DARK TRANQUILLITY

for Painkiller Mag #7
March 2003

Interview

by  Yang Yu/Andreas Stappert

all pics are linked from www.darktranquillity.com  
by any problems refer to webmaster

You made a foto with our Mag, its such a big honor for us. Did you read it? What impression do you have on China due to metal?

Yes, I remember the magazine and found it very cool. Unfortunately, I don't have much of an impression of metal in your country, but of course it's good to see that there are magazines such as yours in existence.

Why dont you ever give a clear definition of the meanings of your lyrics?

Why should we? To me, the whole point of trying to come up with quality lyrics is to leave them open for interpretation from the reader/listener, so I don't think that a band should explain every single detail. Also, we don't really like dissecting and analyzing our own lyrics; that would be a bit like trying to describe or explain every single riff in a song, and that's up to others to do, if the need arises.

Your European Tour is almost over, how was it anyway? The way you expected it?

It all went a bit better than expected, both in terms of crowd turnout and the general response. The whole touring business, for all bands, is a bit unpredictable right now, and it seems that there's just too many tours going on at the same time and in the same areas, so we were really happy to get good reactions from our tour. It also felt very nice to be able to play a full set since we were headlining the trip. On the other tours we've done during the last 4-5 years, we've always played as a support band, and then you're usually limited to 30-45 minutes on stage.

Any special or funny experiences made during the last touring days?

Yex, Alexi from Sinergy (and also Children of bodom) did a special appearance and played "Zodijackyl light" with us at the last gig, which was a great honour. He's a truly brilliant guitarist and it was a lot of fun.

Where did you get the best and where the worst reactions of the visitors?

It's hard to tell, really. Generally speaking - and I say this without wanting to sound arrogant - we got really great response just about everywhere, but people react in different ways. In the more southern countries, people are very wild and animated during shows and like to move around a lot. In Sweden, for example, it's usually more quiet, with people tending to stand still and listen.

A restless tour is a double bladed sword, it can hold the band more solid together or lead the members into problems. I know you are a professional band and are used to play non stop. But tell me the truth, how is the relationship between the members now?

It's very good. Honestly, we're not touring that much in comparasion to other bands. For each album, we might tour for 8 weeks in total and do a couple of festivals, but that's all. We've been around for 13 years and haven't even done 200 gigs in total - that's less than 20 gigs per year. It seems that the touring schedule for the new album will be much more intense than what has been the case in the past, but it's still not that much.

How does a normal day on tour look like? Do you have much parties and meet many other musicians and scene gurus?

It depends, really. Many bands want to give the impression that life on the road is one big party, but that's very far from the truth. Sometimes you feel like drinking and meeting people, but often you're very tired after the gig and just want to relax in the tourbus and go to bed early. The whole touring environment is pretty tedious and miserable, with people around you all the time and little possibility to do some sight-seeing or something out of the ordinary.

Do you have mostly new songs on the playlist this time? How do the "Damage Done"-Songs go live?

We didn't really have a fixed setlist as such, but we tried to keep a good balance between the older and the newer stuff. This has been somewhat of a problem on the support act tours; I mean, it's impossible to play a 30-minute set without some people getting disappointed with the choise of songs, but this time we could play for as long as we wanted and could include everything. The "Damage done" songs went down very well on the gigs. The whole album is probably a bit more live-friendly than our older stuff, both in terms of the arrangements and the actual riffs.

Since "Damage Done" is obviously so different to "Haven", how do you see "Haven" now?

Actually, I don't listen much to our old albums, and when I do, I'm not very analytical about it. It has been at least two years since I listened to "Haven", so I haven't played it back-to-back with "Damage done" in order to compare them.

Was the style change on "Haven" some kind of experiment that you gave up with "Damage Done"?

I don't know...in my ears, there are a lot of traces of "Haven" in the new album. The keyboard stuff is in a similar vein, and the general arrangements are also in the same direction. It's very hard for a band member to compare his own albums, since so much time is spent working on the material, but to me, "Damage done" is a logical continuateion of "Haven", but with some influences from our earlier albums being added.

