In a new interview with Chile’s Futuro radio, DARK TRANQUILLITY vocalist Mikael Stanne reflected on the birth of what is now widely known as “the Gothenburg sound” nearly four decades ago. At the time, Swedish bands like AT THE GATES, IN FLAMES and DARK TRANQUILLITY took the harshness of old-school death metal and combined it with the more melodic approach employed by 1980s heavy metal acts to create something new. After the interviewer noted that “the Gothenburg sound” was “a big thing” in the mid-to-late 1990s, Mikael concurred. “It really was,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “And, of course, for us, we didn’t see it. We were just friends. I mean, Gothenburg’s a small town. We lived very close to each other. We’ve been friends since we were teenagers. But, of course, yeah, we recorded albums around the same time [at] the same studio, so it made sense for it to kind of be lumped together. But we never thought about it. And it was only when we started touring — I think it was ’96 or ’97 — I started hearing people go, like, ‘Yeah, that Gothenburg sound is cool, man.’ And I was, like, ‘What do you mean? What is that?’ ‘Yeah. You know, you guys together.’ ‘Well, we’re just tiny bands from our small city. That’s nothing.’ But, of course, I get it now. But for a while it was kind of strange. We tried so hard, all of us, all the bands tried to be unique and original and different from each other and from everything else. So all of a sudden, people said, like, ‘Yeah, this is just a sound.’ We kind of [took it as] a little bit of an insult at first.”
Stanne previously talked about the experience of being lumped in with other Gothenburg bands less than two yeas ago in an interview with U.K.’s Metal Hammer magazine. He said at the time: “When people started calling it ‘the Gothenburg sound’, I noticed it on tour in 1995. All of a sudden I see a flyer in the venue that says ‘true Gothenburg-style metal’. I had no idea what was going on.
He continued: “At the time, there was ‘The Gallery’ [by DARK TRANQUILLITY], ‘Slaughter Of The Soul’ by AT THE GATES and ‘The Jester Race’ by IN FLAMES. They came out in the same year and were recorded in the same studio. But, at the time, I thought it was an insult. Everything that we set out to do was to be original and new and interesting. We really tried to be different from each other and we were successful in that.”
DARK TRANQUILLITY’s latest album “Endtime Signals”, came out in August 2024 via Century Media Records. Notably, “Endtime Signals” not only marked DARK TRANQUILLITY’s thirteenth studio album, but also the band’s tenth album collaboration with Century Media Records. It built on the success of previous releases such as “Atoma” (2016),which climbed up to No. 2 in the Swedish album charts, and “Moment” (2020),which earned the band a Swedish Grammis award.
“Endtime Signals” showcased DARK TRANQUILLITY’s reinvigorated lineup, consisting of latest additions Joakim Strandberg Nilsson (drums) and Christian Jansson (bass) alongside Mikael Stanne (vocals),Martin Brändström (keyboards),Johan Reinholdz (guitars). It featured an eye-catching cover by founding DARK TRANQUILLITY guitarist Niklas Sundin and a “lived-in” production by Brändström (Rogue Music) and engineering by Alexander Backlund (Fascination Street Studios),as well as a mix and master by Jens Bogren (KREATOR, AT THE GATES).
Photo credit: Linda Florin (courtesy of Nuclear Blast)