Al sinds het debuut ‘Rusted Angel’ uit 1998 bestookt Darkane ons met hun eigenzinnig muzikaal amalgaam van techniek, thrash en melodie. De afgelopen maand is de vijfde en nieuwste toevoeging aan de heerlijke discografie van deze Zweden toegevoegd getiteld ‘Demonic Art’. Een nieuw album bij een nieuw label met een nieuwe zanger, reden te meer dus om drummer Peter Wildoer de hemd van het lijf te vragen.
First off, let me congratulate you on your newest work of art titled ‘Demonic Art’! It has become another great exercise in high speed, catchy melodic and exciting song writing. Were there any specific new things that you really wanted to try out on this new album? Thank a lot, great that you like it! We had no intention of changing anything specific for this CD actually. A reason for that is that we’ve got a new vocalist in Jens Broman so that will be enough of new information to the average Darkane fan, ha ha. We simply continued from where ‘Layers of lies’ ended. In a way there is a bit more of everything I guess, melodies, fast parts, instrumental parts/guitar solos etc. Since Jens is doing vocals now we could try some different stuff and he’s a bit more aggressive than Andreas perhaps so that’s something a bit different.
In which department has Darkane booked the most progression compared to the previous album according to you? As already mentioned the vocals are different now, don’t know if it progressed since it’s two separate vocalists, but it is different. I’m very happy with how the vocals turned out this time. As musicians I think we’re about the same level as on ‘Layers of lies’. The song writing has developed with some more orchestral and instrumental part. We’ve had that before but there are a bit more now. It’s kind of hard to tell since we’re there from the beginning of the song writing and things just develop.
Darkane has of course always been a band that combined furious up-tempo thrash with strong melodic and progressive elements. How difficult is it for Darkane to progress within this framework? Does it become more difficult with the years? Yes, I do think it’s harder and harder for each release since if we change too much people would not recognise the band. A band can just change so much that the fans still understand what they hear but sometimes it would be nice just to do something totally different. That’s why we have other projects so we can explore different musical directions there. It’s also a question about what to progress, the progressive parts, go faster, more melodies etc.? Our fans usually think that our first release ‘Rusted Angel’ is a classic and would want us to do a “part 2” of that CD, but that’s ten years ago and we’re different persons now. I still think ‘Rusted Angel’ is amazing and a kind of once in a lifetime CD, but it would make no sense trying to copy it now.
When looking closely at Darkane’s sound, it is really unique within the metal scene, since it really does not fall into that typical ‘Swedish sound’, nor is it typical thrash, or metalcore or whatever. According to you, what are the defining features of Darkane? Thanks, that’s great that you feel that way! Personally I think it’s a unique sound also even though it’s a mix (fusion) of different elements. I do think that when someone puts on a Darkane CD they almost instantly can hear it’s Darkane. We’ve actually discussed this since many fans also think the same way and I guess it’s a mix of us as musicians, the song writing. Even though the production is very varied on our five CDs and even different vocalists you can still hear it’s Darkane. Christofer (guitarist) has a very different way of composing his melodies and chords than the “average metal band” and that also contributes to the Darkane sound a lot. To be honest it’s hard to tell but one thing we also discussed in the band is that even if we record a cover song of another band one can still hear it’s Darkane and then it comes down to that it’s us as musicians that have a personal style.
Do you remember when and how you came up with this particular concept for the sound of Darkane? Hmm, the sound, I mean that includes musicianship, equipment, production, song writing and so on. In the beginning we wanted to be a mix of At The Gates, Strapping Young Lad and Slayer kind of. We also love(d) the production of Daniel Bergstrand who had worked with SYL and Meshuggah and wanted his production for our band. For the first three CD Daniel’s production is a big part of our sound and we still have a bit of that left even if we record, produce and mix ourselves nowadays. So we kind of knew from the very beginning what we wanted. Christofer and me came from a very technical band and wanted to do something straightforward and so we did, at least to our ears, ha ha. Perhaps there are more progressive elements today but I think we still have that “kick ass” thrash attitude in our music.
