Dan Swano
Shadowman

30.12.2012

*** ARCHIVE ITEM - DATED 2004 *** This was just an accident, but we’re so glad that it happened. Originally our plan was to get in touch with someone from Bloodbath, a superstar old school death metal project that released its second album “Nightmares Made Flesh” a few months ago. We didn’t even think of Dan Swano, though he plays guitar and writes for this band, our original request was to have the Katatonia guys, Jonas Renske or Anders Nystrom, but when the Century Media guys said Jonas and Anders were unavailable, and offered us Dan, we rose to the occasion eagerly, since nearly everyone at our webzine has been a huge fan of some of his projects at some point in time. Naturally, we couldn’t limit this interview to Bloodbath only, as it’s next to impossible to talk to the guy who did Edge Of Sanity, Nightingale, Pan.Thy.Monium, etc. and not ask a single question about these legendary outfits.

(EDITOR'S NOTE - THE YEAR 2012: Those of our readers who have been following HeadBanger.ru for a long time are aware that the website was not born out of nothing. By the time it was established, all of our original authors had several years of experience with other Internet and print media. At that time we came up with a lot of materials, but, for various reasons, some of them are not available on the Internet at all at the moment, or are available in incomplete versions. The fifth anniversary of our webzine is the perfect moment to look back and put them online again. Why? First, because some of these conversations matter a lot to us personally. Second, we know that there is still interest in them on the side of our readers...)

Given the success of “Nightmares Made Flesh”, is Bloodbath still a regular side project for you or something more than that?

It’s always gonna be a project. When we work with a project, it’s always a top priority, but all the time in between we don’t really talk on the phone, we don’t do anything. All the five members playing on the album have only been together in the same room once, that’s when we took the photograph. I would say it’s more of a collective of musicians, it’s even beyond the project. We just wanna make sure that we make the best possible album, and this is the way we do them – we all write the songs alone and then we get together with a bunch of musicians. I don’t think that Bloodbath would be any better if we worked on it like a traditional band, I don’t think we know each other that well.

It’s a strange situation – you say in many interviews that you want to be remembered for your achievements in symphonic metal and progressive metal, but once you form a death metal project, a big label immediately signs it, and your albums get excellent reviews everywhere. It is a kind of paradox, don’t you think?

Yeah, it’s a curse. But it’s always gonna be like that for some people. It’s a little bit like acting, this whole musician thing. I don’t really see music as something where I only like this and that style, I see music as one big whole thing. And I know there are actors out there who are desperately trying to be considered as serious actors doing some kind of strange sci-fi horror movies, but it’s only when they make romantic comedies that these guys really work for the audience. And I think in the big world I will only be well-known for my death metal stuff, because that’s how I got well-known in the first place. But my heart has always been in the symphonic rock ever since I was five years old, that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I’m not gonna be one of those guys who kind of surrender to what people want them to do. I would probably put the death metal thing aside for a lot of years, maybe do the Bloodbath thing now and then, because I still enjoy doing it a lot, but not for full time. I just enjoy doing it a couple of weeks a year, after that I’m exhausted with the whole genre. I like death metal, but not everything I hear, I just like very few songs from very few artists. I must say that death metal that I like the most is the one I write myself, that’s why I write this.

OK, and what death metal CDs do you really like? What was the latest one that you really enjoyed?

(sighs) I must say that the only ones I really like are the three first Death albums. I also like the early stuff from Opeth, but it is not really death metal. The last death metal album I really enjoyed must be something I made myself. The Ribspreader album is kind of cool, but it sounds a bit like the old Edge Of Sanity stuff. I’m not really going out buying and digesting new death metal albums, because most of the guys writing this material are not coming from the same background as me. Chuck came from a more melodic metal background and enjoyed the whole Swedish metal movement. I think that stuff that Chuck did until he turned into technical is the stuff that I go back to. There are some songs from Morbid Angel, some tracks from Entombed, the earlier the better really, I like the stuff like “Supposed To Rot”, the Nihilist demo track, “Maze Of Torment”, “Chapel Of Ghouls”, shit like that from Morbid Angel, but I don’t really care too much for the rest.

