Attention All drummers,

Ross has decided to pursue a new career and wishes to leave the band as soon as we have a replacement. So, we need a new drummer as soon as possible. We are preferably looking at someone between 18-25 based in the South Wales area and must be 1,000,000% commited with their own gear and transport. However if you are interested and think you can do the job but live elsewhere then get in touch.

Anyone interested please send your details and previous experience to:

anterior@hotmail.co.uk

Cheers and Beers

AnterioR

It’ll be a tough job replacing Ross but we wish the boys and Ross good luck with their futures!

First to play are Scotland’s ALESTORM. If you are actually able to imagine pirate-metal then you’re probably not far off the mark. A shrewd choice of genre perhaps when Depp and Bloom have helped push the pirate agenda. Songs about rum, treasure maps and wenches get the swelling masses jigging for joy. Any fears that a metal sub genre founded on such a specific angle might not have a long shelf-life don’t matter when you’re in the moment and yearn to wear an eye-patch.

Next up are a band that don’t meddle in costumes and cosmetics. NORTHER, one of Finland’s finest, may well be playing to new ears tonight, despite being a mainstay of Finnish metal. Playing mostly new material, long-term fan opinions are probably split, although this doesn’t stop them winning over the fresh meat.

The tension mounts as everyone waits for TURISAS to march onto stage. It’s admirable that they made it here at all considering the mysterious recent disappearance of their accordionist. In his place stands a blonde, 17 year old, Finnish beauty. It won’t be surprising if the line-up adopts her as a full time warrior. Before the first note hits you, the smell of manky fur does as each member is dressed head to toe in armour, fur and blood. The epic nature of the music, having been proclaimed as “Battle Metal”, is rousing. Fists are pumped furiously as though tonight was the eve of a medieval war! Vocalist, Mathias “Warlord” Nygård, not only acknowledges Cardiff as Welsh, but samples the local beer on-stage, announcing it as superior to a certain Belgian beverage. Perhaps the weirdest thing, more so than the “hum-pa” duet performed on violin and accordion is the fight that breaks out at the back during Turisas’s ingenious cover of Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’.

Artist: As I Lay Dying
Title: An Ocean Between Us
Type: Album
Label: Metal Blade

This album holds back nothing as you’re sent steam rolling into opening song and first single from this album ‘Nothing Left’. The San Diego quintet are really showing their mettle and brains with this song there’s more complexity and definitely more variation compared to earlier work they’ve done and it genuinely drags you in and sets you up for a ride on the As I Lay Dying roller-coaster.

Title track ‘ An Ocean Between Us’ is solid old fashioned As I Lay Dying and is worthy of a damn brutal pit and has a killer chorus with a plain cool melodious vocal line running through it that is guaranteed to be a sing-a-long hit.

Other songs worthy of a mention include ‘Comfort Betrays’ for its killer bit of solo riffage which is a blessing on any track also worthy of its heavy as hell bass drum driven rhythm which will cause miscarriages and brain damage at the correct volume. The other surprise with this LP was the inclusion of a rather delicate finger tapping piece known as ‘ Departed’ which has a searing crescendo a la EVH.

This leads you into the frantic and downright nasty ‘Wrath Upon Ourselves’ which is a sure-fire winner with anybody who loves to get their head down and get f**king low and has enough licks courtesy of guitarists Phil Sgrosso and Nick Hipa to keep the less ‘core’ of you occupied.

Album closer ‘ This Is Who We Are’ is another hook laden sing-a-long tune with a sweet as honey lead guitar line running through every chorus which fades to an elegant piano piece to calm you down and let you catch your breath.
So in summary this is a scorching, seething album filled with aggression, ambience, yet with delicate touches to round off the sound and enough shred to keep the majority of naysayers and doubters well and truly silent. Their best album to date. No argument.

LFTH Rating: 9/10

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2nd March - Day 4 

9.00am 

We finally arrive at Hamburg, me and Frank are up and about after a crazy night of beer and shenanigans. Feeling a little rough but we powered on in search of some food. We end up in Hamburg train station, what a fucking amazing place!!!! Burger King, Hagen Das shop and prostitutes everywhere!! So after getting some grub into us and taking a monster shit (my guts are still fucked up) we headed back to the venue to check out the place.
3.00pm 

Venue is pretty good although the catering was a load of bollocks, fuck all food and not much beer. Just watching the Himsa guy’s sound checking now, pretty good sound but there’s this weird noise coming from the guitar amps, they say it’s due to the magnetic field at the train station, nothing we can do about it but it sounds pretty shit. Anyway I’m off to get some of the limited beer into me and get my shit ready for sound check! Later fuckers
11.00pm 

