DARK TRANQUILLITY Guitarist Talks About Upcoming CD

Metal Israel recently conducted an interview with DARK TRANQUILLITY guitarist Niklas Sundin. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal Israel: What direction have you taken with the new album? From the YouTube preview it seems awesome. What are we in for?

Niklas Sundin: As a whole, it's more diverse and features bigger variation between the songs than, for example, "Character", but there's no point in elaborating too much as you all can hear it pretty soon. Also, it's hard be objective about our own work; once a recording is finished you're usually so fed up with the songs that you don't want to think of them, let alone try to describe how they sound. I'm not sure if all the songs you can hear on the YouTube preview will actually be featured on the album or if they'll be saved for B-sides.

Metal Israel: Why don't you use Mikael's [Stanne] clean vocals again? At least in some of the songs.

Niklas Sundin: When we started having clear male vocals, on the "Skydancer" album in 1993, it was something drastically new that no band in our genre had tried before. Same thing with "Projector". One-two years after it was released, tons of other Swedish bands — and eventually American bands as well — began using clear vocals in choruses, albeit in a more streamlined and catchy manner. There's no point in doing what everyone else is doing, and the music of the last few albums haven't really been suited to normal singing either. If we were to include clear vocals just to please the fans, we'd be total sellouts. I'm sure we'll have Mikael's singing voice again in the future, but then it really has to suit the music and feel right.

Metal Israel: Is a European or North American tour on the immediate horizon?

Niklas Sundin: I'm sure that there will be a lot of touring for the new album, but it's a bit early to have any confirmed plans right now. The CD will most likely be out in April, so I'm guessing that we'll do a U.S. tour shortly after that, play the summer festivals and then make a European trek in the autumn. But it's just speculation at this point. Within a couple of weeks, the schedule for the next year will be much clearer.

Metal Israel: I would ask you what you think of what's going on in the world on a political level right now, especially in Israel, but it's a complicated question. If you have some thought that you do want to share, please feel free.

Niklas Sundin: I'm sorry, but I have the policy of not discussing these issues in band interviews. Whatever I would say wouldn't be representative for the band, since we're all individuals with different opinions on things. DARK TRANQUILLITY is about the musical experience, everything else is irrelevant. Most of us don't even care enough about politics to even have an opinion.

Read the entire interview at www.metalisrael.com.