Why did you switch over from drums to the guitar on “Nightmares Made Flesh”? You have said many times that drums is your favorite instrument…

The project needed to grow in a new direction. I might be a good drummer when it comes to rock’n’roll music, but I was never really a good death metal drummer. I never really played in any death metal band playing drums before Bloodbath. I was never the drummer in Edge Of Sanity, Infestdead had a drum machine, I was always playing something else than drums. I just felt that it would be fun to be the drummer of a death metal band, but right after recording “Resurrection Through Carnage” (2002) I realized that I was a crappy death metal drummer, I needed a lot of help from technology to keep up appearances. And I felt that the only way to make Bloodbath a better project, get better sales and all that is for me to step down from the drum throne and get a real drummer. And we found him in Martin (Axenrot).

Getting Peter Tagtgren in the band seems to be a risky decision. He has quit Lock Up because he had no time for it – do you think he will have enough time for Bloodbath?

No. I think he’s already out of the project. He was never really in the project or out or anything, he’s like a session guy. With the Bloodbath project, we never agreed to do anything more than to show up and do the shit for the album. Then the album takes a life of its own, and if we still like it, maybe we will get together again some time and make another album. But for me Bloodbath has quit after each release, and then it starts from scratch. There is no commitment, there is no contract or anything keeping us together. Peter was kind enough to sing on the album when Mike (Akerfeldt, Opeth leader and original Bloodbath vocalist – ed.) left, but he’s busy with Hypocrisy and Pain. If we should go out touring, there’s no way on earth that we could get Peter to come along and learn all the old songs. He was probably already out of the project before he joined. But to you guys, I think the most important thing is that it’s a kick-ass album, and who cares really if there is life beyond the recording. The record will live forever, and it will always sound great. If we should have members that could always be available, the musicianship would be worse, and I like to maximize and make the perfect album. I don’t really care too much about what follows, because it’s another world.

But for many fans, if they like the album, they want to see the band live. And as far as we understand, there are no shows or tours planned for Bloodbath…

We have this bad habit of releasing the album during the autumn, and all the cool tours and festivals are during the summer. If you’re not hot at the moment, there’s no one who wants to book you for this summer festival stuff, that’s one of the main problems. Then you need a lot of money to bring Bloodbath together for a live show. My life is very different from the guys in Katatonia, and we need a lot of rehearsing to compete with bands that have been together for 15 years and played live 800 times - and here comes Bloodbath rehearsing two times and then performing for 10,000 people. We need to be fucking boot-camped and trying to make Bloodbath better on stage than on the album, and we all know that the album is fucking great. So the problem is that I don’t think that we’re that good on stage, and we would need a lot of preparation, and there is funding. You need to put the guys in the same room for two weeks, and it’s a bit difficult when it comes to the money situation, because no one is willing to pay. I cannot take time off my dayjob, blah blah blah, so I think Bloodbath would remain a recording project. If we get a good deal to play live, we would probably do it, but it would need a LOT of preparation. (Nevertheless, we found out the day before the interview went online that Bloodbath will play a gig at the Wacken Open Air Festival in summer 2005 – ed.)

How is it like having two producers in the band and recording an album with somebody else as a producer? This guy must have had a tough time with you and Peter…

No. (laughs) He had the easiest time of his life. We were not in his phase, we were just doing our stuff. I was the guitar player, and Peter was the singer. It’s like being a boss in your dayjob, and finally you come to another situation, where you can just sit back and not be the boss – it’s the easiest thing in the world. Some people always have to be the boss, and I don’t hang out with that kind of people. It’s a dynamic situation – one time you’re the boss, and next time you’re the employed guy. If you has had this dynamic as a person, you can step back and be one of the guys and then step up and be the guy leading the guys. I think that everyone in Bloodbath has this drive to be in charge and also know when you can back off and mind your own business. I think it was the most painless recording I’ve ever been part of, and it sounds great.