Just come off stage, pretty fucking good gig we tried a different set tonight, done ‘Fucking Hostile’ to see the reaction and the crowd went fucking mental. A good few Anterior shirts in the crowd tonight was awesome to see the support so cheers to you guy’s for coming out. Air solo’s everywhere, a crazy windmilling motherfucker in a wheelchair, and we all pissed off the roof at Too Pure To Die. All in all a good night, going back to the bus now to get fucked as we have a huge drive to Oslo in a few hours me and frank been whacking some german beer into us and it’s gonna be a crazy night, I can smell it. Snarf (Nick) is going to join us too, so we pretty much gonna kick his ass and tape him to the roof. Rock on!!!!

Leon Kemp
3rd March Day 5

3:00 am

So, we have had a great session on the jaegermeister, vodka, scotch and beer only a few hours after the show and I walk outside to join Chunk and Snarf our new brother from A Life Once Lost where the buses are parked waiting to board the ferry to get our assess to Norway. It’s got to be at least like -1 degrees because everyone who is outside for a smoke is fuckin blue!  After a healthy wait we finally board the ferry and once in the hold, all remaining bands who are awake pile on board to check out the scenery.  Firstly me and Dai get up onto the deck and check out the waves, awesome sight but at like 3:30 in the morning and well into the minus temperatures we can only last a few seconds outside.  We then take a walk down the stairs towards the main deck and meet up with all of the other guys. Most of the Himsa and Too Pure To Die guys are awake and we all embark on an expedition of the ferry.  Dai, legend that he is finds the shop and……Oh yes! It’s open and they sell beer, SCORE! We are still drunk while sifting through all the different liquors and realise that a case of 24 cans of Heineken is like £8.00 so we get two and a bottle of scotch for next to nothing, amazing!  We start throwing the beer around the others and before you know it, there’s whats left of four bands drunk on a ferry and the tannoy starts shouting something in German then translated it means get your Fuckin assess back on your buses NOW!!! Everyone starts running down the stairs to get to the buses, beer and scotch in hand, we finally make it and off we go.  I know we had to take a second ferry shortly after to finally break into Norway but I unfortunately didn’t make it conscious as I had been awake for so long and so drunk that my body gave up and I had to throw myself into my bunk.

2:00 pm

I arise in a complete haze. Crawl out of my bunk and have my first glimpse of Norway, its freezing cold but looks stunning. We stop at a petrol station for a piss stop and some refreshments, hot dogs for breakfast, lovely jubbly! Kempy, fiend that he is, found a funnel and tube so the beer bong was born. We also bought two spray bottles and half filled one with scotch, start spraying each other back on the bus and Chunk says, “snort some scotch” and starts laughing.  I get the bottle and forget that its adjustable nozzle is on death spray and just one direct line of it shoots up my nose and is the most awakening thing I have ever experienced in my life! Fuck me running! Afterwards I start feeling quite drunk due to the nasal ingestion of 40% scotch and take in the drive. On the way I see a healthy amount of lakes and mountains, all still littered with snow and frozen over solid. The roads seem very controlled and the driving is the most peaceful we have endured so far.  After the scotch wears off I actually start to feel sober and take in more of the scenery on the way to the venue.

4:30 pm

We arrive at the venue and feel a bump which is the trailer half mounting a curb. Me and Chunk lay dormant in the bus and Kempy starts shouting “Boys everyone off, we need to bounce the trailer onto the curb” or at least I think that’s what he was shouting, Everyone is running around shouting and Chunk turns and says “What the fuck, there’s a death metaller on the wing?!” we both almost prolapsed due to the stupid mood and burst into tears.

Rich the glorious driver for the other bus then moves forward so our trailer just falls into place in the parking space and is no longer blocking the tram lines of the main street in Oslo!

5:00 pm

We get sorted and start to load the gear in and at once we all notice that we have only seen a few guys pass, but swarms of gorgeous women passing by as we are trying to lift all of our heavy shit out of the trailer which, as you can imagine did not go to plan! After load in we tuck into the catering and chill out watching the Himsa guy’s sound check.  Everything in Norway starts very late and we go onstage at 9:00 pm.

7:30 pm

After the checks we store all of the gear and make sure that the backline is ready to go for later on as tonight there is no meal but a buy out instead.  We get some Swedish dongs and go in hunt of the nearest Burger King. Success! We chow down on a nice XXL meal and get back to the venue to warm up before the show.

