DATE OF INTERVIEW:

DARKANE

15th March 2014

CHRISTOFER MALMSTRÖM; LAWRENCE MACKRORY

METAL DISCOVERY: When Peter went through the Dream Theater drummer auditions back in 2010, were the rest of the band supportive of him during that time, and encouraging him to go for it?

CHRISTOFER: Oh yeah. I mean, it was a pretty cool opportunity. Peter said, from the beginning, “if I get the job, we don’t split up Darkane but we may not be as active as before”; we said, “sure”. He’s been working so hard to get where he is so, of course, Darkane wouldn’t stand in his way to become a… real drummer!

(Christofer Malmström on the 'Layers of Lies' photo shoot)

"We had to stand like this meat pile or something, and then he added legs and arms and stuff. That was...a strange situation to be in – naked with your friends and standing like this!"

PART 3 BELOW

PART 3 ABOVE

Christofer and Lawrence in The Institute, Birmingham, UK, 15th March 2014

Interview & Photography by Mark Holmes

PART 3

Photograph copyright © 2014 Mark Holmes - www.metal-discovery.com

PART 3

RELATED LINKS

Official Darkane Website:

Official Darkane Twitter:

Official Darkane Facebook:

DARKANE DISCOGRAPHY

Rusted Angel (1999)

Insanity (2001)

Albums

Expanding Senses (2002)

Layers of Lies (2005)

Demonic Art (2008)

Layers of Live (2010)

The Sinister Supremacy (2013)

[laughs]

CHRISTOFER: We were hoping for it but…

MD: He came very close as well.

CHRISTOFER: Yeah, yeah.

MD: He was in their top three I seem to remember.

CHRISTOFER: Top three, yes. And it turned out to be a very good career boost for him anyway, because he has a lot of personal fans now.

LAWRENCE: And him not getting the job was actually good for Darkane as well – he has a name for himself now and more people might check out Darkane just because of that.

MD: Would you go for John Petrucci’s job if he ever left Dream Theater?

CHRISTOFER: Oh yeah! I would run circles around him, or whatever!

[laughs]

CHRISTOFER: No, I think he’s in his own league!

MD: One image that’s stuck in my head over the years is from the promo shots you did for the ‘Insanity’ album where you wrapped yourselves in cling film, or plastic, or whatever it was. Is that the strangest thing you’ve ever had to do as a band?

CHRISTOFER: I wouldn’t say that… but, yeah, the thing is that Peter, Jörgen and I had a band before, in the 90s, called Agretator, and we were together for seven years. We did two albums and our second album, which was a five track, mini-CD, we did just that; we wrapped ourselves in cling film. But that album didn’t get any exposure so we still liked the idea and wanted to do it now when we had a real distribution with this one! So, yeah, we wrapped ourselves for a few hours; we went around on the streets of Stockholm… and it smelled really bad when we took it off!

[laughs]

MD: That must’ve looked quite strange – five people wandering around the streets wrapped in cling film!

CHRISTOFER: There is one example of also quite crazy photo shooting, and that’s the one for ‘Layers of Lies’ when we got naked and wrapped ourselves in bandages. You’ve seen that picture?

MD: Yeah.

CHRISTOFER: We had to stand like this meat pile or something, and then he added legs and arms and stuff. That was also kind of a strange situation to be in – naked with your friends and standing like this!

MD: You had your own beer come out last year, another inventive title – Darkale. How did that come about, out of interest?

LAWRENCE: Peter’s friends with the guy who owns the brewery and they were just talking about it. I think Peter was like, “yeah, we should do a Darkane beer”, and the guy from the brewery wanted to do a metal beer, so they just decided to call it Darkale.

CHRISTOFER: The brewery is quite close to where we have the studio and they asked Peter to play a drum solo on their opening night; they had a party. And, yeah, they were just talking about it and, suddenly, one day, decided to do it.

LAWRENCE: Yeah, it’s just something that happened naturally through friendship and Peter doing stuff for them. It’s not like the Maiden beer where it’s going to be everywhere. Mostly, it’s locally in the south of Sweden. Because of Sweden with its alcohol laws, smaller breweries cannot sell it in stores in the whole country, only in a certain region. You can buy the beer because I live in Uppsala which is near Stockholm, you can always go and order it and you can pick up the box at your local alcohol store.

MD: Is there any chance of getting hold of some in the UK?

LAWRENCE: Probably not. I don’t know if you can order to…

CHRISTOFER: You should try!

[laughs]

MD: What’s it like?

LAWRENCE: It’s pretty good. When they first said, “alright, we’ve done the Darkale now”, and we kind of knew what it was gonna be, but we still hadn’t tasted it so we didn’t know. Then, when we finally got to taste it, it was like, should I? What if it’s not good? And it was actually really good. And everybody thought it was really good so that was a huge relief!

[laughs]

LAWRENCE: But we knew they’d done some good beer before. We actually started the whole recording of the latest album with having a beer tasting at their brewery, so we have a good relationship with them.

MD: Finally, if you had to sum up in five words where you feel you’re at with Darkane right now, what would they be?

CHRISTOFER: We are still going strong.

LAWRENCE: In a very good place.

MD: Marvellous!

LAWRENCE: It feels really good; we’re happy with the album; we’re happy with each other and where we are as a band, the relationships, and we see the future… we look at it positively with fun challenges ahead, making more albums. We’re just glad we didn’t lose too many fans during these five years. We’re still on people’s radar when it comes to tours, and we get questions sometimes, “are you interested touring with this and that band”, and we’re gonna try to do some more of that. So yeah, and right now, touring with our friends, and from their audience there’s been a lot of people at every show… and, at every show, there’s been quite a few Darkane fans saying, “we came to see you guys, we’ve been waiting for a long time.” So it feels like we’re in a very good place.

MD: Good closing words! Okay, thank you so much for your time.

LAWRENCE: Thank you, Mark.

CHRISTOFER: Thank you.