Johnny Sandin

Johnny Sandin — Swedish drummer — was Seventh Wonder's founding drummer, between 2000 and 2010. He was on the band's first four records: Become (2005), Waiting in the Wings (2006), Mercy Falls (2008) and The Great Escape (2010). These are exactly the albums on which Seventh Wonder emerged from obscurity and established itself as one of the reference names of Scandinavian progressive metal. Mercy Falls, a concept record about a man in a coma, is the group's most celebrated work; The Great Escape closes with a title track over thirty minutes long, based on a Swedish epic poem. Sustaining pieces on that scale is a specific drumming problem: it demands keeping tension and variation across structures that do not repeat, without the music losing direction. Sandin left the group in 2010, and Stefan Norgren took over from the following year. Seventh Wonder's founding phase — the one that produced Mercy Falls — is his.