9:00 pm

We hit the stage and there are around 20 people in the venue. Shit turnout but the guys from A Life Once Lost grab a few beers and show us some love down the front of the stage, legendry guys we love you all! We finish the set to their four man applause and then aimed to get as drunk as the world has ever seen.  The night gets better the more the bands drink, all of the band played an amazing show to a very intimate crowd and Snake (ALOL) feels the wrath of the beer bong, well chugged brother! After Himsa wrap up a crushing set everyone showers in the beautiful hotel rooms provided and loads out in a very timely fashion.

12:00 am

All bands are done loading and we all look at the show plans and realise that the bus call isn’t until 5:00 am! Holy FUCK! All of the bands sort out their money and joined by the guys from mighty industrialists Mortiis we head for the bar. The very first bar we find, we hit in large numbers.  The party raged on until they physically removed all of us.

3:00 am

So, many drinks later we are all outside the buses waiting for another hour or so to wake up the drivers to leave for our badass drive to Sweden. The crazy shit starts here…..firstly Bob (ALOL) opens the trailer to check something and Joe’s (Himsa) stage clothes fall off the hanger in the trailer including his boxers, Kempy who is already fucked by this point takes it upon himself to wrap Joe’s boxers around his beer and take a swig through sweaty cold drummer shorts! Everyone is balling with laughter and cheering and John (Himsa) is nearly puking at the sight of it.  After this everyone keeps drinking and the beer bong once again surfaces from our bus and this time poor Kyle (TPTD) had it! At one point we were all sat on our bus which is under half the size of theirs and Derek (Himsa) decides to crowd surf all six foot something of his bad self through the aisle containing all of us, Snarf, Kyle and possibly more. Awesome!

After many more shenanigans myself and Chunk, both drunk as cunts walk to the hotels to wake the drivers and start the 6 hour journey to Stockholm.  On the short walk to the hotel Chunk spots a cherry picker looking machine and finds the switch to turn it on, within seconds I am on the roof of this 15 plus foot machine and Chunk has it going, complete insanity! We finally get to the hotel drunk and get in the lift and keep stopping it in a drunken mess, pissing ourselves laughing.  Chunk gets the drivers awake and we head back to the bus while the drivers sort themselves out.  We arrive back at the bus and meet three random guys from Bridgend which was outstanding but very strange at 4:30 in the morning in Oslo, Norway!

5:00 am

We get on the bus and head for Stockholm, everyone is so drunk we only last an hour or so before we are all unconscious in our bunks but what a fucking night, one of the best parties anyone could ask for…..beer, random welsh guys, hot women, bus surfing, pants beer and drunken machinery operating. Fan-fucking-tastic! Bring on Sweden mother fucker!

James ‘Frank The Tank’ Britton

SILURIA are one of the few current UK bands that are embracing the rising interest in the combination of folk music and metal. Hailing from Wales, there is no shortage of musical history or cultural heritage to draw from. Could Siluria be the UK’s answer to the current scene making waves in Finland and Scandinavia? We spoke with ‘Taran’, the man behind Siluria, to discover more.

Hi. Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions. First off, could you explain where the word ‘Siluria’ comes from?

TARAN: This is a question that gets asked quite a lot…Siluria was the name given in iron age times by Roman writers to a tribal region in South Wales, the territory of the ‘Silures’, a particularly fierce ancient British tribe,who according to legend disposed of an entire legion of Roman soldiers,their remains were never found!

So Welsh history and Celtic culture is at the heart of the band. In what way does the music reflect this?

TARAN: Although the music we make doesn’t always contain an obvious Celtic influence or tune, you can guarantee that there is a Celtic undercurrent in there somewhere, whether it be in the lyrics or in the general feel of the song. There will always be a Celtic feel in there because after all we are a band made up of defiant Celts!

Have you considered using any traditional folk instruments?

TARAN: We already use some folk inspired instruments in the 12 string acoustic and the tin whistle, but as far as traditional welsh instruments then, yeah, in the future it would be great to use things like the pibgorn and the crwth. Many folk metal bands are already using traditional instruments such as the fiddle and bagpipes etc….it would be really nice to use something a bit different to the norm. We have several acoustic based tunes written which could be enhanced by using the aforementioned instruments, we are always experimenting so anything could happen!

How is the folk metal scene in the UK right now? How do you fit in?

