When it comes to melodic death metal, Dark Tranquillity stand not only as godfathers, but also one of the most consistent acts around. While in more recent years they’ve had some big line-up changes, this statement has stayed just as true. With members who depart (yet still stick around in some fashion), there’s just something magnetic about the long-time Swedish metal champs, and their newest album, Endtime Signals, continues to showcase them as one of the most brilliant bands in the genre. We caught up with keyboardist Martin Brändström to discuss the details about the new album, discuss his entry point to the band with Haven (and his synth scene background), the role of synths in DT, and even his concerns for the world.
Dead Rhetoric: I’m likely reading into this, but to clarify, Endtime Signals is not meant as a final album, given its title is it?
Martin Brändström: No, it’s not the final album, it’s more of a comment about where we are right now in society. It’s not a prophecy either. When we started writing the album, we were talking about what kind of album we wanted to make. We are living in very different times now than four years ago. We have been through so much. We suffered through a pandemic and the political landscape, doesn’t matter if you are right or left, we have never been further apart than we are right now.
I think democracy is weaker and that’s something that is kind of scary. The title is more of a comment or warning about needing to think carefully about our next step as humans and what we are going to do in the next ten years and to see where we end up. It’s definitely not the last album.
Dead Rhetoric: With Anders [Jivarp] having left after Moment. It’s you and Mikael left as the long-standing members. What gives you the drive to keep going?
Brändström: I think that we are thinking about our place in the metal scene when things like this happen. It was also the same in 2016 when Martin [Henriksson] left the band and then Niklas [Sundin] left shortly after. There was that same sort of self-evaluation. Did we want to continue, and how do we do it? I think that we still have the urge to express ourselves and explore this territory of music, even if a member might be feeling that their part of the journey is done. I think Dark Tranquilllity still has a place in music. So there’s a lot of self-evaluation that is asking about how we continue. From the old guard, there’s not much left. But Johan [Reinholtz] was touring on Atoma, so he has been with the band for 6-7 years now. While writing Moment, Johan had a part in writing it and in where he comes from, he really understands the band. He really understands what Dark Tranquillity should be.
Also, all the members that have left, they didn’t leave our circle. We are still in touch and working with them. Martin Henriksson is still our manager, Niklas is still making our visual stuff. So we are talking with old members constantly. I met with Anders just the other week. So it feels like we are different people on the album and on stage, I think we are looking and searching for is the same, and that’s not defined by me, and Mikael, and Johan, but by everyone in the past and present as a member of the band.
Dead Rhetoric: So do you view the new members over the course of the last two albums to be a spark to keep going and push forward?
Brändström: We don’t have a choice – we are going to work with new musicians regardless so I think that’s the right way to approach it. To look for that spark. Does this person have the right energy, do they come with a different toolset in their musical abilities? Of course, you experience sadness with a change in the relationship with the band, but once you are over that you look forward and you see what the new members have to offer. Both of them are really great musicians and that’s obvious from the start. But what I think a new person also brings is a sense of hunger and some new blood into the machinery. We have to introduce them into what we are doing, so while we are explaining that process of what we are doing with the music, it gives us a chance to put into words what we are really searching for. So it reaffirms ourselves as well as guiding a new person to what Dark Tranquillity really should be.
So the right way to approach it is to look for that spark and embrace the inspiration that person leads to. I think that’s what we did this time. Christian [Jansson], our bassist, we have known since he’s in the same town and in the same circles since forever. Joakim [Strandberg] is an old friend Johan and he’s a very technical drummer so that opened up different composition avenues to pursue. So we decided to make this a varied album to explore different territories.
Dead Rhetoric: I know bands write for themselves first and foremost, but do you feel there’s a delicate balance about continuing to move forward with a band that has been around as long as Dark Tranquillity without alienating long-time fans?