For this album you, Jonas and Anders wrote four songs each. Was it a conscious decision, something like, “Let’s split the album so that everyone can have an equal share of songs,” or did you just get together and select the best songs you had?

No, we wrote four songs each, and that was all that was written. We made that up beforehand – “you write, I write, Jonas writes, and that’s the album.” That’s where you get the variation you need for an album like this.

There’s a song on the new album called “The Ascension” where Peter sings the line “Resurrection through carnage.” Is it an outtake from the first album?

No, no. For some reason, we never did sing the words “resurrection through carnage” on that album, and I just felt it would sound cool. We’re also singing “Breeding death” in the same sentence, so it’s one of those stupid wordplays (everybody laughs), we mess around with the other releases.

In the U.S. “Nightmares Made Flesh” will only come out in 2005 and there will be two bonus tracks on it. Where are these songs coming from?

It’s the very first time we ever recorded together. We wrote and recorded the track “Breeding Death” and the track “Ominous Blood Vomit” in maybe 10 hours, while we were preparing for a party, just hanging out having fun. We never got to mix these songs in this recording, because I accidentally erased everything the day after, so we only had this cassette copy that we made to listen to while we were drinking beer the same night. Mike found that tape and sent it to me, and I managed to get most out of the cassette recording that’s full of tape hiss and tape noise and shit like that that you get on old cassettes. I think it sounds really cool. It’s probably the best Bloodbath recording ever – these two songs, it’s so full of aggression and so full of life that it’s spooky. It’s pure death.

In keeping with the album title, what is the worst nightmare that you have ever had?

I would say in the modern times it’s probably involving the death of my son. It’s the parent’s worst nightmare – to see your son being run over by a car or something like that. Sometimes I have it even when I’m awake. You step back and think for a minute what it would be like, because it’s hard to imagine the pain and how you would react. I would say it’s always the parents’ worst nightmare to see their child dying or having to choose between your life and theirs. Really wicked shit like that, or it’s the bills or whatever.

You now have another death metal project Ribspreader. How did you become a member of this outfit?

I’m not a member. That was something that the record company made sure of. It looked like I was a member, but I was only a guest, only playing drums as a payback to the guy behind Ribspreader who was doing the vocals for the “Crimson II” album. I kind of paid him back doing drums and some lead guitars. At first I wanted to react and tell them to fuck themselves and burn all the CDs, because I’m not a fucking member of this project. But after a while I thought, “Hey, Rogga is a nice guy, and he can sell 200 albums just because people believe that I’m in the project, well, who cares?” I’ve done 2,900 other project, it’s not like people will go, “Hey, you have more than one project! What kind of guy are you?” (everybody laughs) Who cares really? But I think it was pretty ugly not to ask me. The guys from Bloodbath were flipped out because I told them that I didn’t have the time to do Bloodbath, because I had other things to do, and the next thing they know is that I’m a part of a new old-school death metal band! They were like, “Hey, fuck you!” And I tried to explain to them that this was something I had to do - instead of paying someone a lot of money, I paid them with my time. This was scheduled, shit, what could I do? I think it’s a great album, the Ribspreader one. I didn’t write one single second of it, I just played drums and looked stupid! (everybody laughs)

What is currently happening with your website www.swano.com ? Only a few sections of it are still available…

It’s tricky to find time for doing all that stuff, trying to maintain the website. Actually the website thing happened when I was very ill, one year ago I had stomach problems and shit like that, so I was home from work for two weeks. Then you get a lot of downtime, the time you don’t spend in the toilet shitting your fucking guts out, so I was working on the webpage. But once life got back, and I had a dayjob, I didn’t have enough time for the web anymore. That’s when you realize that webmasters are a pretty good thing! Then I had this divorce thing happening about three months ago, and some of the pages were far too personal, and they kind of reminded me of my previous life. It’s painful showing your family, when you don’t have a family anymore. So I kind of closed down some of the sections in order to upgrade them to the current status of my life. We will see in the future what happens with the webpage. I am opening another webpage for the release of the Second Sky album, but that is in another year.