TARAN: There are currently quite a lot of folk inspired metal bands in the UK,the scene is quite healthy with a lot of bands taking their music to a live audience. For me it all started with Skyclad and the vision of Martin Walkyier and continues with bands like Cruachan, Waylander, Forefather and the like…As far as bands in Wales go, there ain’t that many… there’s just Siluria, Annwn and a few one man projects. We are also behind the ‘FOLK METAL UK’ page on myspace where we are trying to create a community amongst the bands and fans alike, a place where anybody who is into this kind of music can exchange information about artists/shows/releases etc. A one day mini festival is planned for later this year, keep tabs on the page for news, there will be an announcement pretty soon.

Do your lyrics reflect some of the Celtic and folk background? Could you briefly explain some of your songs?

sleeping giant

TARAN: Our lyrics can be about very many things…whether it be about Welsh mythology or about pagan themed subjects. For instance, one of our earliest songs ‘Sleeping giant’ is written about a mountain in the upper Swansea valley, when viewed from the valley floor it resembles a huge stone-clad sleeping human form. Legend has it that one day this sleeping giant will arise to save and protect the people of this magnificent country!

‘As homelands burn ‘ is a warning to all of how important it is to maintain our own heritage and culture, to fight for our language,our history and our people in a time when we are more and more in danger of losing our identity to a Britain quickly becoming a cosmopolitan state of Europe… We feel it is important to remember who we are and where we come from and what better way is there to get the message across than in the form of an epic heartfelt slab of passionate metal?

Do you think that Welsh mythology is given enough respect or interest here or anywhere?

TARAN: No, not really.There are very few schools in Wales teaching kids about their own history, stupid really as there is an enormous wealth of amazing literature to draw from. Not just the ancient folk tales that have been handed down through generations orally,but also of more recent heroes…people like Caio Evans, Dic Penderyn and the like. The Mabinogion features in the writings of Siluria, an ancient book of welsh folk tales, one of our national treasures and a literary masterpiece written by the hands of forgotten bards.

Do you think that as a Celtic nation, Wales shares a lot of culture with Scandanavia and Finland, places currently producing lots of folk metal?

TARAN: Some of the aspects of our cultures are similar, the Finns for instance are fiercely proud of their history and heritage as are a lot of the Scandinavian countries, they too have immensely rich histories…and so they should be. Our attitudes are quite similar too, probably comes from constantly being considered the underdog.

Do you have any songs sung in Welsh?

Yeah, a few of our tracks have Welsh lyrics, although we haven’t played them live yet, no doubt they will appear in the very near future as our live set gets a bit longer. It was always an idea we had from the very beginnings of Siluria that we would use Welsh lyrics, I speak fluent welsh and quite often find myself composing lyrics in my mother tongue quite naturally. I don’t know what audiences will make of it though…but then, other bands are quite prepared to use their native languages in their music…Tyr for example are from the Pharo isles and use Pharoese, so there’s no reason why Welsh should be any different.

Apart from the mini-festival, what other plans do you have for the rest of 2008?

TARAN: Well, after the huge success of our recent show with Battlelore the future looks quite promising. We have a couple of local gigs booked as well of the possibility of supporting some major acts later on this year, so it looks like its gonna be a busy 2008 for us. We would really love to play the unsigned stage at Bloodstock this year, but for a band like us its difficult to get the right backing, it is however very encouraging to see that people have been asking for us on the BOA forum…who knows…it might happen and if it did you can be sure we will give 110% as usual on the stage!
As for the immediate future,we will soon be entering the studio to record a few tracks for our first EP, ’sleeping giant ‘ will be on there and maybe 2 or 3 others still to be decided. But things could change, we are writing at quite a pace now and new songs are coming along thick and fast.

Diolch yn fawr i chi am siarad â ni!

TARAN: Dim problem, diolch.

29th Feb - Day 2

11.00 pm - Anterior are back stage at Roxy and we’ve drank just about all the beers in the fridge, the other bands are looking at us as if to say “what the fuck why didn’t you leave some for us?” but we’re too drunk to care, the night proceeds with us shouting at the bar man to bring us more drink which he kindly does but then we have a cheek to pull a face when he takes one! TAKE WHAT YOU CAN, GIVE NOTHING BACK!!! So we continue to drink all beer in site and start chanting lines from “The 300” its kind of became our call, “SPARTANS…WHAT IS YOUR PROFFESION!! AAAAUUUUUGGGH!! AAAAUUUUUGGGH!! AAAAUUUUUGGGH!!

01.00am

We’re on the bus and we’re all fucked and we’re cutting up beer cans to make cups to put shooters into, we’re all so fucked I can’t remember much except watching some family guy and cutting up some brie for everyone to try, tasted amazing at the time but probably tastes like puke when your sober.

