Darkane pour l'album "Layers Of Lies"

1. First off, could you please introduce your band to our readers? What are your main influences and how would you define your music?

We're Klas (myself) on guitars, Peter on drums, Jorgen on bass, Andreas on vocals and Christofer on guitars. We've been together since ‘99 with the same line-up.
Well, our main influences differ a lot within the band, but if a main influence should be mentioned I would say we're pretty much influenced by the Bay Areas thrash and melodic Death metal.
Our music could be described as thrash metal with a mixture if melodic death metal.


2. There was quite an evolution between Rusted Angel and Insanity… Do you feel it as much as we do? Do you think the main reason behind that evolution your singer’s replacement?

Yeah, there's a pretty huge gap between "rusted" and "Insanity". One of the reasons are of course the change of vocalist, another one is a change of style to a little bit more complicated stuff.
We wanted, or at least Peter and Christofer wanted to play more complicated and rhythmic stuff. The production of the album is also very different from rusted angel. It's very clean. Too clean for my taste.


3. You’ve got a new album out… How would you describe it? Within the team we’ve thought of it as a mix between Insanity’s diversity and Expanding Senses’ choruses… Would you agree?

Sure, that's a good remark. I think we incorporated all 3 previous albums in "Layers of Lies". The simplicity and rawness of "Rusted...", the technical and rhythmic stuff from "Insanity" and the melodic choruses and the heaviness from "Expanding..."


4. Layers Of Lies marks the return of a kind of « Symphonic » intro… Why not include one on Expanding?

Well, some of us didn't want an intro so decided to skip it on "Expanding..."

5. How did the writing process go?

The writing process foe "Layers… " was more of a group effort. It's actually the first time me, Peter and Christofer worked together with the songs. Not all of them but a little bit here and there.
Christofer has always worked with Peter in the song writing process, but it's my first time working with Peter a lot.
So the song are better analysed this time around I think. And we had the time to do it of course.


6. What’s the meaning behind the title “Layers Of Lies”?

The title song is actually a very Matrix-influenced song, like you don't know if all you see in world are for real. But this can easily be adapted to world we live in today. There are a lot of lies in the world today, just look at the politicians.


7. On Layers Of Lies, there are two songs, Klastrophobic Hibernation and Amnesia Of The Wildoerian Apocalypse which seem to refer to band members… Anything more to add to this? Any explanation on the general meaning of the songs of the album?

There's actually 3, hahaha.
"Maelstroem Crisis" actually refers to Christofer. His surname is Malmstroem. The thing with the names in the songs is just a funny thing we did, to mess around with peoples heads, hahaha.
The word hibernation means winter sleep, and half of my surname, Ide, means just that. We goofed around with the whole name as well: hibernation-mountain, which is a translation of my whole surname: Ideberg. Berg means mountain in Swedish.
The Widorean apocalypse... comes from Peter cunning ways of inventing his own wildorean language. It sounds like latin, but it isn't. Here, once again we mess alittle bit with peoples heads, hahaha.


8. Is there a tour planed to promote your new album?

Yes, we're working on a couple of touring options at this point. I don't want to mention it, but it's good tours. It concerns both Europe and the USA.


9. During Wacken 2003, Andrea left the stage during each « instrumental » parts of your songs… How did you feel about this?

That's ok for us. He does that once in a while plus that gives him time to drink some beer as well, isn't that good, haha.


10 . Can you tell us more about Non Human Level? Any news? What about Terror 2000?

Peter is actually putting down vocals now, so it's almost done I guess. It sound very cool. The Terror 2000 was finished last week actually and it will be released in september I guess. It's going to be a very funny album. The vocals are totally fucked up in places. It's a party album. It's very fast this time around.


11. What’s your view on today’s Swedish metal scene? What about the European metal scene?

I think the Swedish scene is good today. There are not many places to play but the scene is constantly growing. Metal is popular again, which is good.
I guess the European scene is good as well, but we've been away from it for a while so I can't really tell how it is.


12. Do you know/like French metal bands?

Yeah, I just love Scarve, plus I know them pretty good. They really cool guys. We would love to tour with them. It would be a perfect package. Their sound guy actually works for us once in while.


13. What are you listening to those days? It seems you’re quite often compared to Strapping Young Lad… Do you like that band? Have you listened to their last effort, Alien? Speaking of which, you have quite humorous song titles, what do you think about mixing humour and metal?

Yeah, we like SYL. Their new album is cool, but I like the previous album better.
I think there is way too little humour in metal these days, and always has. I think it's good to put a little bit of humour in the music if it fits. We wouldn't joke around too much with Darkane so that's why I have Terror 2000 where I can joke around as much as I want to. Not that much with the music, but with the lyrics.


14. Does playing with Darkane pay the bills? What do you do for a living apart from the band?

No, unfortunately not. I work as a producer/engineer at studio where I live, so I work with music so to say, which is great. Peter works as a drum and math teacher, Jorgen works as some kind of computer technician, Christofer as a janitor and Andreas as sound engineer as well.


15. What is the best/worst memory you have from your career?

The best memory is when we played in Japan the first time.
The worst would be when we were supposed to play a festival in Austria and everything went wrong. The van broke down in the Czech republic and we were forced to push the van back to Germany to get help. Luckily we only came 1000 meters in to the Czech Republic. They couldn't help us there because they didn't have stuff for American vans there, hahaha.
We had to rent a new van in Germany while our van was taken care of. When we came to the festival everything was delayed so we had to play in the middle of the night to 30 people. Those 30 people were very enthusiastic though, hahaha. So, going 1500 kilometers one way in a van, going through all that shit, yeah, that's easily the worst moment in Darkane's history. Oh yeah, the problems weren't over there. There were more problems on the way home as well, but I won't go into the details… hahaha.


16. If you could organize your own metal festival, what bands would be invited?

Metallica, Slayer, Forbidden and Darkane of course, hahaha. Plus a bunch of other bands. There's too many to mention…


17. Thanks for your time, last words are yours!

I just want to say hi to all the readers of Thrashocore and I want to tell the people that don't know about Darkane to check us out. Give the albums a couple of listenings. I promise you you'll like it.
Stay metal! Cheers!

Thanks a lot to Klas for his time and his will to forgive the loss of our first phone-interview, thanks man !