Europe has “great ideas” for new album, says Joey Tempest

In a recent interview to Metal Global, Europe frontman Joey Tempest talked about the band’s latest single “Hold Your Head Up“, recorded in August at Atlantis Studios in Stockholm with producer Klas Åhlund (Ghost) and by Stefan Glaumann (Rammstein, Def Leppard), who previously mixed Europe‘s album “Secret Society”(2006).

Tempest revealed why the band decided to release one song at a time:

We wanted to get this ready before the tour and the documentary. So we focused on this song so we could have something out together with the tour and the documentary. That’s why we released one song now. But we have a handful of songs — great ideas.

We want to record the album next year. And whether we do it in the beginning, I don’t know yet, but we have some great ideas. And ‘Hold Your Head Up‘ is just the first one, basically.

Tempest also said the following about working with Åhlund:

It was a great experience. We all liked it. The whole band would like to do more stuff with him. We don’t know whether he’s gonna be the producer of the album yet, but… No, we don’t know yet. I mean, it would be an interesting idea, actually. But we haven’t decided yet. But we were very happy finding him and working with him. He’s very professional, and he’s also listened to Europe when he was younger and so he knows how we think. And the procedure with him was amazing. It went really smooth, and he’s a very talented, very talented man. He’s a guitar player as well.

About “Hold Your Head Up“, the singer said:

I think it’s a good mixture in the song. We never really set out to do that. It was an idea I had, and I sent it to the guys and everybody was, like, ‘Yeah, that’s great. Let’s do that.’ So, it’s a natural progression, but I think you’re right. I think it’s a little bit of some melodies, especially in the verses, in the end of the verses there, there’s melodies that remind you of some of the earlier stuff. But maybe the chorus and the riff a little bit, it’s also quite fresh and more modern, I suppose. So yeah, it’s got a bit of everything, but it still sounds like Europe, which is really cool.

Transcribed by Blabbermouth.net