03.00 am

Total blank…

1st march - Day 3

11.00 am

Woke up with heartburn and a sore head, obviously something that I ate the night before….Kempy has had the runs since India (they were drinking out of date beer because some tit from the beer store saw us coming and ripped us off!) anyway, when you gotta go then you gotta go and since we were no where near anywhere we could stop he ended up having to shit in a strongbow box!! Wouldn’t be me I’ll tell you that! Also just been notified that I was oblivious to the fact that we drove through a lighting storm while I was sound asleep, Glyn was charging on like a marine but at one point the wind pulled us so much that he felt as though we were going to drive off the side of the mountain, I think we even stopped more than once to check that the trailer was still attatched!!

21.00 pm

We’ve just come off stage, only managed to fit in four songs as the local support took about 35 minutes and they drank all the beer while we were onstage, do they think they are fucking Iron Maiden or something? All the other bands are such a cool fucking bunch of guys, you know what its like the first time you meet new people, especially when you meet 15 new people all at the same time, but its just really cool that every one of them is cool as fuck and up for a laugh, not all of them are drinkers like us, some are more into their weed, but each to their own I suppose, we’re off to find another fridge to empty and also buy some vodka because there is a disco here that is on till 5 am, the Germans don’t do things by halves do they! We’ll all be too fucked to write any more for today so stay tuned and we’ll bring more updates from Anterior land tomorrow!! Rock on brothers (and sisters) AAAAAAAUUUUGH!!! AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!!! AAAAAAAAAUUUUGH!!!

Steve Nixon

Blistering their way into set opener ‘Silent Divide’ ANTERIOR are doing their upmost
to upstage the bigger bands on this bill and are making light work of it. They shred
their way through the set playing tracks from their debut album ‘This Age Of Silence’
with guitar wizardry being thrown back and for between both guitarists and a fearsome
group of windmillers going nuts at every opportunity.

They have the crowd well and truly salivating when the time comes for NYHC band
TOO PURE TO DIE to bring the noise. They throwdown some beefy, stomping
songs from the same school as bands like Bury Your Dead and The Acacia Strain and with
a very gymnastic and bonecrushing set played out it’s a shame the crowds response wasn’t
a little better.

Next up are prog/stoner/hardcore/southern metal kings A LIFE ONCE LOST with a barefoot Bob Meadows
up front looking like jesus in a tye-dye they lay it down heavy and relentless.
They drop tracks from newest album ‘Iron Gag’to great effect but still manage to bulldoze
the crowd with classics like ‘Vulture’ and ‘Hunter’raising the gathered into a ruckus ready
for the almighty Himsa.

They’ve been around this neck of the woods before and it shows as they storm their way through
everything from classics to new numbers from ‘Summoning Thunder’.They’ve got it all going on tonight
from wardrobe malfunctions to guitar solo beer swilling and even a bass player jumping onto the sofa
sidetsage to catch his breath before tearing back to centre stage to join the fray. With songs
like ‘Big Timber’ dragging everyone into the pit and singer John switching roles with photographers
it’s a laugh a minute.They try to finish tonight on newest album title track Summoning Thunder but the
crowd wants more so they return to the stage and finally disembowel everyone with

From humble beginnings in 1996, Nightwish rapidly rose to prominence and were instrumental in driving the burgeoning popularity of symphonic and gothic metal. Their debut album ‘Angels Fall First’ was an instant success, and was soon followed by ‘Oceanborn’ in 1999 and ‘Wishmaster’ in 2000, which went straight to the top of the Finnish album charts. An EP ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’ – issued in 2001 – bridged the gap to the next album ‘Century Child’, which appeared in 2002 and went gold in Finland within two hours of its release. Extensive touring followed – including an appearance at Bloodstock Indoor in 2003 – as the band continued to build their fanbase and rack up impressive sales.

Their increasing international profile led to tensions within the ranks and the recording of 2004’s landmark ‘Once’ album was mentally and physically draining. It was, however, a huge success, selling a million copies, and the ensuing world tour – including their debut trek around the USA - continued right through til the end of 2005. After the final show, singer Tarja Turunen was fired from the band and many feared that the Nightwish fairytale had come to an abrupt end. The rest of the band had other ideas and auditions to find a suitable replacement were carried out in late 2006. Finally, in May 2007, Swedish vocalist Anette Olzon was announced as the new singer for Nightwish, and the band released their latest album ‘Dark Passion Play’ in September.

