Mikael Stanne: „We always play like the world’s going to end the day after.“

Short and pleasant conversation with the garrulous and friendly frontman of the Swedish melodic death metal legend Dark Tranquillity. The end of the world and the birthday on stage in Bulgaria, read below.

MH18: Good evening.
Mikael Stanne: Good evening.
MH18: First of all, I must say that I’m very excited for the chance to see you here in a couple of days.
Mikael Stanne: I’m excited too! It will be cool!
MH18: Whose idea was that mini Balkan tour?
Mikael Stanne: Yes, we’ve been trying for many years to come to Bulgaria, to come to Romania, it’s always been one of those things that we’ve been, you know, trying to do, but it never really worked out. During tours, because of timing, you know, and distance. And then, also the promoters and people we work with… Somehow it fucked it up, we failed to come, make it happen. So it’s been sad and still one of those things. Last year we did so many shows, we toured all over the world – 130 shows, something like that. This year we want to make up to this countries and cities, and people we haven’t seen. And when we started thinking about this idea, we wanted go to Greece, because we missed Greece, we played there many times, and then do some other countries, we’ve haven’t been, you know. I think this is perfect – new amazing places and some more familiar places.
MH18: What do you know about Bulgaria and the audience here? Do you have any impressions from other bands, played here?
Mikael Stanne: We always heard that you’re crazy. You know, whenever you come to a country that doesn’t have many metal shows, it’s always a different vibe. Sometimes when you play in country where you know that they don’t really see that much metal, and there’s a different hunger there, different kind of anticipation – I think that’ awesome. It really used to be like that in Sweden as well, when we were young, so whenever band came over here everybody were so excited, that’s something I really look forward. And, of course, we encounter a lot of fans over facebook and e-mail and all of that stuff and it always been like “Sorry man”… We’ve been trying so hard to come to your country but it never happened, but finally… (laughs).
MH18: Last year I wrote a review for the „We are the void“ album. My last words were: „The thing that I love about this band is that they can change their sound in such way, so they remain one of my favorite bands for over twelve years.“ Do you agree with me, that you’ve always changed the best way?
Mikael Stanne: Well, I have to, I guess. And of course that’s always our goal and our main objective to of course changing, of course do something different, but in the same time kind of retaining what we feel is important in our music. To us that’s not really that hard anymore, because whatever we come up with, whatever, I guess, we have, it still going to be Dark Tranquillity, because we have certain sense of melody that we like, we have a certain sense of pace and beats and whatever. Then we can make all kinds of stuff, but after we work some stuff, after we rehearsed for months, you know, and we tried things out and changed things around all the time, eventually what comes out and what ends in the album is something that is genuine Dark Tranquillity I guess. And I really like that, we always love that process, when we take something that sounds like…I don’t know…like pop or country to begin with, and then we kind of transform into something this – very, very uniquely. That’s a lot of fun to do.
MH18: Do you thing the band reached its “best“ period, or it is still forthcoming?
Mikael Stanne: Our next album is always going to be the best, that’s how it works.(laughs) It would be a shame if I ever thought that we reached our peak already, it doesn’t work like that. You always strive for that perfect album and I think “We are the void” is closest to that thing by now, but I think we can do even better. That’s always the goal that we try to achieve and it’s why we do this and we keep doing it, and it is … hey, it’s not about selling albums anymore, obviously, it’s ongoing struggle – to keep getting better I know in my heart that we can do even better record next year and I’m looking forward to it so much.
MH18: Looking back from now, do you feel that there’s anything you would have changed?
Mikael Stanne: I don’t know, it’s not like I want to go back and go like:”Oooh, I want to change this and that.” Because I always consider our albums to be kind of “timecapsules” – we make in our albums exactly what we want to do at that time. So, in ’95, “The Gallery” was exactly where we were – what we thought is right, our influences came from everything like that, I don’t know, I never regret anything, I really don’t. And if you look back, you can go like:”Ooh, theoretically or hypothetically , we could’ve done this or that, we could’ve changed things here and there, we could’ve  change way more back then.” Those are just hypothetical ideas. We don’t look back; we just keep looking forward and think what can we do different next time, what can we improve on, how can we change our sound so that it’s more interesting to ourselves and to others. I think it is going to be a tough year first, we come up with that, because it keeps getting harder, in years it gets harder to come up with something better that is still original, but I think that in the same time that pushes us working harder to make sure it really happens. I have high hopes.
MH18: And final question – a little funny one – there’s a theory about world’s end at May 21st. And you know your show here, in Bulgaria, is at May 20th…
Mikael Stanne: And also my birthday.
MH18: Really? Amazing.
Mikael Stanne: Yeah!
MH18: Well, would you do something different for the show, knowing that this will be the last one ever? 😉
Mikael Stanne: But what is that theory for May 21st? Is the world going to end or something like that?
MH18: Some American religious guy said that the world’s going to end on May 21st this year.
Mikael Stanne: Wow, as a devote atheist I’m not really worried. (laughs) But I love theories like that, I find it fantastically fascinating and humorous, I love the doomsday prophecies and stuff like that, it’s amazing. So, hey, prove me wrong, please, it would be fantastic if world just end like the day after my birthday, you know, if it happens – bring it on. But … hey we always play like the world’s going to end the day after, so that’s how it works. (laughs)
MH18: I hope so! Thank you for your time…
Mikael Stanne: Thank you!
MH18: See you in a couple of days.
Mikael Stanne: Yeah! It’s going to be awesome! See you soon!