MIKAEL STANNE On Gothenburg Orchestra's Upcoming Concerts Celebrating Music Of IN FLAMES, AT THE GATES And DARK TRANQUILLITY: 'It's One Of The Greatest Honors'

At last month's Rock Hard Festival 2026 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, DARK TRANQUILLITY vocalist Mikael Stanne spoke with Marcus Schleutermann of Rock Hard magazine about the upcoming concerts in Gothenburg, Sweden where songs by IN FLAMES, AT THE GATES and DARK TRANQUILLITY will be played by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Led by conductor Josef Rhedin, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra will take on the melodious death metal that has put Gothenburg on the rock map forever in specially written arrangements by Johan Lindström and composer John Metcalfe. Metcalfe is known for his work with artists including U2, COLDPLAY and Peter Gabriel. The 109-piece orchestra will host three performances, dubbed "The Gothenburg Sound", at Göteborgs Konserthus on December 3, December 4 and December 5. The concerts will serve as a warm tribute in memory of Tomas "Tompa" Lindberg. As frontman of AT THE GATES, Lindberg was one of the most important individuals behind the Gothenburg sound.

Stanne said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's a super-cool event. They contacted us through Tompa, actually, a year and a half ago or something like that, or two years ago almost. Because that's what the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra does — they will do rare events like that, celebrating a genre or a certain artist or something like that. And they are considered — rightly so — one of the best symphony orchestras in all of Scandinavia and the north of Europe. And they're incredible. And I've seen when they did a show celebrating 'Krautrock', and it was — wow — one of the best things I've ever seen. That kind of stuff. So it's super cool."

Mikael continued: "When they asked us, [it was] kind of, like, 'Hey, we're gonna do this. Do you wanna be part of it or help out? Do you have any suggestions what we should do?' And then we had some suggestions, but they were, like, 'Nah, we're gonna figure it out. We wanna listen to the songs, see what fits.' And the guy who's written the actual orchestration and stuff like that, he's an incredible guy who worked with U2 and Peter Gabriel and that kind of stuff. So he's written the orchestration for a 104-piece orchestra with choir. So, we're not gonna be part of it other than we're gonna be dressed up in the concert hall. And we're just gonna enjoy it. So it's gonna be 30 minutes of AT THE GATES, 30 minutes of IN FLAMES, 30 minutes of DARK TRANQUILLITY, kind of in sections. It's three nights only, and it's already sold out, way, way, way, way in advance, obviously. But it's so cool. It's one of the greatest honors that, I think, we can get. It's something to play at a fantastic festival that you look forward to, but this is another kind of level of culture where we don't normally fit into. And so it's gonna be super cool. And Jonas [Björler] from AT THE GATES has written one piece that is just gonna be like a tribute to Tompa, and so I think it's gonna be absolutely beautiful. And I can't wait."

Elaborating on the significance of having such an event take place in his hometown, Mikael said: "Doing it at home in a place that I used to go with my parents, my grandparents, to see classical stuff or operas and stuff like that when I was a kid, having our music be performed there, [it's] incredible. So, it's gonna be one hell of a couple of nights. But it's a cool thing. And we're gonna hopefully do things around it to make sure that... Because I know a lot of people who are gonna travel to see it. So we're gonna try to make some kind of event, just to celebrate it. And for us, I cannot wait. And I don't wanna know. I know what kind of songs they're gonna play, but I don't wanna know more. I just wanna be there, sit there and experience it for the first time on the first night. That's what I look forward to."

Asked if there are any plans to professionally film and record the concerts for future release, Stanne said: "We were talking about that. It's not finalized yet, but I really hope so because, yeah, it needs to be at least immortalized somehow."

This past January, Stanne spoke to Chile's Futuro radio about the birth of what is now widely known as "the Gothenburg sound" nearly four decades ago. At the time, Swedish bands like AT THE GATES, IN FLAMES and DARK TRANQUILLITY took the harshness of old-school death metal and combined it with the more melodic approach employed by 1980s heavy metal acts to create something new. After the interviewer noted that "the Gothenburg sound" was "a big thing" in the mid-to-late 1990s, Mikael concurred. "It really was," he said. "And, of course, for us, we didn't see it. We were just friends. I mean, Gothenburg's a small town. We lived very close to each other. We've been friends since we were teenagers. But, of course, yeah, we recorded albums around the same time [at] the same studio, so it made sense for it to kind of be lumped together. But we never thought about it. And it was only when we started touring — I think it was '96 or '97 — I started hearing people go, like, 'Yeah, that Gothenburg sound is cool, man.' And I was, like, 'What do you mean? What is that?' 'Yeah. You know, you guys together.' 'Well, we're just tiny bands from our small city. That's nothing.' But, of course, I get it now. But for a while it was kind of strange. We tried so hard, all of us, all the bands tried to be unique and original and different from each other and from everything else. So all of a sudden, people said, like, 'Yeah, this is just a sound.' We kind of [took it as] a little bit of an insult at first."

Stanne previously talked about the experience of being lumped in with other Gothenburg bands less than two yeas ago in an interview with U.K.'s Metal Hammer magazine. He said at the time: "When people started calling it 'the Gothenburg sound', I noticed it on tour in 1995. All of a sudden I see a flyer in the venue that says 'true Gothenburg-style metal'. I had no idea what was going on.

He continued: "At the time, there was 'The Gallery' [by DARK TRANQUILLITY], 'Slaughter Of The Soul' by AT THE GATES and 'The Jester Race' by IN FLAMES. They came out in the same year and were recorded in the same studio. But, at the time, I thought it was an insult. Everything that we set out to do was to be original and new and interesting. We really tried to be different from each other and we were successful in that."

DARK TRANQUILLITY's latest album "Endtime Signals", came out in August 2024 via Century Media Records.

Image credit: MiYa_The_Theater_Metal_Blast