Far from being the end of the line, the band’s troubled times have given them a new lease of life. ‘Dark Passion Play’ is a worldwide hit and the positive live reviews have already begun to pour in. Female-fronted symphonic metal may now be an entire genre in itself, but nothing beats the original.

NIGHTWISH – Power And Passion – BLOODSTOCK OPEN AIR 2008.

Photograph: © Owain Richards

It’s the day of the first show on the UK DARK TRANQUILLITY tour and we’re sat in the subterranean venue of the Cardiff Barfly while hundreds, if not thousands, of red jerseyed rugby fans, inebriated, cheer on their team above ground. In a little green room, we take time out to chat to Mikael Stanne while sound checking takes place next door.

Welcome back to the UK.

MIKAEL: Thank you

You played Bloodstock here in the UK and then the Eastpak Antidote tour. Was the response you got the reason why you decided to do this tour?

MIKAEL: It was yeah. Bloodstock was fantastic. We didn’t really know what to expect with the Eastpak tour but it turned out to be a great one so we figured that we wanted to do more here. So we were lucky enough to be able to set this tour up.

Were you surprised with the reaction you got from Bloodstock?

MIKAEL: Yes! Oh yes! It was fantastic. And we’d never played a festival in Britain before.

You’d toured here with Chimaira previous to this, was that less successful?

MIKAEL: Oh yeah. That was kinda tough because it wasn’t really a crossover audience. They were there either for them or for us so we didn’t really go over that well. That’s why we had low expectations going into Bloodstock, which turned out to be great.

With so much music under your belts, is it hard choosing what to play each night?

MIKAEL: It is really tough obviously. I mean, we would love to go back and do a lot more old stuff but sometimes it just doesn’t work so it’s just a combination of songs that we just really love and songs that we know people really want to hear live. We do a lot of new songs on this tour. It’s torture every time we put together a setlist.

How do the crowd respond to the new material?

MIKAEL: That’s always tricky. I know when I go to see a band, I usually want to hear more of the old stuff that got me into the band in the first place but actually people have been really positive about this new album. We did a tour in American before the album even came out and we played about five new songs and people responded really well to it so it’s worked out well. I haven’t heard any complaints and that’s rare!

With bands like Soilwork and In Flames getting more of a mainstream success internationally, how do you feel when sometimes you’re overlooked as a band despite being pioneers of such a scene? Does it ever bother you?

MIKAEL: No, they’re different. We all come from pretty much the same background but we’re different bands. It’s always been about making the music we want to and people will follow and get into it. We’re not in a rush to go around pleasing a certain type of people or crowd or anything like that. We take our time with writing and know that eventually people will get into it.

Your progression album to album isn’t as drastic as some of these bands perhaps?

MIKAEL: Yeah yeah. But they have to feel different to us. We have a different perspective going into each new one. That way, it still feels interesting and is still challenging to write new material.

Are you writing now for another album now?

MIKAEL: We’ve got a little bit but nothing really serious. We’re doing a few tours then we’re going to shut ourselves off from the rest of the world.

Do you draw inspiration from other bands or is it now all internal, seeing as you’ve worked on lots of albums over the years?

MIKAEL: I guess we did that when we started the band, but not anymore. We obviously take inspiration from bands but it could be any type of genre for instance. But we’re over that, we know the kind of music we want to write. No matter what influence we have, once we go down to the rehearsal room and start playing with stuff and trying things out, what eventually comes out of that is Dark Tranquillity material. It doesn’t really matter where the inspiration comes from, it all goes through our individual filters and what comes out is all ours.

It’s quite an organic process?

MIKAEL: It is. It’s very much alive until we kill it by recording it.

What bands inspired you?

MIKAEL: Oh, um, a lot of German power metal and thrash. Things like Kreator or Helloween, stuff like that. Sabbat from Britain were like the greatest band ever.

They played Bloodstock as well last year didn’t they? Did you get to see them?

MIKAEL: I know, I missed it! I’ve met them before but never seen them… never seen them! So it was like torture for me to miss that. They’re going to play a few festivals this summer too I think. They were important. But also the thrash scene, the slayer scene. But Kreator and Sabbat were like the main ones for me.

That’s interesting considering how different you sound to those bands.

MIKAEL: Yeah, but it is a form of inspiration you know? I wanted to sound as cool as Mille Petrozza and write as well as Martin Walkyier

I think you’ve done that! Anyway, that’s the end of the interview, thanks very much for your time!

MIKAEL: Thank you.