MS: That was actually just our second or third tour; we were only just getting into the touring kind of thing. When was that 97 I think? (was Dec 4 1997 PW). Back then touring wasn’t really the same as it is nowadays. A lot of shitty companies took you around and all that. Now it’s actually profitable and much better organised.

Yes that was fantastic, I remember that really well. Then we came back with Arch Enemy, and a headlining tour and we recently came over with Soilwork too, still not been here enough.

PW: You recently played your first ever UK festival date at Bloodstock Open Air. This was probably due to the fact that England is crap at putting on proper metal festivals. You went down a storm, how was that for you?

MS: It was one of the best shows that we did that summer. We were so amazed, with England the shows are great but in general it seems like not a lot of people really know about us, but Bloodstock, wow.

PW: It’s the last night of an 8 date UK jaunt and you have been playing pretty intimate venues. How have things been going?

MS: Yes some of these were the smallest venues ever. The shows were offered and we figured we were going to do it because we kind of like intimate shows and it’s hard to do something really low key. Bloodstock went so well and things were really happening so we figured we wanted to come back. The shows have been fantastic, tiny, sweaty and real. You don’t generally get that connection with the audience, so it has been great.

PW: One other thing I have always wanted to ask about DT and gigs is that as a band you always seem to be in your element playing them. Every time I have seen the band you in particularly have a huge shit eating grin on your face, can you imagine not playing, is this one of the highlights of your involvement of the music business?

MS: That and the beer yeah! Well I think when we perform the songs it’s such a relief as writing and putting stuff together is constantly a struggle. Its challenging and you have to really dig deep in order to find something that is real, something that is worth recording and putting into songs. It’s always such a long process where we constantly talk about music, different ideas, how to put things together, what’s good and what’s not. Then when you finally step on stage to perform your songs and you see the response to that, it’s such an amazing feeling. Also we can do it with a totally clear conscience, knowing that we have not compromised one bit with anything we have ever done. We have never considered other people’s reaction to our music, other people’s thoughts on how we should sound, never listened to a record company saying we should do this or that, this is us exactly how we want it. When that works, it’s beautiful.

PW: You have been with Century Media for almost a decade now, since the release of ‘Projector’ in fact. What has kept you with CM for so long?

MS: What we really liked about Century Media when we first started talking to them, was that we got tough and said to them, there is no way you can influence us in any way. We take care of the artwork, photos, mastering and everything, you just put it out. They said yes and so that’s one of the best things about them. They have always been totally honest with us, they never pushed us but just supported us and it’s been great. We are not really the sort of band that needs much, we take care of ourselves. Once it’s time for an album we start talking and that’s it, it’s very simple. We do what we do best, they do what they do best.

PW: I asked about longevity to Primordial recently but again DT are a band with 4 members having been in the group since you formed and recorded Skydancer way back in 1993. I take it you all get on very well?

MS: Well we don’t have any other friends haha. They way things started, well we all lived in the same street and grew up together, went to school together. We hung out together and had our first beers together, we got into metal together! So it’s a case of friends and people who know each other well, me and Martin were at kindergarten together. One day me and Niklas were sitting around in his room listening to Kreator we figured, we had to do something this is cool and we can’t just sit around here. We were tape trading like crazy and reading Metal Forces, trading live tapes and demos. Then we just convinced the other guys. Anders, you have a lot of muscles, you play drums ha. That was it you know.

Yes we don’t have to speak, we have this secret language that nobody else knows. Honesty is very important. We want to be honest about what we do, we want to be honest with each other and want to be straight up in everything we do. We really love making music together, struggling for a year and then coming to the perfect conclusion, when something amazing happens. It has come such a huge thing in our lives that everyone is afraid to let go as well. I’m a totally useless pointless person but I have something in my life that is amazing, that translates, that actually connects people. We have never cared about money or fame. If we can be together and play shows and travel, cool! Try hard to make music sure but don’t try hard famous or cool. Forget about all those things and just focus and you can do this for 20 years.

