Intervista Dark Tranquillity (Mikael Stanne)

On the occasion of the release of Dark Tranquillity‘s new album “Atoma” we interviewed the Swedish’s band’s frontman, Mikael Stanne.
We talked about the new album, the recent changes in the band’s formation and the history of the band since its formation, since the birth of Melodic Death Metal.

Hi Mikael, how are you doing?

I’m good, I mean, life could be worse, you know? And it’s sunny too! [laugh]

Eh, eh, yeah; so let’s start talking about the new album, “Atoma”, how would you describe its sound?

That’s a hard one because it’s still so fresh to me, we finished it like 4 weeks ago or something, I haven’t really been able yet to properly sit back and listen to it because you listen to it so many times while recording it.
For me it’s a very emotional album in many ways, I think it’s coherent in a way that I think maybe we haven’t done before, I think there’s an urgency and an immediacy to the songs, they’re straight to the point.

I don’t think that anything is unnecessary on it, everything is in the right place; we worked on it for such a long time that we were able to say “yeah, maybe that’s not working” and throw it out and make sure that every single aspect is right.
I think everyone experimented and tried a little bit new things, even though the basis of the songs is there, what Anders is doing on drums and what Martin Brändström is doing with some of his new keyboards and sounds, what Niklas is doing with some of his new guitar stuff, it’s just amazing and it adds so many layers to it and I think that just listening to it I always find something new going on like “Oh, these melodies are interacting in a way I haven’t noticed before”.
I think the thing that I’m most proud of is how it all came together, it works from the beginning to the end even though the songs are very different there is like some kind of connection that I really like.

I suppose you’ll be releasing at least a single, when will we hear it [N.B. the interview happened in early September before any single was released]?

Right now I’m trying to figure that out, before the album there will be three songs released: the first will be just a taste of a song, then there will be a music video, I’m talking to the director right now trying to figure out when the hell we’ll be able to record something, and then there will be a digital single closer to the release date of the album.

You recorded “Where Death Is Most Alive” right here in Milan, how was that experience? Why did you choose Milan? How was the response of the show’s crowd compared to your expectations?

First of all, ever since our first tour here in ’95, ’96, whenever that was we’ve been blown away by the enthusiasm and the passion of the Italian fans; it’s always been like a special connection we felt, like this is our second home, it’s always been so great: some of our best show ever have been here.

After we played at the Rolling Stones with Kreator in 2010…no, no, no, 2005 maybe [laughs], we felt immediately as we walked off the stage that that was our best show ever, one of our favourite shows of all time, even the guys from Kreator were like “What the fuck? How can we top that?
So when we started to think to record a live video the choice was easy, “let’s go back to Milan where we have the best crowd in the world”; the venue was nice and cool, we heard it was shut down but at least it stayed open long enough to allow us to record the video.
It was a lot of fun just setting it up, finding a good production company that would do justice to the show and all that sort of stuff; we invited a lot of die-hard fans from all over the world, we flew in a lot of people just to make it special and it truly was, I love it!

We were super nervous like, “how is it going to look, maybe we’ll fuck up, we have to be sure we are on time” and all that stuff, but in the end it worked out amazingly well and when I saw the finished result I was like “Holy shit it’s amazing!”.

The only downside is that I have no idea how we’re going to do a better one now, for me that is just perfect, I don’t know I we’ll be able to top that; maybe we’ll have to come back.

Martin Henriksson recently left the band, was it unexpected or did you see it coming?

It was unexpected but in hindsight now that I think about it, of course, I’ve seen all the signs and I knew that he lost touch with playing guitar and being on stage; I’ve seen it of course, but I’ve never thought it would go this far.

Martin is the guy who takes care of everything around the band; he is the practical guy, he knows everything that goes on with the band: every show, every venue, every flight, every bus he arranged everything.
I guess he felt like, sometimes even when he was onstage he was thinking “well, tomorrow we’re going to do this, that, write this email…”, he wasn’t really 100% there, in his mind he was somewhere else and he felt that was unfair to our audience and to the band.
Of course that’s really sad to hear, like “oh you lost that thing that makes it so special”, I mean that’s the thing that I love the most about being on stage, being there in the moment, having everything else in the world just disappear and hearing he lost that was really, really sad.
But, you know, that happens and I have to respect his decision; so it was sad and like a shock, but somehow I knew what was going on.