But what happened to the Downloads section? You used to maintain a lot of demo material in the mp3 format on your webpage, and now all of that is gone…

There were two changes of providers – first I had the shit uploaded to some place, and then that server closed down, and then I uploaded the shit to another place. But then people were downloading so much that we were always exceeding the limits. I was told there were no limits, but the limit was something ridiculous like 400 gigabytes per month. But you guys just took it away and downloaded half a terabyte of my shit in one month, so I was thrown out of there. It’s still on that server, so if anybody wants to, they can drop me an e-mail, you can find my address everywhere on the web, at least spam guys can do it, and I will send you and html file with all the links, and you can just go there and download. But it’s not an official thing anymore, because people are downloading like maniacs, and it will end up costing me a lot of money and a lot of trouble. People can download shit, but they have to go through me first. But it’s all still on the web – the videos, the music and everything. I just don’t have the time to do the fancy layout and do it all again, it’s too much work, and I’d rather do albums than webpages.

More about this website – there’s a section on it still available called Unisound Memorial. This place is now legendary, but not many people know what eventually happened to it. As far as we understand, you now have a totally different studio…

I don’t have a studio anymore, I just have my new flat here – one big room full of computers. I record the drums and sometimes the guitars and bass and shit in other places, the new Nightingale album was recorded in Studio Underground, I mixed it there as well, but using my own gear. I have this little portable rig with a bunch of PCs and some strange units and I move it around to some cool locations. The Second Sky album was recorded in a little cottage in the Orebro countryside, built in the late 18th century. It was really inspiring, I like to work that way. Unisound was always looking and feeling like either a rehearsal room or at home, it was never a studio with fancy-looking windows and shit like that. I want the artists to relax, to be themselves, because I cannot be myself in the studio. I hate that environment, it feels so fake, like you have to make the take of your life today. I’d rather make that take when I feel like it, that’s why I try to record everything at home.

You mentioned Second Sky – when can we expect its first album?

The first album will come out in a year from now, that’s the latest possible, but it will be sooner, because I plan to start mixing the album some time in late summer 2005.

But why so late? You said it’s already recorded…

It’s only the drums. I recorded the drums because I used a session drummer, and I managed to get a good price at that specific time. He’s a very busy person, he’s playing with everyone in Sweden now, and he’s one of the best drummers in the country. And I happened to have a close personal relationship with him, because he was working at my dayjob at that time. We were hanging out a lot, and I felt closer to him than just making a phone call and booking the drummer. I felt, “Now is the time to do the Second Sky drums, and then we do the Nightingale album, and then I do everything else.” As soon as I’m ready, I will start doing the rest, because the drums is the backbone. Now you’ve built the background on which to place this giant castle.

And what happened to Diabolical Masquerade? Anders has announced that he is closing this project, and as far as we saw from a few interviews, you are quite happy with it. Why?

I’m not really happy, I just felt that it would be sad for people… I was a very big part of that project, ever since we did the third and the fourth albums. The last album was more me than him, because he just recorded a bunch of riffs and went home, then I made everything and he came back and did the vocals. So I did a real production job there, and the same goes for “Nightwork”, we were really collaborating. And I just felt that he couldn’t take the project to the next level without me, because he didn’t have it in him. We both have Bloodbath, and have all the other stuff… So I feel personally I’m kind of happy about the fact that he killed it, because I think he should focus on Katatonia and make that big. Maybe one day when we’re older we will do another Diabolical Masquerade album, it’s just a matter of him and me getting into the same room, and then things will happen, I promise you. But he could not do it alone, I feel that I’m a part of the Diabolical Masquerade classic sound. If he wants to take it in a totally different direction, it’s fine, but he wants another album like “Nightwork” or “Death’s Design”, I have to be there. I’m that confident in myself, I know that I am also responsible for the success of that project.

You have mentioned a new Nightingale album. Does it mean that you’re planning to do another one in 2005?