Looking at your discography, before ‘Expanding Senses’ (2002) Darkane was really productive. After that album it seems you guys took it easier with the song writing. What was the reason for the quick succession of albums in those days? We didn’t have any pressure writing songs and also our lives looked way different back then. We simply had more time to put into the band. Another thing is that we hardly didn’t get any tours so we were at home all the time and could write new songs. The Danish producer Jacob Hansen just told me that when Darkane came to be he couldn’t really put a label on our music and he said that that’s probably a reason why not too many tours got booked because who should we play with. Of course both him and we know that we’re not that original but there might be a point.
What was the reason for slowing down this process? Well I wish we could have kept that fast pace of writing songs later on too but we’ve had so many things coming in the way. Before ‘Layers of lies’ I had severe wrist problems and couldn’t play drums for about one and a half year. We had to take a long break and the others couldn’t think of playing with another drummer. Now before ‘Demonic Art’ three of us in the band got kids and that’s a huge step in life. Another thing is that since we have normal daytime jobs we tend to record our CDs during evenings and weekends. This of course take a lot more time, actually up around five to six months which is totally insane, ha ha! Normally we also have a lot like bad luck with equipment burning up, flooding etc. and that really doesn’t help to speed up the process either. Hopefully the next CD won’t take that long, we already have something like five song ideas and hopefully we’ll record already next year. Fingers crossed!
For your last two albums you have done at least one single, what will be the single for the new album? How important is the concept ‘single’ nowadays within the metal scene according to you? More specifically, what does ‘having a single’ actually do for a band like Darkane? Is it still useful? Well we never actually did a single like released a physical single, but we’ve done videos for a song and also promoted that song on samplers that’s included in magazines. We still have no clue what song we would like to do a video for this time. The reactions for the CD so far have been very varied and it seams like the more thrashier fans like the faster songs ‘Impetuous Constant Chaos’ or ‘Execution 44’ while the fans of “softer” metal likes the more melodic and slower songs ‘Demigod’ and ‘The Killing Of I’. So it’s kind of hard to know what song to promote the CD. Personally I think that ‘Leaving Existence’ is a very typical Darkane song. Perhaps not the strongest song on the CD but a very good song representing Darkane. About the importance I honestly don’t know. Of course it’s important to have strong songs but I don’t think a single is that important to the metal scene. If you’re a more “commercial” metal band it will make sense but for Darkane I don’t think so.
You guys obviously switched from Nuclear Blast to Massacre Records. Why was this? It was not us making this decision. I got a call one day from Nuclear Blast telling me they would licence the new CD to Massacre, that’s it. Not much of a saying we had. The reason is that Darkane don’t sell enough records to be on Nuclear Blast and that they most likely don’t believe in the band that much either. Nuclear Blast stated that we would be better off as a big fish in a small sea at Massacre than a small fish in a big sea at Nuclear Blast. In a way they are totally right about this and actually something we already discussed in the band before. In a way we felt that we were no top priority at Nuclear Blast and so the switch kind of felt totally ok.
A little over a year ago, your singer Andreas Sydow left the band after seven years of service. Can you shed some more light on the reasons why he left the band? Well Andreas comes from a totally different background than the rest of us. He’s from a hard rock background like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Kiss and so on which the rest of us also grew up with, but we later on moved to more extreme music which Andreas never did. He felt in a way that he was holding us back and couldn’t develop as much as he wanted. He also works a lot and even though we hardly ever rehearse he kind of felt that he couldn’t put as much time into the band as needed. He’s now singing in a hard rock band and he’s just freaking’ great at doing that. Some month ago I got married and Andreas sang some heavy songs like ‘Holy Diver’ at the after party and I can tell you that he knows his heavy metal very well! We’re still very good friends and still hang out.
