Rockezine.com interview with Darkane on May 10, 2001

with Christofer on May 10, 2001

With Darkane`s second album Insanity on the shelves and a tour about to commence, it is about time to give guitarplayer Christofer a chance to tell about the ons and offs of Darkane…
		So, many things happened between the release of Rusted Angel and the new album, Insanity. Can you describe in short what happened in this hectic period? Two years ago, right after the release of Rusted Angel we replaced the vocalist. With our new vocalist we recorded Insanity in a 5 or 6 week period, last summer. The greatest effort went in the dealing with record companies, to find a suitable one to license the CD. In the end, Nuclear Blast was the best deal for Europe, and in the States it was released by Century Media.
		The vocals from Insanity are completely different from those of Rusted Angel, which can be ascribed to Andreas, your new vocalist. His clean vocals are much more developed than his raw screams, something quite opposite of most bands. Well, we knew him from our hometown where he was a singer in a hardrock band in the early nineties. By the time we went on tour with Naglfar/Soilwork our former singer Lawrence couldn`t come with us, so we asked Andreas if he could `scream` for a change and replace Lawrence for the tour. His screaming sounded pretty cool, he joined us on the tour, and we decided to bring him in the band as a permanent member. Lawrence wasn`t the ideal choice for a bandmember anyway: he lived far away from the rest of us, and he didn`t want to focus on Darkane. Right now he`s working with his own band, actually. About Andreas, I know his vocals are different from what people are used to - actually, I`ve heard of people who can`t stand his voice. But it was with that with Lawrence too, you know. Andreas has to grow with the band, but we feel like his vocals belong with Darkane.
		When listening the album, I hear more and more Meshuggah and Devin Townsend in the music. Yeah! Quite right! Meshuggah is the best band in the world, and Felix from Meshuggah also did a little guest appearance on "Psychic Pain". I think it`s quite cool to have your idol play with you in one of your songs. About Devin Townsend, we`ve been listening a lot to Strapping Young Lad`s City album and when we were in the studio, our producer let us hear the mastertapes from that session. One of the tapes had just the vocals on it, and it was stunning - he`s a monster! Andreas was definitely very influenced by hearing this, and that`s why he sounds a bit like Devin in some way.
		Then with the rest of us, on Rusted Angel we still had no idea what we would sound like. We wrote Rusted Angel in five months and by the time when we entered the studio we still didn`t know we would turn out as a band with mixed vocals. That came up in the studio! After we recorded Rusted Angel we knew what Darkane sounded like so we tried to write more songs in this style, keeping the mixed vocals in mind. I guess we wrote faster songs, and in some points more technical ("Pile Of Hate"), but never too technical. We still want the listener to hear the `beast` in it.
		Also, the instrumental songs ("Calamitas" as prelude, "000111" as interlude and "Inverted Spheres" as postlude) fit in nicely with the music, as opposed to most bands just ripping a movie sample here and there and cutting/pasting it in-between songs. We were on tour with Marduk and Cannibal Corpse, and Marduk had this live intro from the movie Omen. Peter and I said to eachother how cool the intro was, and how much more cooler it would be if we would put it down ourselves. So we started to write it and get together the musicians - which was quite a job, with the strings, violins, horns and all - and also we wanted the choir to sing in Latin. So we looked for Latin phrases and browsed through Latin dictionaries on the internet, and used that for the intro. That`s the reason why we don`t put those lyrics in the booklet: it doesn`t make much sense (laughs).
		Will the lyrics be available on the website? We thought about it. And no, they won`t be available on the website. The reason for this is quite simple, we want people to go out and buy the record and that way they will have the lyrics. People who download the album on Napster should have a harder time getting their hands on them. I`m not saying I`m against Napster, I`ve downloaded a few songs myself from it, but you`re not happy when you see your new album up on Napster when it`s not even released. There was a guy writing in our guestbook: "Well, I downloaded the entire album and I don`t like the new singer, what happened to the old singer?" and things like that. I thought: if you would have BOUGHT the album I would have listened to your critics. [Editor`s note: this caused quite some reactions in the Darkane guestbook from fans telling this certain person to get the fucking album instead of downloading it. There still seems to be a lot of respect for artists!]. On the other hand, there are people who download songs from Napster, listen to it, and when they like it they go out and buy the album. Looking at it from that way, we get a possibly much larger fanbase. So it goes both ways, I guess.
		On Insanity, I have more of a cyber-feeling than on the Rusted Angel-album. How is this aspect integrated into the lyrics? For me, the lyrics are a lot like on Rusted Angel, dealing with all kinds of subjects - and there are a few in the science fiction area. "Third", for instance, is about having a `close encounter of the third kind`. It describes the trauma the person having the encounter suffers from. Other songs are more straightforward: "Emanation Of Fear" is a person`s struggle with his inner demons and desires, while "Distress" deals with the kind of people that try to gain as much success and money from other people as possible. The point of that story is that sooner or later their act will catch up with them. So I guess that most songs really deal with people doing bad stuff, but in the end still having a conscience telling them they`re doing the wrong thing.
		A final word about the artwork, it`s downright... weird. What is it? Actually, it`s a fish. Or it was a fish (laughs). Thomas Emerhart from Germany, the guy who also does covers for Hypocrisy, created it. We sent him the music, lyrics, and photos of us wrapped in plastic, then gave him full artistic freedom. I guess the photos inspired him and this was what came from it!
(Darkane will be touring the Netherlands on May 11th (Arnhem), May 12th (Hengelo) and May 13th (Rotterdam). Be sure NOT to miss them you`ll be drive to INSANITY!) (Xander Hoose)