Interviews

Interviews: Dark Tranquility

Gothenburg, Sweden's Dark Tranquillity has been around for 13 years, but their unique style of melodic death metal continues to evolve with each album, including their most recent, "Damage Done," released in 2002. Combining technical skill with emotional urgency, Dark Tranquillity have pioneered and influenced the genre a great deal, and continue to impress new fans. These are the results of Katherine Davidson's chance to interview singer Mikael Stanne in a noisy bar in Springfield, VA during their recent US tour supporting Nile and Napalm Death.

Katherine: How is this tour going so far?

Mikael: It's going really well. This is our second American tour so everything is still really new to us. It's been amazing and almost every show has been sold out more or less, so it's been really good. It's been a good time.

K: How do packaged tours compare to festivals?

M: I don't know- it's harder of course- you must play every day and all that stuff. Festivals are fun but when it's over you kind of miss it, while here it's different- you get to have fun every day, and see so much better and cooler places like this. It's a different thing.

K: What's the significance of "Damage Done"? What does that mean?

M: Well, it's kind of about the different choices we make. Whatever I've chosen in life has been good to me and I don't regret anything, but still, I've chosen one path, and then gone towards another, and some things have ended good and some have ended badly, so it's a learning experience. Also, the whole process of writing an album as well- you spend a year and a half just writing and polishing and making sure everything is totally perfect and then it's just a piece of plastic. It's a weird feeling sometimes.

K: Do you consider your lyrics political? Do they pertain to current events?

M: Not at all. Personal. Never political, it's not for me.

K: Why the instrumental on the album?

M: Well, when we wrote that song, the last song, I realized I didn't need words to make it special. I couldn't find words to match it, I thought the melody and the harmonies worked for itself and so we thought "fuck it, let's do it instrumentally" and it worked out fine.

K: Do you ever play it live?

M: We use it as an outro actually.


M: Well, we didn't like it, it spoils the surprise for when the album came out. But then I think it helps more than it hurts, really. A lot of people got to hear the songs so if they didn't know what to think of the album, they could decide if they liked it. I wish it didn't happen, but it does, and it happens with every single release that is out there, so what can you do? There's no way to stop it. You can try, but you fail. Might as well learn to live with it.

K: Where do you see Dark Tranquillity in five years?

M: [laughs] I don't know. Hopefully doing the same thing, but better, bigger, and more interesting. I have no idea. We try to take each album for what it is. We don't really plan ahead- not that far anyway.

K: Do you have any last comments?

M: We're here to meet a lot of new people and also say thanks to a lot of people who have been supporting our music for a long time. Hopefully we'll get to meet a lot of new people tonight. We would like to thank the people who don't have a chance to be here for being supportive of our band. Thank you.

Links:

Official Site