DARK TRANQUILLITY Singer Says He Wants To Challenge Listener With Band's Music

DARK TRANQUILLITY frontman Mikeal Stanne recently spoke to Blistering.com about the group's new CD, "Character", and the group's decision to re-sign with Century Media Records, among other topics. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

On entering Swedish charts at No. 67 with their latest single, "Lost to Apathy":

"It's quite weird. We don't know what to expect. Singles are usually quick, poppy songs and we don't have any of those songs (laughs). The new album has no single material whatsoever, we purposely didn't write any songs in that manner, but the label thought it was the best song to do a video for, so we went and did that and the next thing we knew it was on the charts. The charts are usually a place for more poppy, commercial bands, so having 'Lost to Apathy' on there was really cool."

On the recording process for "Character":

"There isn't a whole lot of tinkering done in the studio with the songs. Some bits and pieces here and there, mostly keyboards and some of my lyrics. They are already prepared in rehearsal, that way we can just go in and knock them out. This time we tried to have short and sweet songs, but songs that have a longer life span than a week. We wanted to have 11 songs, all perfect which took us a really long time to do. We wanted to have songs that challenge the listener, that way they will keep coming back to them. We have thought about going to another studio, but I don't think we'd be comfortable with it. The studio [Studio Fredman] and Fredrik [Nordström, famed producer] are the seventh members of DARK TRANQUILLITY, plus we are very protective of what we do, I don't think we could work with anyone but ourselves at this point."

On other bands copying the DARK TRANQUILLITY sound:

"I am aware of all the metalcore bands in the states doing this melodic riffing style, so we take it as a compliment. On the other hand, there a lot of lesser-known European bands that totally copy what we are doing and it are a little stupid. Be original, do something of your own. I don't really think about how far we can push the envelope with this style, let's see what happens. We don't really think about it, we just let it be natural and don’t care what other people think."

Read Mikeal Stanne's entire interview with Blistering.com at this location.