Dark Tranquillity

Written by Richard Castañeda
Thursday, 01 April 2010

Dark Tranquillity

Repetition is a band’s worst nightmare. With a 20-plus-year reputation of brutal riffs and the Swedish meatballs to back it up, melodic death metal pioneers, Dark Tranquillity are back with their ninth studio album, We Are The Void.

“We’re really careful about that. The most important thing is to keep things fresh, original and different. That’s one of the reasons it takes so long to write an album, because we need to make sure that everything is fresh and interesting,” vocalist Mikael Stanne shares.

We Are The Void takes an introspective look at death, loss, grief and how we all deal with it from a Scandinavian perspective. According to Stanne, we all carry around an emptiness we don’t necessarily comprehend and it intensifies when we question our mortality and purpose in life. “What’s our purpose here? What do we do here? How do we deal with the fact that eventually we will be gone and forgotten? How do we deal with those issues? You’re trying to fill that void with anything that…takes your mind off things,” Stanne continues.

“We identified that this should be our first proper death metal album. Death is a topic that I’ve never touched on before because I figured it would be awfully cliché being in a death metal band, but I figured after 20 years it’s time to do it properly.”

We Are The Void also marks the first time since 1998’s Projector that Stanne employs metal’s ever-controversial clean vocal style. The mere mention of “clean” in metal immediately raises a red flag. “Whoa, are they selling out?” “Are they trying to be radio-friendly to sell more CDs?” These are questions Stanne pondered during production.

“I’m not big on just doing clean choruses just so it’s more commercial or whatever. I just do it if it feels right. We started doing it on [1993’s Skydancer], then a little bit on [Projector]. It was interesting at first. Not a lot of bands were doing it, but now everyone’s doing it and it takes the fun out of it. I only do it if it really, really benefits the song.”

We Are The Void is the first album with new bassist Daniel Antonsson who replaced Mikael Niklasson in 2008. The album took over a year to record because the band is notorious for arranging, rearranging and scrapping songs altogether in the pursuit of perfection.

“It’s actually ridiculous sometimes. A song can go from something really mellow and complex to a straightforward flashy piece in the span of a couple weeks or we can totally change a total thrash song into a heavy mid-bass song. We take things apart and rearrange stuff. That happened a lot on this album,” Stanne points out.

Perfectionism seems perfectly natural to Stanne because he strives to remain relevant in today’s metal community. At the heart of Dark Tranquillity’s meticulous recording process is their mutual respect for one another and complete faith in band democracy.

“It’s a total democracy to the point where we have votes. Martin [Henriksson] is the guy who runs most things. He’s the band leader in a way, but everybody has to agree on everything we do or else we won’t do it,” Stanne continues.

“It can be really frustrating obviously because sometimes you lose the battle, you really feel strongly about something and you get voted out, but that’s the way democracy must work.”

Stanne can’t be married to any idea he brings to the table because he knows if one person in the band disagrees, the idea is obsolete. He concentrates instead on his pitch. Since he’s known his bandmates most of his life, he knows what tickles their fancy and what doesn’t. Likewise, other band members know the intricacies of their other bandmates. Stanne says it helps ease frustration and band tension.

Their camaraderie extends to the whole Gothenburg scene, which includes In Flames, Soilwork and At the Gates. The scene is so small all band members grew up with each other and in many instances exchanged band members. Normally, these swaps would inspire drama of soap-opera–like intensity, but Stanne like many others, view their collective accomplishments to music as a greater good.

“We grew up together-all the bands in the area. We started bands, exchanged a couple members and it’s still a really cool, friendly vibe. I love it. It’s always been a supportive kind of environment. No animosity, no negative competition, just a healthy kind of encouragement,” Stanne comments.

Dark Tranquillity has changed to keep up with the times. They’ve embraced their latest generation of fans by indulging them with frequent updates on Facebook and Twitter and with a web series detailing the recording process. It’s all to keep pace and remain at the top. Cause staying there is harder than getting there. For more information, please visit Dark Tranqullity’s official website www.darktranquillity.com and follow them on Twitter www.twitter.com/dtofficial