Hi Dave,
Here is the interview I wrote you about
its from the magazine called Aardschok, number 1/2 januari/februari 2010.
"DT recently celebrated its 20th birthday with the release of a dvd of a full concert and a more than excellent documentary. A great moment to end it all? Not if it’s up to the singer Mikael Stanne. Ï don’t see this as the end of 20 years DT, but as the beginning of the next 20 years!”. The more than excellent debut album for the coming 20 years is called “We are the void” and will be released beginning 2010.
I’ve mentioned it more often in Aardschok: DT never disappoints. Each album is different, but always recognizable and –especially- always good. A good view of the history of the band is on the new dvd “Where death is most alive” and then especially in the documentary. Has all the looking back influenced the writing of the new album “We are the void”? Mikael Stanne doesn’t think so. “Anyway, not consciously. In any case it hasn’t tempted any of us to go back to our roots. Even stronger: we’ve laughed about the things we did when we just started the band. A few years ago we would have been embarrassed about it, but now that we’ve grown older, we see it more in perspective. We are very grateful of our carrier which we’ve had sofar. Our begin period has opened many doors for us, but if it had its influence on our writing proces? It might only have given us starting points for the songs, but certainly not more than that. We don’t want to live too much in the past. We’ve focused our view tightly on the future, although a bit of nostalgia was involved in making the documentary.”
DT doesn’t like speedy work. Also the writing of the 9th studio album has taken the necessary time. Almost 1,5 years, although during this period the dvd was made as well. Stanne: “While the other band members were writing the new music, I was busy with the new dvd, especially the documentary. I have to admit that these were stressful months. It was fun to do though, because whilst searching for old material I encountered all sorts of things I hadn’t actually ever viewed properly, like recordings of rehearsals from the period before our debut album.”
Like said before the result is good. Unlike most nonsense documentaries you’ll find often on metal dvd’s, the band members guide you through the places and people that have played an important role in the long road that DT has taken. The singer is happy with the compliment. “I myself am a great fan of dvd’s, but I have to agree with you that the documentaries usually lack any depth. Ours shows everything: from the worst at our begin years to our peak of last year; the live show in Milan which is included fully on this dvd. It absolutely is my favorite show up till now. We’ve mainly asked ourselves what we wanted to see when making this dvd. It had to be interesting for us.”
During the live show in Milan DT plays a noticeable amount of songs of the album “Fiction”, their best sold record ever. The main focus with “Fiction” was to no longer tried to put too many ideas into one song, but just write good, recognizable songs. An approach that is developed on “We are the void”, although the singer expresses that this album goes a lot further than the previous album. “We are the void” is not necessarily a reaction to “Fiction”, but a sequel to it. It is everything that “Fiction” was plus more. Not that we’ve talked about it, the songs were just made by themselves. That’s why it still sounds so familiar, even after the many roads we’ve taken. At one time one of us came with a radical new idea for a song, but when we worked on that song with all of us and each cook added its own ingredient, it quickly sounded pretty much like DT.”
Although “We are the void” reminds us somehow of its predecessor , it does sound a lot colder and more mean. The best example of this is the noticeable song “Arkhengelsk” admits Stanne. “That song does stand out amongst the others. We originally wrote it as an instrumental song, but started building on it further. The last weeks before the recording it has grown enormously. Even in the studio we’ve adjusted it, something we normally rarely do. It is a very cold, almost creepy song. That’s the only thing we did talk about beforehand: the whole album had to breathe a dark mood. We wanted to hold that feeling throughout the whole album. One has to really hear that this is our most serious album ever.”
Stanne is already focused on the next 20 years with his thoughts, but that doesn’t mean of course that the band hasn’t celebrated the jubilee. “We’ve organized a big party, with which we didn’t just celebrate the 20th jubilee, but also introduced the new album to the press and friends. We’ve also rented a cinema in our hometown in which we’ve shown the new dvd on a big screen. All in all it was a very successful day and a special feeling to be in this business for 20 years. Ultimately we were allowed to drink legally at our own party, haha.”
DT is now busy with some stand alone gigs, but according to Stanne we can expect a full European tour around February/March 2010 to set in the next 20 years."
Hugs