PW: The Gothenburg metal scene and as far as the groups that evolved from it around the same time as yourselves has changed in quite a lot of respect. In Flames, have taken a more commercial slant, The Haunted have frankly gone rather odd and newer bands such as Avatar; Engel and One Man Army And The Undead Quartet are springing up from in many cases the remains of fallen bands. How do you think things have changed lately?

MS: I guess what goes around comes around really. We still all really have the same mindset when it comes to the music, we can all still hang out and talk about what’s real and what’s interesting. Everyone has gone out and used their different influences in different ways. This is I think natural and not been forced in any way, but is a natural progression and is really cool. The Haunted, could have just been a progression of At The Gates, they chose a totally different plan, which I think is fantastic. In Flames have gone from like death metal to something else, it’s amazing, it works out well for them. That is what it’s all about, taking your influence, taking your background into something new and original.

PW: I did actually wonder what your opinion is of the reformation of At The Gates?

MA: There is something about reunions that I don’t like but what can I say, I love At The Gates. I have seen them lots of times, but I want to see them again, as many times as I can. Carcass too, I saw them once when Grotesque supported them and I heard Forbidden had reformed and have never had the chance to see them. So I think in some cases if a band quits at the right time and I know with At The Gates they had a lot of problems. If they can overcome them I think they are going to do something fantastic.

PW: Onto the most recent album Fiction, the instantly noticeable thing about it is the cover art. Considering the fantastical imagery of Character, Niklas Sundin’s artwork is quite understated, in fact it suggests a back to basics sort of approach. Is this what were intending to focus on, I was quite surprised when I saw the cover art.

MS: Me too and I didn’t like it at all for some time because I didn’t understand where Niklas was coming from. Once I really got it I kind of liked it because what he wanted to do was something in total contrast with the album. I think this is one of our most expressive albums, it’s very diverse and personal and serious. It also deals with creativity in a way, you have a starting point of nothing and have to build and create something new. That is something I thought about and I think it is something Niklas picked up on. You just create something out of nothing and that’s what we see, what is around us, that boring landscape. In order to survive and feel OK with yourself, we are all atheists you know, there is nothing out there, it’s just what you think of it. I’ve come to terms with that I guess, to me as you get older I don’t get concerned about things around me, I consider them barren. We don’t, I don’t need them as I can come up with things of my own, I can make up stories that hold things together for me and keep my life going.

You just reach into nothingness and take something out of that and that’s what we actually do. You can at times feel like shit and think what can you do to make things feel better and we create music. It’s not a thing like that childhood was so crappy or anything. It’s all about finding inspiration from nothingness and that’s the reason for the cover.

PW: Whereas Character strikes as somewhat conceptual, Fiction is more a work of separate identities within the songs. I wouldn’t really agree with the statement on the biog that it harkens back as a modern day version of The Gallery & The Minds Eye either, it’s much more evolved. What do you think?

MS: What we really wanted to do, what we tend to sometimes do is limit ourselves too much. We don’t want to sound, retro, we don’t want to do something we have done to death, or to be just heavy for the sake of it. We limit ourselves a bit by saying oh no that doesn’t fit and you end up somewhere middle of the road, at least in our minds. We are kind of scared of that and decided this time around to open ourselves a bit more and if we had something good and mellow in a piece of music we would just keep it and make the most of it. We do have the tendency to write something beautiful and mellow and just give it up and add guitars and add guitars and in the end it’s just RAAAAAAAAUGH! So we decided to let the music breathe this time and think what is it that makes this melody perfect and what is it that makes this piece of music and not destroy good ideas. We wanted to just make the songs really mellow or really intense but not mix it all up. It’s very simple to do verse, chorus, middle and then add some mellow parts but it doesn’t make for a good song. We wanted to make sure the songs were good in themselves really.

PW: The title Fiction obviously strikes as literary and listening to it the album has a very futuristic feel to it certainly as far as the keyboard programming is concerned. If it were a work of fiction whose would it be comparable to, something along the lines of Asimov, Phillip K Dick and Ray Bradbury, JG Ballard perhaps?