Martin has always participated in the song writing process, how did his absence influenced the new album?

Actually in the past, absolutely, he’s always been doing that, but already from the last album “Construct” he felt like “I don’t have anything to offer”, he didn’t have the creativity, already then he was like “maybe I’m not 100% there”.
For this album we had 10 song already finished before he left so he didn’t really affect the actual songwriting, but of course how we felt about him affected the album; we were like “okay, we lost someone but that means we have to regroup and focus even more to make this extra special”, so it became kind of like a motivation instead of the opposite.
It pushed us forward in a way.

Over the years you sound evolved constantly is it something that happened naturally or did you force yourselves to keep being original?

A little bit of both maybe?
I mean, it’s always been in our mind like we have to do this, otherwise what’s the point?
Repeating ourselves…no way.

But at the same time it has to come naturally, otherwise it would be weird.
That’s why sometimes we take some extra time off, like coming home after a tour and immediately going to the studio, that doesn’t make any sense because this way you don’t find the need to do something new, you know?
So, even though we’ve been touring a lot for “Construct” there’s always been a lot of time in between when we were like “well, maybe now we’ll find the need to write again” because sometime you just burn out from touring and you are like “oh man, I just can’t come out with anything original”.
Sometimes you need time, and of course it becomes more difficult with every year and of course you push yourself a lot and that costs a lot of stress and pressure on yourself so it makes really, really difficult.

Like you’re sitting there going like “Why am I doing this? Why am I not having this great inspirational moment right now?” and you keep pushing yourself; I didn’t sleep for maybe six months because it’s constantly in your mind like “Do something better! Do something better than you’d expect from yourself!” and it’s not healthy but at the same time it has to be this way, and the reward you feel when you finish it it’s just amazing.

You are now short of a guitarist, are you looking for a new one or are you planning to go on with a session musician like you’re doing now?

Yeah, the plan is use a session guitarist for the upcoming shows and see how it feels, because now it’s weird not having Martin there.
This summer we’ve had an old friend called Jens filling in and he’s awesome but he can’t really commit to touring the way we want to, so for the upcoming American tour we’re going to have another guy, then for the next shows we’ll see; see if it works, if he fits.
You know, we are childhood friends, he’s a friend since we were fourteen so, but having a totally new member in the band is something we are a little bit afraid of, so we want to take it slow.

Also I love the fact that touring with some old friend who has never been on stage before I can show them our audience, “look at this amazing people who come to our shows!” because, of course, when I come home from a tour I tell my friends “oh men, it’s been awesome, you should have seen, you should have been there” and now I can really show them!

After many digital made albums’ artworks “Atoma”’s cover is again hand drawn, why did you choose that?

We didn’t, Niklas decided on it but I’ve always told him I love his drawings basically from the first day I met it, which is when I was 5 years old, he’s always been drawing, but he never really uses them; I mean, he released a couple of books with his artworks, but other than that most of his album covers are digital media which I think he’s great at, but I love his drawing stuff.

For the vinyl version of “Construct” we had a drawing as well and I love that, so we though “Let’s keep that going”, you know?
For the artwork for this album we just started talking about what it should be called, the title of the album we didn’t really have that, we had all the songs and Niklas read all the lyrics and he was like, “Okay, what is this? What the album about? How do we find a title that covers everything?” and once we decided on “Atoma” which means nothing, and everything, Niklas was like “Maybe I have an idea” and then three or four days later he sent us the finished cover artwork and we were blown away.
I love how it mix the drawing and the colours and all that stuff and makes you think and feel a lot, I think, which is what great art should do and I’m really happy.
I saw the deluxe edition thing and Niklas has created artwork for every single song, you open this book and there’s tons of drawings which are really amazingly beautiful, so hopefully people who appreciate that kind of things will get that so that they’ll get the full experience: listen to the album, read the lyrics, see the artworks…in my dreams that’s how everybody experience the album, but of course that’s not the case [laugh]

You are considered one of the bands that mostly contributed to develop melodic death metal. Some of the other historical bands split up or changed musical direction, like In Flames. What are your memories of when you began? Were you conscious that you were shaping something so big?

