Question for longtime DT fans

His Divine Shadow

His Divine Shadow

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Nov 5, 2003
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I was wondering what did you think of Projector when it first came out? This question is really more specifically aimed at people who were already fans of DT before Projector came out. Was it quite a shock to hear so much clean vocals? What was the general reaction?

Did you:
A. Like it immediately
B. Took a while to grow on you but now you love it
C. It's not one of their better ones
D. Hate it and still do!!! (I'm a blasphemer)

I'm asking because I know sometimes when a band is known for making a certain kind of music, and then they depart from that style it can upset some of the fans. But for people like me who only got in DT in the last couple of years it doesn't seem so odd... Sorta like when Iron Maiden released Somewhere In Time many IM fans hated it because it sounded different, but now most people who are just getting into IM hear it and enjoy it quite immensely without problems...(I know cause I'm on their message board and see new fans all the time). Does this make any sense why I'm asking this? Well perhaps not but anyway... :D

Plus if you are a newer fan like me, did you like it when you first heard it? It took me about 5 seconds to fall in love with the clean vocals, yeah. :)

edit cause I can't fuckin spell
 
Well, I'm not sure I really classify myself as a long term fan, because when I first started listening to DT, Haven had just been released. However, I heard the albums in the order Haven, The Gallery, The Minds I, then Projector, and so I still hadn't really heard anything from it with the exception of Therein. And although I immediately found it very different from the albums, I found I liked it just as much in a different way. While I was attracted to the aggression of The Gallery and The Minds I, and the flowing style of Haven, the deep, contemplative sound harmonised with Mikael's clean vocals gave an album that was just as impressive.
 
I started with DT after the release of Haven, but my first album was "The Mind's I". After that, I bought "Haven" (it took me quite some time to get into that one... about 10 times listening to it), "The Gallery" and then projector (not quite sure if The Gallery and projector are in correct order).

My first thought was that projector was some sort of "showing the world they can do other music, too". Today, I have a different opinion, of course. I think, projector is a great album. I don't know much stuff which can be compared with it (I prefer DeathMetal), but it's a gret thing to listen to and one of these albums you should work out like this: be alone, shut all doors and windows, be sure that the room is dark (completely!), take a bootle of good red wine and then relax and enjoy the album. (Here, I could recommend another album of this kind: Disillusion - "Back to times of Splendor")

So, after all, my favorites of DT are:
1. Damage Done
2. Haven
3. I don't know if either projector or The Mind's I

In recent times, I listen to the following albums the most:
1. Damage Done
2. projector
 
i might qualify as oldest dt fan around, having heard their trail of life decayed demo even before skydancer was released.
and it's definitely "a" for me. i loved projector straight away, even though i had heard freecard long before the rest of the record and had found it a bit mediocre. the thing is, i still consider freecard the worst song on projector.
i was blown away by nether novas, undo control, auctioned, on your time. i remember hearing it for the first time about 20 days before the release date, on a saturday morning, and having to go to lunch with relatives somewhere. i spent the whole day in a stupor, i wasn't able to think, much less talk, about anything else but the sheer splendour of dt's new record. i still consider projector their second best effort ever, and quite likely the second best record in the world ever.
 
This is cool, because a friend had told me that lots of DT fans at the time had thought they "sold out" with this record, mostly because of the clean vocals and the perhaps more accessible sound. (of course they were wrong. :err: ) Looking back on it now I'm sure almost no one would say that about DT, however. Sometimes when a band experiments on a record, it can be a bad thing *coughInFlames* but sometimes I think people just get worried for no fucking reason at all!

:Spin:
 
Thats not entirely true. Some people liked DT because they liked the formulatic melodies of the "gothenburg" sound and thought DT was gread at them, they just got caught with that particular aspect of DT and never really understood all the other distinctive elements that made them ( and still do ) unique and that are, have been and still are present on their sound.

In short: they liked DT because of the cover ( so to speak ) of their sound but never liked or really got to know the inside of their music.
 
To me at first Projector sounded less creative than the earlier albums because of the generally simple structure of the songs... Although it was easier to be comprehended because of that.
I value this album for it's emotion, not the technique.
 
I think, Misanthrope brought it to the point, as well as Onyx did. Often, bands are misunderstood, when they do/ try something new.
DT did well (wrong: they did GREAT) with projector, In Flames did well with RIIR and they did a bad job with StyE (all my own opinion!!!). I think a good example is what Iron Maiden did back in 1986 when Somewhere in Time was released. The use of Synthie-Effects wasn't accepted by many fans, but today this album is accepted as any record of IM released until 1988 (7th son... included). I personally think that Somewhere in Time is their best record so far (and surely will be forever).
 
Schwedentod said:
I think, Misanthrope brought it to the point, as well as Onyx did. Often, bands are misunderstood, when they do/ try something new.
DT did well (wrong: they did GREAT) with projector, In Flames did well with RIIR and they did a bad job with StyE (all my own opinion!!!). I think a good example is what Iron Maiden did back in 1986 when Somewhere in Time was released. The use of Synthie-Effects wasn't accepted by many fans, but today this album is accepted as any record of IM released until 1988 (7th son... included). I personally think that Somewhere in Time is their best record so far (and surely will be forever).
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree with everything you guys/gals are saying (except 7th Son is my favorite :) )

I personally think it's better for a band to try new things instead of sticking to the same formula album after album, because then they run the risk of becoming stale. Granted change is not always for the better musically speaking (we can all think of bands who changed for the worse), but I think it's a worthwhile goal to keep trying to do something new. I think this is one of the things that makes DT stand apart from many bands. They are not afraid to change things, but they still make excellent albums in the process.

