e-mail interview conducted by Aleksandar Bošković and Rincewind with Niklas Sundin (we received Niklas's answer on may 16 2007):


First, which band-member(s) is/are being kind-enough to answer these questions?

Niklas: Hi, Niklas at your service!

Rincewind: How did you (the band-member(s) we're interviewing) get into metal?

Niklas: It was the same for all of us; we hung out a lot when we were 13-14 years old and discovered bands like Kreator, Merciless, Sabbat and so forth together. After having gotten into the whole underground-tape-trading movement, we started thinking about playing music ourselves, and so the band was born. None of us could play at all before starting the band; we basically bought our instruments the week before the first rehearsal.

Alex: One band-member told me at last year's [2006] Evolution festival that the band once invited a female singer to the stage during a gig to help with the female vocals on some songs. Which gig was this?

Niklas: Eh... are you sure about this? That person was probably drunk or maybe just joking -- we've never had a female vocalist on-stage. Maybe some stage-diving girl has screamed in the microphone once or twice, but that's about it. I think there were plans of having a female vocalist during some gigs around the Skydancer era, but it never happened. I guess that proves that absolutely-NOTHING of what we said or did at last year's Evolution festival should be taken seriously at all, ha ha! Ah, the madness!

Alex: Does Zodijackyl light have an unintentional spelling-mistake or is there a meaning behind the invented word?

Niklas: It's a wordplay. A zodiacal light is an astronomical phenomenon (see here), and the jackal adds the mythology-vs-science connection that we had in a lot of the lyrics at that time. Why we spelled it with a Y i honestly can't remember, but Mikael had a good reason for it.

Alex: What do Anders, Martin H and Martin B do in their spare time?

Niklas: Sorry, but, as boring as it sounds, it's not really interview-material. Privacy has gotten more-and-more-important for us as the band has grown bigger, and i truly-believe that metal music should be only about the musical output and nothing-else. I understand that some people want to know these things, and it's harmless-enough, but at the same time there's no reason for anyone to know about our daily lives. We're normal people, and our spare-time activities are as normal as they can get, so there just isn't much of interest to tell.

Alex: Does Mikael have a single black shirt that he wears every day or does he have dozens of identical ones? What about his pants?

Niklas: We're disgusting people, but not THAT disgusting, ha ha! I think he has at least two pairs of shirts that he alternates with. As for the pants, i've never really investigated further...

Rincewind: Why don't you change your setlist more-often? You have many great songs that could be amazing live, but you've never played them; i understand that there are some songs that are great live or that people really-love, but why not vary the rest a little more than you do?

Niklas: Well, we're six members with very-different opinions on this matter and it's hard to please everyone when you have limited playing-time and eight albums to pick from. Some of the songs that people generally think never have been performed live we've actually played several times only to discover that they don't work out in a live setting. People are usually eager to hear their favorite song on a gig, but in reality there are totally-different mechanics deciding if a track works as-well live as it does on an album. Many tunes that are great on studio-recording just don't cut it live. In addition, there's always a lack of time. A lot of people keep asking for Skydancer songs, for example, but you have to remember that only two members play the same instruments now as back then and that album is extremely-complex. It would take so-much rehearsing to get a song good-enough for us to play it live, and we'd rather spend that time writing new music instead. But, anyway, i do agree with you and really-hope that we can bring some surprises into the setlist for the upcoming touring.

Alex: What kind of literature do you like and why? And what's your favorite book, if you have one?

Niklas: I haven't had much time for reading lately, unfortunately, and i don't really have an all-time fave book either. The last one i read was The men who stare at goats by Ron Jonson, which is highly-recommended.

Alex: If you could have any power (like one of the X-Men or something), what would it be?

Niklas: Invisibility would be nice. I wouldn't say "no" to the ability to fly or mind-control either.

Alex: What's the strangest thing that happened while recording an album?

Niklas: Our album-recordings are never very-strange, to be honest. It's like going to work. The music is 100%-completed before entering the studio, so it's just a matter of getting everything recorded in the best way possible and spending an enormous amount of time trying to play better-and-better. I can't really think of anything weird or crazy that has happened; some technical problems here and there, but that's probably it...

Rincewind: What made you guys decide to make that kind of music, a whole new kind of metal? Why did you decide to make the particular kind of music you decided to make? Why mix growls with melodic music?

Niklas: We were just kids when we started playing, but we were really-determined to come up with something original, different and serious. Our listening habits included both the typical death-metal bands and more-melodic music from other genres, so it was natural to try to break the borders a bit.

Alex: What's one song (theme, kind of music, anything) that you always wanted to make with Dark Tranquillity but never did?

Niklas: I can't really think of anything, sorry. Never had a "dream thing" to do with the band, i'm way-too-cynical for that.

Alex: You recently [as of mid-2007] started to sell necklaces, a belt buckle and a flask, all of which are kinds of merchandise you'd never sold before. What new kinds of merchandise can fans expect in the future?

Niklas: I don't know, to be honest... we have some cool ideas, but it all depends on the manufacturers and distributors, which in turn are affected by sales figures and so forth. As soon as something is confirmed, we'll let you know for sure.

Rincewind: Which song from the new album [Fiction] do you like to play/sing best? Why?

Niklas: Hard to tell, as we've only tried a few of them out live so-far. Icipher was pretty-neat the two or three times we played it, and i can imagine that Inside the particle storm would be interesting as-well.

Alex: I know that your reason to include bonus stuff in japanese releases is so that the people will buy the japanese ones (even-though they're more-expensive) instead of the imports. As a band, what are the benefits of your japanese fans buying japanese editions as opposed to them buying imports? Why do you care about which release they buy as long as it's your album? Why do you put up with having to record extra stuff and make new booklets and sometimes even album-covers just because in some country cds cost more than in most countries?

Niklas: I'm not sure how to explain this without getting too–long-winded, but basically there are lots of good reasons for having an album released on license rather than import in a country like Japan. First of all, the local record-label promotes it much-better -- we probably sell at least ten times more now than if we hadn't had a native version of the album. An import album wouldn't get any magazine ads or general promotion, it'd just collect dust in a record-store bin. Secondly, we never would be able to tour in Japan without support from a japanese label, as they provide all the funding and invest the money (touring ALWAYS means losing money; lots of people don't know that) in the hope of recouping it later from increased album sales. Also, there are business aspects which i won't go into here -- but, basically, having to provide a bonus song or two isn't much effort considering the benefits. And if they want to do some special packaging that's just a bonus both for us and for the fans.

Thanks in advance for answering these questions. :)

Niklas: Thanks!