What I remember is that those were exciting time, of course, this was the early nineties, we were like eighteen, nineteen years old, we lived outside of Gothenburg but everybody that I knew, all of my friends were into metal, heavily into metal and some guys had bands and we wanted to be in a band too, everybody wanted to be in a band.

All of us were like “Oh you guys are in a band? Awesome!” than you go in their rehearsal room and listen to them like “Wow! Maybe we can do something like that too!”, so we were like encouraging each other a lot, you know, but we always talked about how important it was to be original and do something that no one else was doing because at the time you started hearing American Death Metal, all these Death Metal band and a lot of it was kind of the same; we thought it was cool and brutal but the lyrics are just about horror movie stuff and…that doesn’t do anything for me, but I love the music.
When we heard something original it was like “Wow!”, like when I heard Atheist, something super technical, I thought “THIS is awesome!” and also Death which was like primal but had song writing skill that were amazing, and of course you were influenced by other music as well you grow up to, like Iron Maiden, Speed Metal band, so all of us had this love for all kind of music, not just “This is Death Metal, we love it” it was very open.

It was a great community of friends who hung out, drunk beer, talked about music every single minute of the day, lived music basically, went to show…that was it, that was everything; at that age, when you’re like sixteen, seventeen you basically form who you are…and we became metal musicians [laugh]

Later, like in 1995, when we released “The Gallery” and “Slaughter of the Soul” came out, of course you realise “Wow, it’s actually working, people care about our music” and that was really, really cool, I was so proud of my friends for getting attention, then we started touring and we didn’t really see each other that much anymore, only on festivals and stuff like that.

I loved that period because it was really exciting, because you were young you felt like you could do anything, anything was possible, you didn’t have to think about anything, you didn’t have to care about money, you live in your parent’s house and stuff like that, you could tour forever and think “Tour is way better, it’s free beer”, it was really exciting and a lot of fun of course.

Then when the people started talking about the “Gothenburg sound” it was like “Mmh, that’s not fun”, because the whole idea was to be original, be something new and innovative and all of a sudden we were a bunch of band who sound all the same according to people?
But now of course I’m super proud of the fact that people connected with, you know? And I love the fact that all these band kind of moved on, became something different and changed but are still loved, I’m so proud of all my friends

I guess getting to give the name of your hometown to a genre, or sub-genre if you prefer, because of what you played must be weird…

It is weird, it is very weird…it’s only the last couple of years when I actually appreciated fully and…because when I think about it it’s like “Some of my favourite bands are from home”.
In other genres like Evergray is coming out with an album and I’m super excited about, and we have bands like Monolord, we have Blues Pills who are totally different, like Graveyard are one of my favourite bands…they are all right there, I see them all the times. 

How do you think the scene is doing today? Is there any young band that is keeping it alive?

I really think so, of course you have to image that if you’re starting a new band in Gothenburg now and you play Death Metal you will be scrutinized and there will be made comparisons between older bands, for a while it was like that and a lot of bands were really trying but all the time it was like “They sound like a cheap copy of this and that band” and what happened is that either whose band quitted or they found their own style, their own identity and that what I’ve always been saying, that’s what you need, you take influence from all the bands you love and make something original, something cool out of them, otherwise you’ll just disappear after a while.

So, there’s a lot of great stuff happening in Gothenburg, there’s definitely a scene where some smaller clubs have 3-4 bands every other week, some of the smaller clubs have tons of shows, there are new venues that open up for different kind of music, there definitely a “retro” thing going on so there are bands going back to old-school Thrash, there’s some Black Metal, it’s really amazing.

For me going out and watching new bands is part of my routine.

Apart from tomorrow’s show at the Metalitalia Festival you have only a North American tour planned so far, can we hope to see you coming back to Italy soon?

Yes, we do this until December and then, right now we are planning the European leg of the tour which is going to be extensive, really long, we start out…I believe in the beginning of March, late February, something like that and we’re going all over the places.
We are going to do a support tour for a really, really amazing band and then we’re going to do a long headlining tour as well, so we are definitely coming down here.

Davide Sciaky