MS: Oh man yeah! That could be a very good comparison as this work is so far removed from anything. Lyrically that is what I was going for, although there are no futuristic elements in them. I wanted to write about other people rather than myself. Lyrics are often based upon yourself but I wanted to remove myself from that and take a step back and go instead of writing about my fear of getting old, write about a person who is way more scared than I am and way more frightened and fragile than I am and have more freedom. That’s what I found different about it. I can just go all out without being afraid really of being exposed. Yes it always is cathartic but more so this time round. Usually I am too afraid of exposing myself too much, in the sense that things wont be forever, so I was more comfortable having something else here. There are lots of things that add to the futuristic theme like listening to Depeche Mode, soundtracks, computer games and weird sounds and changes

PW: That leads me onto the next question. There are some really great stomping songs bristling with hooks on the new album. One of which Terminus stands out and at 1st I thought the sound of a modem or computer programme downloading in the background subtly, was my PC getting infected? Was this some sort of allegory to some sort of futuristic virus perhaps in line with the ‘ghost town’ lyrical approach?

MS: Really, where in the song? That’s cool, I have never really picked up on that. What Martin always does is he creates so much stuff that there are so many different sounds and layers, when you listen to things it can be hard to hear all of them. Perhaps you have a better sound system than I do haha. It could be I guess, that’s the sort of thing Martin tends to do.

PW: I am sure I read somewhere that ‘Inside The Particle’ storm was the 1st song completely written by Niklas Sundin, how did this come about and who is normally responsible for the bulk of the writing?

MS: It’s not the first he has ever written but it is the first one in years. Martin tends to be the main writer and is the most together person, he sticks to the rules and sticks to the formula whereas Niklas is more artistic in many ways and he wants things to be extreme, compared to Martin who is happy with what he does. So it is great as they are struggling in a positive way and at the time of writing the song Niklas felt frustrated and it was hard to incorporate his stuff into what Martin was doing because it was so different, this means you can put the greatest stuff you have into one song. It turned into a fantastic song and that was one of the things we were thinking about with the writing, everyone can go all out with their own ideas and put it all together.

PW: I absolutely love Misery’s Crown it also harkens back to the very unique Projector style clean singing which at the time really surprised a lot of the groups fan base. Personally it was an album I really enjoyed, looking back on it do you consider it was perhaps unfairly judged?

MS: In the beginning sure, people were just afraid of it. It caused a dilemma, how can I be a death metal guy and also like this? There were not a lot of death metal albums that sounded like that one. For us it was something we had to do, we had to prove to ourselves we could be a different band, that we were creative and were not just rewriting our own material and yes there were reactions that were angry really. Then again there were people who thought we would never go back to what we had done.

PW: Speaking of vocals the female singing lines on ‘The Mundane And The Magic’ work really well, who provides them and has the group ever been tempted to work with someone perhaps from a well known group on a number?

MS: The girl singing is Nell Sigland of Theatre Of Tragedy. The first time I heard the song in the studio I thought this is what we need to do and then I recorded some demos at home and thought about female vocalists. I did consider some friends of ours from more famous bands but it can be too cheesy and has to be explained as ‘featuring’ so and so. Yes Cristina Scabbia would have liked to do it but contractually she could not. Anyway you don’t really need that, I have this good singer, someone who has that beautiful quality that she has. There is something about Norwegian singers, the tone of their voice and the clarity which is fantastic. She was happy to do it and it all worked out.

PW: What’s next for Dark Tranquillity, Fact?

MS: Perhaps we need to stick to facts. We have more touring to do and then we will start writing again, it’s about time. We have material but no real plans but it’s going to be fun. We have some more countries to conquer.

PW: Where haven’t you played that you want to?

MS: Russia, South Africa and some of South America, we just did China and Taiwan.

So there you have it, a band with character, humbleness and honesty; lets not forget some cracking good tunes too. Many thanks for the interview Mikael.

Visit the band at www.darktranquillity.com
www.myspace.com/dtofficial
www.centurymedia.com

Read a review of Dark Tranquillity at www.metalteamuk.net/review-darktranquillity.htm

If you enjoyed this interview you might also like the following:
Review of Behemoth, Kataklysm and Aborted
Interview with One Man Army & The Undead Quartet

Interviewed by Pete Woods

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