And your new singer is Jens Broman from Construcdead and The Defaced fame, can you tell something about the selection process of Jens? Why did you specifically choose for Jens? Why was he the perfect guy for the job? First of all because he’s a great vocalist and totally fits the Darkane sound. We knew him very well already since he’s from the same town as the rest of us and that’s perhaps even more important that you can hang out together without any problems, not saying that Jens is not a great vocalist, ha ha. Personally I prefer higher pitched aggressive vocals and that’s something Jens is very good at and he’s a good melodic vocalist too. I heard him on the new Defaced CD and thought that he was the perfect guy with his varied style that is needed in Darkane.
This is your first record with Jens, what do you think of his performance? He did one hell of a great job if you ask me! It’s not easy being a new member in a band that played together for ten years and knows each other not only personally very well but also musically. He had only done two shows with us before he did the vocals on the CD so he was not 100% comfortable with his role in the band. I mean he knew he was the vocalist, ha ha, but not really what we would expect from him. As I said he did a great job and I’m positive that after the touring for ‘Demonic Art’ he will deliver even better on the next CD. He also writes lyrics which Andreas almost never did, which is great since Christofer and me who have done the main part before kind of are having a harder time to find topics to write about.
With the addition of Jens, you have yet another band member who has some side projects besides Darkane. How do you manage all those different agendas and how on earth do you find the time for, for instance, rehearsals and tours? Well actually Jens’ other bands Construcdead and The Defaced hardly ever rehearse and even more seldom play live so that is no problem at all. Jens even told me that he wished his other bands would do more to keep his voice up to date since Darkane hardly ever rehearse either. Personally I’ve taken one year off from my normal day job as a teacher to be able to concentrate 100% on music. I recently recorded drums for the new Old Man’s Child and just finished the drums on the new Pestilence but since we live so far from each other in those bands we never rehearsed so far either. Of course I need to practice a lot myself to be in good shape and know the songs but it’s only up to me what time I do it.
I saw on your website that the first major tour that is planned will take you guys to America. How did this deal come about? What do you expect from it? We’ve just toured US once before, besides some one of festivals, on ‘Layers of lies’ and the reactions were great! Our good friends in Soilwork wanted us to come on that tour and that makes things so easy for both bands to share a bus etc. since we know each other well. Also it seems like the US is a better market for Darkane. We expect it to be a lot of fun and the ability to get more fans in the US. It’s very cool to go to another country and travel as extensive as we will in the US, you simply get to see a lot. We’ve always got great reviews in Europe and also good response live but not as good as in the US. Of course we hope to be able to tour Europe as well! Most likely we will play some, hopefully a lot of, summer festivals in Europe too. Most likely there will be no tour in Europe until after the summer though since I will tour with Pestilence after the Darkane US tour and the rest of the Darkane guys can’t take more time off from work until after the summer.
How did the last album do in the States? How ‘big’ is Darkane over there? It did quite well, considering that people download your music “for free”, we’re happy. Before we toured we did something like 3000 copies in the US but after the tour we broke the 10.000 sales. Touring is extremely important to be able to make people aware that you exist and to sell CDs. We haven’t toured as much as we actually need but that’s also because we haven’t got so many good offers or if we got the offers our record label wouldn’t put the money into it that’s needed. So our last album ‘Layers Of Lies’ did quite well “over there” and I hope that ‘Demonic Art’ will do even better. That might just succeed after that extensive tour we will be doing. Darkane is actually not that big in the US but we hope to get bigger of course!
And when will the European crowds be able to hear some of the new shit played live? What are the plans in this department? We will do some dates in Switzerland and Italy in November and that will be the first time we play some more songs from the new CD live. We already played ‘Leaving Existence’ on some shows but that’s about it. Looking forward to these shows in Switzerland and Italy a lot, both counties have been very good for Darkane before. Like I already said, most likely no tour until after the summer but hopefully a lot of summer festivals.
Ok that is about it. I thank you very much for your time and really hope to see you soon play live in Holland! Thank you! We would love to go back to Holland, which most likely is the best country in Europe for us. Besides Sweden it’s the country in Europe we’ve played the most. We will come back, count on that!
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