BW&BK; spoke to NEVERMORE frontman WARREL DANE recently about a number of topics including his upcoming solo album, the status of new Nevermore material and the band's upcoming live CD/DVD. Dane's inaugural solo effort - Praises To The War Machine - is due for release on April 29th in Europe and May 13th in North America via Century Media Records - click photo to reveal artwork. The singer is quite anxious to see the reaction to the record and he fully intends to perform the material in front of his rabid fan-base.

"I'm definitely going to take it on the road at some point," Dane says on the phone from his dreary Seattle home-base. "I'm very committed to get this thing on the road. I'm working on new Nevermore material, but I can work on songs on the road. It's not going to be a problem writing the Nevermore stuff and touring at the same time. I'm going to do as much touring as I can possibly do for this because I'm so proud of this record and I just want to get it out there and play these songs live because I know they are going to translate well to a live show and I can hardly wait."

Since you brought it up, what is the status of the Nevermore writing?

"I've got a lot of really strong song ideas from Jeff (Loomis - guitars) that I'm working on. At the moment he's working on an instrumental record. I'm not sure when he's going into the studio to work on it. It's going to be very soon though. Once he's done with that, we're going to go full-on focusing on Nevermore stuff. For the moment I have a bunch of stuff I can work on without Jeff. Everyone keeps asking me - 'with this solo record is Nevermore broken up?' Fuck no! There's no sticker on it that says 'there's no more Nevermore so deal with it.'"

Nevermore hope to release the follow-up to 2005's This Godless Endeavor in early 2009. But first up is the long-awaited live album plus DVD due out this fall via Century Media. The band filmed their October 11th, 2006 gig in Bochum, Germany and the setlist was as follows: 'Final Product', 'My Acid Words', 'What Tomorrow Knows'/'Garden Of Grey', 'Next In Line', 'Enemies Of Reality', 'I, Voyager', 'The River Dragon Has Come', 'I Am The Dog', 'Dreaming Neon Black', 'Noumenon', 'Inside Four Walls', 'Politics Of Ecstasy', 'Dead Heart In A Dead World', 'Matricide', 'The Learning', 'Sentient 6', 'Narcosynthesis', 'The Heart Collector', 'Born', 'This Godless Endeavor'.

"That's been a nightmare to deal with, but it's finally getting sorted out," Dane reveals about the DVD process. "There's a company in Germany that's editing the whole thing right now. I'm going over to Germany in March to help because the first cut didn't turn out so great. The footage is good, but the first edit was bad. It was like an MTV video, not a live show. So I have to go over and fix the problem. There's been other issues in terms of getting it released that we are trying to get resolved and it's been a nightmare."

Dane closes with more thoughts about Praises To The War Machine. "The album cover is fucking amazing," he says with excitement. "It's like an apocalyptic scene with these two children that are standing naked in the middle of a battle-field with bombs dropping on them. And they are kind of waving at the bombs saying 'hi, how are you.' It's really creepy. The song itself has got a little more of a political bent to it. Not really personal. I mean the music sounded very angry and a little bit war-like. It's just kind of a statement about the current situation in the world where politicians are making money off of war. And to me that's just sickening and I had to vent. I'd like Dick Cheney to hear that song actually. It's certainly a moment in history when you have a black man and a woman up for the same job. That's something a few years ago I would have never imagined. No matter who gets the nomination it's going to be historic either way. So that's kind of interesting. I still have no clue who I'd vote for."