Brändström: I think so, and maybe we aren’t necessarily thinking about the people who are going to be ending up listening to it, but I think we need to be true to our past and true to what we want to explore. I think more this time than any other album, we sat down and talked about what we wanted to make before we started. We talked a lot about politics, the times we are living in and the struggles we face. You’ve talked to Mikael [Stanne] and met him, so you know he’s an optimistic person. But even he has been kind of worried about where we find ourselves. I think that’s what he kind of approached in writing it. It was kind of therapeutic for him to write this album, and to deal with the emotions he was feeling himself.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you feel makes Endtime Signals stand out as a new Dark Tranquillity release?
Brändström: With Endtime Signals, what we wanted to do was to create a new avenue, but we also wanted to look back at the past and explore some of those energies we hadn’t approached since like, Character – some of the faster songs. We wanted to try that again and see what it would look like in this setting. We knew it would be an album that would be kind of serious, and it’s a bit darker. For the vibe, if I were to compare it to any of our older albums, I would compare it to We Are the Void, as a bit of a darker album. But still, it’s a varied album and we have everything from ballads to the more introspective and faster songs. So it’s varied while rediscovering our past and moving forward. There’s a lot of directions at the same time [laughs].
Dead Rhetoric: As you were saying, Niklas [Sundin] has continued to have a hand in the visual aspects of the band even since leaving. What can you say about his vision for the cover for Endtime Signals?
Brändström: The visuals, like we did with the music, we talked about our surroundings at the time and what we wanted to create with it. We always share the music with Niklas and he’s heard the songs even from the demo phase. He knows the material really well when he starts to make the cover. We talked about the bleak outlook on our situation right now and how it should be translated into both the musical and visual aspects. He gave us a couple of different pieces of art for us to digest. One of the pictures had these two people who were in despair, in terms of what Mikael and I saw. We were both drawn to those two people so we asked Niklas to tell us more about what those two people were experiencing. What was their situation? He went back and thought about it and came back with this dire situation with two people in need – then there is thunder and there is fire and it’s kind of a huge disaster. We felt that really encapsulated what we wanted to portray with the album. This is how serious the situation is that we are in right now.
Once we saw the cover, with these two people in need, we asked Niklas to show us more – where are these people from, what is their situation? So he started to imagine different scenarios while listening to the music. So in the booklet as well as the video for “The Last Imagination,” he did a lot of different situations. It’s kind of a symbolic, post-apocalyptic universe but more with symbolism than realism. But embodying that feeling that if we stray too far, we have to relearn everything. So these are people in the future who have to relearn how to be a civilization. They are symbolically electing a leader, in another picture they meet a group of strangers and wondering if they are enemies or a resource. There’s the symbolism of what we have to relearn to become a civilization. That’s what the rocket is symbolizing, to strive forward and create things again. So it’s a play on these thoughts and emotions of how it would be to relearn everything.
I think it turned out really well. Once we had this direction figured out, then Niklas just goes and what he does is spot on. We are really fortunate to be able to work with him. It’s a big part of the music as well because what you see is matching what you hear. It’s a very strong experience.
Dead Rhetoric: You started with Haven. What do you remember about joining the band then and that particular release?
Brändström: I was friends with the band for a long time before I joined the band, so I could kind of see their progress and success with The Gallery and The Mind’s I, but just as a friend. I was in a different scene – the synth scene then. They had decided early, even on The Gallery, that they wanted to have keyboards incorporated into the music and they asked me if I wanted to join. But when I listened to The Gallery I couldn’t see what I could do with the band. They asked me again, but it wasn’t until they recorded and released Projector and they showed that to me and asked me once more. But with that album, I could finally find a spot. Projector was kind of a reboot of the ambitions of the band. It was so different from their previous albums. So in a way, we had an open campus to figure out what to do after Projector.
It was exciting to me to try to explore a new universe and find a place in it for me. We decided not to go backwards, and explore further than what we had done with Haven. So it’s a special album for me because it was the first one. I was really young then, and it’s kind of like when someone is really young and writes a poem – when you go back and read it, you might want to change things about it [laughs], and that’s what I do when I think about Haven. I’m really proud of it, and it is what it is. It was an exciting time to go out and pursue a career in music with my friends.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned you were in the synth scene at the time. I don’t want to say you were doing it as a hobby, but you were doing it on the side of something else. With Dark Tranquillity, it was your time to jump into music more professionally?
