Violent Tranquillity

Musical revolutions happen in the strangest of places. And one of the strangest of all is the picturesque Swedish city of Gothenburg – home to a post-modernist opera house and, in the mid-1990s, a melodic death metal movement that's gone on to influence a vast swathe of modern heavy music. Where the trailblazing Swedish Death Metal scene of Stockholm was dominated by punk attitude and the fuzzed sound of the Boss HM-2 pedal, the later Gothenburg death metal invasion sounded like the bands were having an illicit affair with various members of Iron Maiden and Rush.

“I think the melodic death metal sound can be put down to a few things,” muses Stanne, whose band, along with In Flames and At The Gates, is considered to have sired the melodeath sound. “First and foremost we were all brought up on a steady diet of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal – so it made sense to incorporate the melodic aspects of that style into the more extreme death metal we also loved. I guess it was also a reaction to the fact that the Stockholm sound was so ubiquitous. We loved those bands but we also wanted to do something different. I mean, as soon as we wrote music that was similar to other bands we would throw it away and start again. I think we also liked cleaner production and we didn't want that patented Sunlight Studio sound the Stockholm bands had.”

Compared to, say, In Flames, who are no longer recognisable as a death metal band, Dark Tranquillity have generally remained true to their own highly idiosyncratic brand of melodeath. That said, they've taken some divisive left-hand musical turns – first on 1999's Projector and now again with last year's Construct, which boasts clean vocals and a gentler sonic assault.

“Construct was a reaction to the albums that came before it. We needed to take the risk doing this record – we couldn't have carried on doing the same album again and again. We weren't exactly burnt out but we did need to get excited about writing again. After 20 years of writing records things don't get any easier.”

“We were prepared for the fact that Construct would be polarising – that happened when we did Projector. But now when we play the songs live they go over very well and I think that's the best good review we could possibly get.”

Dark Tranquillity haven't graced our shores in over seven years. “We play a longer set now than at any time in our career. We've been changing up the songs we play on this tour every night so there's always something different. I think by the time we get to Australia the balance will be perfect. I promise a lot of old stuff and a lot of new stuff – so everyone should be happy.”