JEFF LOOMIS Says New NEVERMORE Members Are “Extremely Talented”, Talks About The New Material: “It’s Going To Be A Heavy Album”

When the reunion teaser for Nevermore dropped on December 27, 2024, a lot of us weren’t sure whether to hit replay or just sit in silence. A one-minute clip, all shadowed figures and familiar imagery, closed on the words “Resurrecting The Dream”, followed by “A New Chapter Rises” and the year “2025”. For a band whose identity is so tied to the voice and presence of Warrel Dane, the message felt both a promise and a challenge.

In a new chat with Sefo of VegaTrem, guitarist Jeff Loomis pulled back the curtain on what this new era of Nevermore actually means, and he didn’t dodge the question that’s been gnawing at fans since that teaser went live: can you really bring back a band when its defining singer is gone?

“It was something that I’ve been talking with to Van Williams for, I would say, three years, about reforming Nevermore. The whole subject comes up, is it proper to [reform the band] when a singer passes away?, or whatever,” he continued (via Blabbermouth), referencing the December 2017 death of founding Nevermore vocalist Warrel Dane.

“I think it is. I think that there were some things that were left unsaid, and I think we had more things to say musically. It’s unfortunate that Warrel Dane passed away — he was one of my best friends — but I really, honestly believe that Van and I and the rest of the new band [will do the music justice], and we are scheduling shows already for 2026.”

But, who else is part of the band at this point, you might be wondering. Well, the rest of the players are being kept under wraps. Loomis knows exactly how online metal discourse works in 2025, and he’s pre-empting the dogpile.

“We’re withholding the names of the members of the new Nevermore, simply because there’s a lot of online criticism nowadays about pointing fingers about, ‘Oh, you should have gotten that person or that person,'” he explained. “We’re just gonna wait until the first show and have an announcement before that, probably sometime in, I would say, March. And we’ll announce the new members. They’re all extremely talented. They know the Nevermore material and are huge fans of the material. We picked people who are excellent musicians. We really spent time [looking for the right people]. And we went through about seven hundred submissions, and it took a long time [to check everybody out].”

“And this started basically about a year ago. So Van and I started looking for new musicians about a year ago. And since then, we’ve accomplished so much. There are new shows that are being scheduled. We have all these festivals that are coming up for ’26, and I’m also working on writing a new album right now for Nevermore. So a lot of exciting stuff is coming up for 2026. We’re just so excited to get back out there and play those songs again that people wanna hear from our earlier albums, and some new stuff, and just kind of a new direction,” Loomis added.

And… what will this new version of Nevermore sound like? Loomis isn’t pretending they’re about to reinvent themselves as a different kind of band. He’s leaning right into what drew most of us in the first place: “It’s gonna be a heavy album. It’s gonna have all the Nevermore qualities you would expect, with a heavy aspect. But yeah, we’re just really excited.”

The impending question here is whether that weight shifts without Warrel Dane at the mic. On that front, Loomis did not shy away from how close the new singer’s delivery comes to the original.

“With everybody’s input in the band, it’s gonna be really cool. The musicians are absolutely fantastic and are able to play all the stuff perfectly, and the singer’s able to sing almost exactly like Warrel. But he’s got a death metal voice, he’s got different [ways] he can use his voice, and we wanna utilize that. So, it’s gonna be cool. But we’ll see what happens.”