musicians from around the globe. During the promotional tour of their next single, Gus was already committed to playing with Mystic Prophecy. Thus, Snowy Shawn took upon his hands the task of playing the lead guitar sections of the Dream Evil songs. For their third album the band actually took time to write the songs and fine-tune them in the studio. The Book of Heavy Metal took two months to be recorded and was released in May of 2004. Guitarist Gus G left the band in late 2004 in order to dedicate more time to Firewind, being replaced by Markus Black (also known as Mark U Black). Niklas Isfeldt and Peter Stålfors briefly left in 2005 to be replaced by Jake E. Berg (aka Jake Steel, of Dreamland) and Tommy Larsson, but returned before recordings or live shows were done. At the start of 2006, Snowy Shaw abruptly quit Dream Evil. After a half year of silence, Dream Evil published a statement on their homepage and announced that they had a new drummer, whose name was Pat Power (aka Patrik Jerksten) and that they had recorded 18 new songs. The 18 said songs where released on the album United on October 13, 2006. After some touring in Sweden and the UK a new phase of the band began...In the summer of 2007 Mark felt that he had problems getting his life together with two children born just 13 months apart. He decided to leave the band to give more time to his family. After some auditioning the guys finally found the excellent axe swinger, Dannee Demon who immediately took the lead guitar spot and was baptised in fire so to speak when doing his first show with Dream Evil at the Bloodstock Open Air festival before 3000 screaming fans. The recorded shows at Sticky Fingers in November 2006 was put together to a live DVD by phantom producer Patric Ullaeus. This DVD together with a live audio CD and a compilation CD with previously unreleased songs and bonus materials was released as the Gold Medal In Metal box in 2008. After a headline tour in the UK and some festival shows through 2008 and 2009 it was time for the next studio album The album In The night was recorded in 2009 and was released in January 29:th 2010. A release show was held at TuRock in Essen, Germany as a start to the two week tour together with Stratovarius. A lot of festival shows were made and also a UK tour together with Hammerfall in may 2010 where Patric Ullaeus came to London to film the video for the song The ballad. After playing some more festivals in 2011, 2012 and 2013 the time had come to record a new studio album. But there had became some friction in the band and Daniel left the band in may 2013. A good friend to the band and also an excellent guitar player, Pierre Lysell, helped out as a stand-in guitarist at the Bang Your Head festival in Germany in July 2013. By now Mark Blacks family situation was a lot different from what it was in 2007 as almost seven years passed by… Mark was contacted and he had no hesitations at all, he rejoined the band to the guys exaltation. By now it felt it was time to record album number six… But we first had to get together and get a spot booked in Studio Fredman… The days passed by, the weeks passed by, the months passed by and finally the years passed by.. at last in September 2015 all was set for the start of the recordings and Pat recorded the drums for all songs during two weeks in September. Then it took one year to complete the recordings with guitars, bass and vocals before the mixing, mastering etc. Finally on May 26:th 2017 the album SIX was released and it was followed up by doing some head line shows in Sweden, The Netherlands and some festivals in Switzerland and Denmark. In early 2019 Pat Power decided he wanted to walk his own path as a guitarist and songwriter in his own band Crawl back to zero. Pat had been the drummer in Dream Evil since 2006 – 13 years!!! So that was very sad news for us. At this time a Gothenburg based band (Pagandom) was recording an album in Studio Fredman and Fredrik was amazed by the skills of the drummer. Fredrik asked the drummer (Sir N) if he would like to try out for the vacant drummer spot in Dream Evil. It would show that Sir N isn’t only a phenomenal drummer he’s an energy boost for the whole band. Sir N’s first live show with Dream Evil took place at Denim & Leather Rock club in Jönköping, Sweden on May 4th 2019. After doing some shows together in the new lineup the pandemic hit and everything got into a halt. The decision was made to do a live stream concert on Facebook in June 2020. After the pandemic Dream Evil set out on a headline tour in the UK in March 2023 following that up with some festival shows in Sweden, Denmark and Spain. The time had come for a new album. The new material was put together and recorded in the autumn of 2023. The album Metal Gods was released in July 2024.