I guess my main point in all of this was it's interesting how the general concensus about an album can change with time/hindsight. For example, Iron Maiden is my all time favorite band, but sometimes I wish they would take a few more risks in their music. I think they have the talent to put out something more progressive than the tried and true "Maiden formula," but I think they are afraid of alienating too many fans (in the short term) if they do. But I think if such an album was really good then even the most die-hard Maiden fans would come to accept such changes, given a little time.

That's why I respect and love DT all the more; because they're not afraid to use their talents in a more diverse way to branch out what melodic death metal is/can be all about.

Oh and yeah I think Projector is a very emotional album, and it's my favorite. :D
 
I'm a bit late to this thread, but I certainly was around back when Projector was released, and boy, was there a huge debate going on about whether or not DT had completely sold out. First of all, the long delay for the album caused a massive anticipation among the fan-base - there was a huge gap between the first tentative release-dates (sometime in early fall of 1998, if I recall correctly) and the final real release-date.

The oddest thing was, FreeCard had been up on the official site for months, as well as the radically shortened ThereIn-clip, both available for download. Thus almost everyone had been introduced to the clean vocals and simpler song-structures already - and yet they were somehow able to be completely surprised by them when the album was finally out!

As always, the greatest hystery was caused by those who had not heard the whole album. One amusing fellow managed to get a promo-copy and decided to upload one track from it: Day to End. I bet you can imagine all the "What the fuck is this? They sold out! There are only clean vocals on Projector! Day to End will become the next stupid MTV-hit!" comments that flooded the forum after that.

Indeed, those days on the old (I mean very old) forum were quite interesting to say the least - massive hate-threads were made all the time and finally the band had to delete a few of those with most vulgar language. Which, of course, caused even more commotion and non-constructive comments. However, after a while it all calmed down and there were even some rather insightful discussions about DT's new direction in the end.

A funny side-note to all this: Back when The Mind's I had been released, the band-members had said in some interview that their next album would probably be their most aggressive ever. As that was nearly two years before Projector was finally released, I can't be quite sure if that had an effect on people's expectations about the album, but that's one possible explanation.

On a personal level, I'm leaning to option B, I guess. At first, I wasn't too impressed by Projector (granted, this is very relative comment, as it was still the best album I had heard in months at that time - I was just comparing it to the previous DT-albums and initially felt it was a bit lacking). However, once songs like UnDo Control, To a Bitter Halt, Sun Fired Blanks and especially Nether Novas grew on me enough for me to realize their greatness, the whole album "opened up" on me. As Rahvin, nowadays I think I consider Projector to be the second best album of Dark Tranquillity and thus the second best album in the world (of course, mine and Rahvin's opinions about the #1 differ a lot :p). Never, for not even a split-second, did I suspect that the band had sold out, nor did I doubt that they had done anything else but followed their artistic instincts. This still applies, to all their albums.

-Villain
 
wow Villain! thanks for that insight. I was always curious about this as when I was first collecting DT albums some years ago I wanted to know what each album sounded like. I was told projector was like an emotional pop metal album. When I bought it, I was like WTF was that dude on about... I thought it was just a really emotional metal album. When I talked to the person that told me it was poppy he told me that he really loved it too :confused:. I think with time his stance on it changed.
 
oh well, a late addition.

the first DT song I heard was ThereIn so for me there has never been anything "non-DTish" about clean vocals. quite on the contrary, I´d like to hear more clean vocals.

when it comes to projector in its entirety I got it shortly after haven, which was my first, and loved it immediatly. and I still do consider it one of the top 5 albums ever, probably top 3, and possibly the best ever (it differs from time to time and I can´t make up my mind...).
 
His Divine Shadow said:
That's why I respect and love DT all the more; because they're not afraid to use their talents in a more diverse way to branch out what melodic death metal is/can be all about.
Click to expand...

I think that DT have the possibility to try new things out because they all (afaik) have "regular" jobs, so that they don't need the money to have something to eat in their freezer. Iron Maiden - on the other hand - should have enough money to be able to live with a not-very-good-selling album.

I also bring up much respect to Blind Guardian (as an example) who changed a little with "A Night at the Opera". No fantasy-cover, not too much fantasy lyrics and this huge thing called "and then there was silence" (15 minutes or so...). That's a great thing although my favorite BG-album is "Imaginations from the other side".
 
Villain said:
As always, the greatest hystery was caused by those who had not heard the whole album. One amusing fellow managed to get a promo-copy and decided to upload one track from it: Day to End. I bet you can imagine all the "What the fuck is this? They sold out! There are only clean vocals on Projector! Day to End will become the next stupid MTV-hit!" comments that flooded the forum after that.
Click to expand...
I imagine a lot of bands can toss aside such comments, but there still has to remain this notion of what amounts to being black listed. Reading this I'm reminded of a group of fans near me at a gig during Opeth's Damnation tour actually commenting that Opeth had sold out, "What the fuck is this slow shit?" Why do people need to open there mouths about things they know nothing about? The right people never get lock jaw.
 
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