Brändström: For sure. It was a hobby, but it was really serious because I wanted it to not be a hobby, but I didn’t make any money so it was a hobby [laughs]. But you are young and you don’t need as many resources. You can get by with some day work or whatever. But my influences and my surroundings were in the synth scene. But in Gothenburg, those two scenes were living close to each other. There was only one small venue where bands could perform and it was the same ones that the metal bands could play in. It was natural that those two scenes met there. But yeah, the first time I made it professionally was with Dark Tranquillity. Even though I still needed a day job there for quite a while since it was so early in our career.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you feel keyboards add to the band in the sense of atmosphere and sound?
Brändström: I think there are a lot of different ways to be a keyboardist. I see a lot of keyboardists who are very technically proficient and they are really skilled at playing the keyboards almost like a solo guitarist. It’s the same role if you are doing synth leads in a metal band, its almost like a guitar solo. That wasn’t my background.
My background was more about creating atmosphere and maybe hooks. To find the missing pieces of a song. I think all of our songs need to be metal first. I want to give a new dimension to it and give it a twist. If something is missing, I can put more aggression into it, I can put more atmosphere in. Maybe there’s a point in the song that is needed to let it breathe between two points – I can give that more room. That’s how keyboards have developed with Dark Tranquillity. There was always some sort of melancholy in the band, and I think that’s what drew me to it, because that’s what I am drawn to is this melancholy. That’s why we fit together so well, so I think I brought more of that into the songs with the keyboards.
Dead Rhetoric: Some metal subgenres have come and gone, but why do you feel that melodic death metal is still thriving in the scene today in 2024, decades after it began?
Brändström: It’s hard to explain, because all of these bands that started in the beginning have taken different routes. Us and In Flames were really comparable at one point, but I don’t think we are anymore. At the Gates is something else. Maybe we share the same DNA, but we started to explore from our perspective. Maybe Dark Tranquillity stayed closer to the root DNA while still trying to discover emotions instead of genres. I don’t’ know how it has survived this long. I saw some statistics on the average listener for us, and I was surprised at how young they are. We have a lot of listeners who may have listened to us for only the last two or three albums. That was surprising to me. I’m really grateful. It’s great to have old fans who stick around, but also find new ones.
Dead Rhetoric: My own history with the band started back just before Projector came out. I remember scratching my head about why everyone was so upset about it when I loved it so much.
Brändström: I remember that! When Projector was released, I was already in the band, I just wasn’t on the recording. When we looked at the reviews, we were like, “Oh shit, people don’t like this!” What can you do? I think in hindsight, its better in our catalog. But coming from The Gallery and The Mind’s I, I can get that it was confusing.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned before about the content of Endtime Signals, so what are some of your fears about the state of the world, given what made its way to the album?
Brändström: I am concerned about the dismantling of democracy. That’s happening everywhere. Also that the extreme points of view are becoming more normal. There’s less common ground. We have created these social tools that make us so easy to manipulate and for people to influence us to be scared of each other. It’s a big concern. We need to start trusting each other again. I don’t know how but we need to.
In Europe, we have a war in the Ukraine right at our doorstep. It’s also a war that is really hard to see the motivation for it, other than territorial advantage. That’s scary because it’s been framed differently. There’s a lot of reasons for concern at this point. We have to fire up Mikael’s optimism to look forward some how [laughs] to take the right steps in the next ten years. I think it will take a few years to get back to something closer to normal. But we need to start trusting each other – it’s such a big challenge.
Dead Rhetoric: You have a North American tour planned for just after the album release. What else do you plan to do to finish off 2024?
Brändström: We are doing the tour in America with Amorphis and then we come home to Europe with a tour with Moonspell, Wolfheart, and Hiraes. So the last show of the year will be November 13. We are going to play a lot of new songs. But like we did with the new album, looking to the future while rediscovering our past, thats what we are trying to do now. We are rehearsing songs that we have never played [live] before. We want to show the audience a varied set, and a song that you thought you’d never hear, you might. We are trying to change things up. If you have seen a few shows, this one will be different for you. We really are pumped up to release the album and get out there, and get over to America again!
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