Interview with Dark Tranquillity guitarist Niklas Sundin

If you’re talking about the pioneers of melodic death metal then there’s no way that Dark Tranquillity can be left out of the conversation. This six-piece Swedish band has received a lot of recognition for its remarkable body of work that has been accumulating now for over twenty years. The group just recently released its ninth studio record We Are The Void at the end of February and while in one respect it’s classic Dark Tranquillity, the album has been given credit for incorporating more diversity into its sound than previous releases. The band has a very busy late summer and fall ahead in support of We Are The Void as the guys will be crisscrossing most of Western Europe and won’t wrap up until into November. They are currently wrapping up a U.S. tour that has been ongoing since early February. Recently we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to ask guitarist Niklas Sundin a few questions about the band, the new record and the group’s plans for the near future.

Dark Tranquillity just recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary as a band. Did you ever think the band would still be together here in 2010?
Niklas: Ha ha, not at all! When we decided to form a band, we were 14-15 years old and none of us had even touched a musical instrument before. We were devoted metal heads that just had discovered amazing bands like Kreator, Morbid Angel and Sadus, and felt the need to create something of our own. We literally bought our guitars the week before our first rehearsal, so at that point it would have seemed highly unlikely for us to even get beyond the stage of actually writing and playing a song. I remember thinking that the one year anniversary felt surreal – “an ENTIRE year!” – So the fact that we’re still around, in largely the same formation, is weird. But great.

In all these years the group has only undergone three line-up changes and four of the original group members remain. What do you think is the main reason why the band members have been able to stay together for so long?
Niklas: People often ask about this, but we have no good answer. We just happen to get along well and have a good chemistry and working method in the band. We’ve known each other since the age of 2-3 years since we grew up on the same street, and even if we’re different in a lot of ways, we have the same attitude and approach to what being in a band entails. No bloated egos, no drama over petty things and a good work ethic. Everyone writes music and contributes to the songs, and we split everything equally independent of who the original creator of a riff or song was.

Your most recent line-up change was adding bassist Daniel Antonsson in 2008. How did Daniel become part of the band and are you pleased with how he’s fit in?
Niklas: We’ve known him for a long time, and he’s part of the same old scene as us, so he fit in right from the start. For the bassist slot we got a lot of applications from 20 year old guys, but we wanted someone with lots experience from touring, recording and the other sides of the music business.

You just recently released your ninth studio record We Are the Void. What are your feelings on the album now that it’s out?
Niklas: It feels great to finally have the bastard out in the open. The album represents a year of hard work, frustration and devotion, and its release means that we can finally stop obsessing about the songs and focus on the live representation instead.

You’ve released so many records now; how would you say We Are the Void matches up with the rest of the Dark Tranquility catalogue?
Niklas: It’s always incredibly hard for a musician to analyze his own material; these things tend to be pretty subjective anyway. I personally don’t listen to our old albums at all, and whenever a recording is done I begin looking forward to new creative adventures, so I usually find that the listeners have much better ideas on what album X offers in relation to album Y and so forth. A quick reply would be that We are the Void is darker and more diverse than its predecessors, but it’s more interesting to let the fans form their own opinion.

Speaking of which, what would you say is the band’s best album overall and why?
Niklas: I don’t really have a fave D.T. album, as they all were created at different times with different goals in mind. Our mindset when recording – say – Skydancer is completely different from how we reasoned when writing Projector, so it’d be hard to say that one is better than the other.

What was the writing and recording process like for We Are the Void? When did you begin working on it and how many songs did you write?
Niklas: We wrote 15 songs and one instrumental if I remember correctly. The bulk of material was written from late 2007 to the early autumn of 2008, but some of music is way older. “Iridium,” for example, dates back all the way to 1998. It has been floating around since then, but never felt complete enough to fit on an album; there was always something missing. We decided to dust it off and try one more time, and everything just fell into place. The recording process was simple enough (two studios in our hometown, owned by band members). Since this is a web interview, I’d rather point the readers to the extensive studio webisodes on YouTube than trying to explain the process here.

You worked with highly acclaimed metal producer Tue Madsen on We Are the Void. Why did you choose to work with Tue and what’s his best asset in the studio?
Niklas: Tue did a great job with both our Fiction album and the live DVD, so it was an obvious choice to hire him again. We’re pretty self-sufficient in the studio, so our work setup is that we record everything on our own and then just send the tracks to Tue and let him work his magic. We’re not even there when he mixes, as there’s no need to micro-manage everything. I can’t pinpoint any particular thing that would be his main weapon – he’s just very skilled at what he does as well as being easy to work with.

You’re just wrapping up a tour of the U.S. with none other than Killswitch Engage. How’s the tour gone? What have the fan reactions been like towards the new songs?
Niklas: The tour is going great! Right now we’re in New York, having done the first of the two shows here, and in a few days we’re home in Sweden. On the whole, it has been very interesting and rewarding to play for a lot of people that previously weren’t familiar with our music, and the reactions from the new songs have been very positive.

What else does Dark Tranquility have planned for 2010 in terms of touring?
Niklas: It’ll be a busy year. It’s 95% certain that we’ll come back to the States already in May for a headline tour, and we’ll head to South America directly afterward. After that, there are the usual summer festivals and then a long European headline tour in the autumn. Other territories like Greece, Turkey, Japan and Australia are likely to be added as well. No rest for the wicked.