Do you still see yourself as a death metal band or does it do any matter what style you are playing? There arent much death metal elements left on "Haven", is "Damage Done" some kind of a recall refering to the earlier pure death metal days?

Hmmm....I don't think that there is any need for us to define our music. A label like "death metal" mean totally different things to different people anyway. To me, death metal is bands like Nile, Vader and Deicide, and we certainly don't fit into that category anymore. "Damage done" was never meant to be a back to the roots-album, but as mentioned we allowed ourselves to be influenced by some things we've done in the past.

You are very much into experiments and new tryouts these days, but don't you think metal-music after so many years of its huge developments will still remain a too limited and conservative playground when you are into musical adventures?

Absolutely! Metal music, and especially metal people, can be very conservative and narrow-minded, but it's nothing that I care too much about. I don't define myself as belonging to a certain "scene" or movement anyway. Many bands are being labeled "experimental" or "avantgarde" or whatever, when they're still not offering something new. On the other hand, no single music style or scene can be truly groundbreaking on its own.

How does the new album sell? There must have been many fans hoping for the comeback of the old NWOSDM-Heroes for what DARK TRANQUILLITY will always stay rather you do like the term NWOSDM or not...

I don't know any specific sales figures yet, but our label recently told us that "Damage done" is doing way better than what "Projector" and "Haven" did. A comeback? I don't know...there are a lot of people that didn't like the direction of the last two albums that think that they finally can listen to us again, but there are also fans of "Projector" that were disappointed with the lack of clear vocals on the new album.

You are working on the songs for very long time before the end version of it is set. When or at which point is a DARK TRANQUILLITY-Song normally finished? In the rehearsal room or even in the studio?

Everything is 100% finished before we enter the studio. It's hard so say something specific, since the process can be different for each song, but normally we do a lot of re-arrangements and changes, and at a certain point everything just feels right, and Mikael starts writing the lyrics and vocal lines. When the vocals are added, it's possible that some parts of the music needs to be altered a bit. It's an intuitive thing.

There are many piracy copies in China. Many of them are even made from mp3 downloads. Do you think the free access to MP3s of a whole album in CD-quality (for what "Damage done" is already in case) equals in some kind distributing piracy copies?

Essentially, it's the same thing, but the whole mp3/piracy issue is very tricky. I fully understand that people in countries like China, Russia or Mexico go for bootlegs or mp3-albums since there is no way that they could afford the legal versions. I would do the same under those circumbstances. When the Napster debate was running at its best, I was very much against it since I believe that copyrighted material shouldn't be given away for free. On the other hand, I know a lot of people who have discovered our band via mp3's, and most people in the metal scene are serious enough about their music interest to buy the real albums if they have the chance. And if they don't buy the album, they might want to use that money on going to a gig or buying a t-shirt instead. All in all, there are many arguments for and against the evolution, but it's very clear that the whole music industry will change a lot during the next 5-10 years.

DARK TRANQUILLITY is called to life for about 13 Years now. Many younger and less famous bands have already their "Best of"-records out. When will it be time to bring out such a compilation with DT highlights, where I hope to get all the bonus from different releases too? Or maybe even a reissue of the demos "A MOONCLAD REFLECTION" and "A TRAIL OF LIFE DECAYED" on CD?

I think that "best of"-albums are pretty pointless, so I doubt that we'll do something like that in the future. It'd be cool to make a special 15 year anniversary box or whatever, but it's something that we'll have to consider when the time is near. As for putting out a CD with the old demo/EP material, I definately want to do that, but there are so many practical problems related to such a release. We're working on it, but I'm not sure if we'll be able to do it at this point. The music business, even for a metal band, can be really troublesome at times.

Due to NWOSDM you were mostly named in the same line with IN FLAMES. Do you like their music? Do you know them personally?

Yes, we've been friends with them for a long time, even before In flames was even started. We all grew up in the same scene, which was very small at that time. Our vocalist Mikael did the vocals on the first In flames album, and Anders Fridén (current I.F. vocalist) was a member of Dark tranquillity for the first four years - so yes, we know them very well. They're a talented band.

Discography

Albums

 

Demos