Yeah, we’ll start recording after Christmas. It’s a 10-year anniversary album, and it contains re-recordings of two songs from each of the first four albums, one old Edge Of Sanity song, and a new song. It will be released at various times, first time for the European tour in April, and the second time for some summer festivals, if we get them, and I think there will be a worldwide release around autumn, when it’s cool to sell albums again.

Which Edge Of Sanity song are you planning to re-record?

“Losing Myself”, which was originally a Nightingale track, but we were running out of material for “Infernal”, so I recorded that one in a dark metal version. But the way it sounds when we play it with Nightingale is the way it was supposed to be played.

You have released another Nightingale album called “Invisible” just a couple of months ago. And this time it’s not a concept record. Why did you decide to put an end to the ‘breathing shadow’ saga?

Guys, I’ve been stretching this project for four albums, and I felt that it’s not gonna be good enough for more than one song. I felt, “Hey, it’s not working anymore, all this endless concept, all these endless movies that have sequels one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.” There was nothing left to it, really, and it’s also refreshing to just thing about something else. In the past it was like, “Yeah, maybe I should write a song about it? No, I will not, because I have a fucking theme to follow.” It feels better to write about different topics. You can take a song like “Stalingrad” for example. You can actually write a song about that and totally focus on finding the emotion from the whole battle thing. You can have some of that sci-fi crap get out of the system for a while so you can be more basic, more true to life. You can actually relate to some of the issues on the “Invisible” album, because the songs are about a real person in a real world, not about gypsies and shadows. I like sci-fi probably more than anyone can ever imagine, I’m a total die-hard sucker for that, but sometimes it feels great to be in a real world and write about something that really matters to you, like the fear of dying and shit like that.

Where did you get the inspiration for “Stalingrad”? Did you see the movie about this battle?

Yeah. My brother wrote this song in 1981, and the lyrics were originally in Swedish. There is an expression here in Sweden when you have faced your biggest fear, or when your life is really fucked up, you call it own personal Stalingrad. His lyrics were not about the battle of Stalingrad itself, it was about another person having his own personal Stalingrad. And as I was like eight years old when he wrote it, I have heard it so many times in the Swedish version that I felt that this song will always be called “Stalingrad”, there’s no doubt. But I saw the movie, the German one, and I was so affected by it, because it was pure hell, so I decided to write a lyric about it and call it “Stalingrad”. It’s about a soldier, a German soldier, but it’s not pro or against any of the nations, it’s just me watching how pretty much both lost in a way. Humanity made a big mistake by letting that shit ever happen. I was just so taken, because the movie ends with everybody dying. The hero of the movie just blows his brains out, and no one wins. And that’s war really. That was a tough one to write, I cried when I sang it the first time, because it was very emotional, I finally got to feel the lyrics. Singing about gypsies and shadows, you don’t really feel them. I used to feel like Stephen King or something.

For “Invisible” you once again used some old songs by your brother…

Yes, it’s a tradition.

But were the original versions of those songs ever recorded?

Yeah, of course. My brother has recorded more songs than you could ever imagine. He spent a lot of his adult years as an unemployed guy, so he had all day and all night just to write and record songs. The track “Invisible”, the track “Stalingrad”, and the track “Worlds Apart” have all been recorded as Tom Nogua solo tracks. Only the tracks “Raincheck On My Demise” and “Game Over” are exclusive Nightingale material, all the other stuff has previously been recorded in Swedish.

Where can we find these original versions?

You can get in touch with him, and he will gladly mp3 them for you.

So they are not official releases, right?

Some of them are. He has done CD releases, sold them at gigs and stuff, but I think it’s a bit strange for him to release the Swedish versions of Nightingale songs, it’s a bit cheap, you know. But people have downloaded them just to compare, and some of the versions, “The Game”, for example, are identical, there are no changes. The track “Alonely” is also pretty much the same to its original version. But if you wanna hear it with a different singer and in a different language, just go ahead. I think he will guide you to some place where you can download the stuff.

Speaking about Edge Of Sanity – “Crimson II” was welcomed by most of the fans, but still there was a lot of controversy about you using this name without the rest of the guys. Do you now think it was worth doing this record under such a name?

Yes, definitely, because most of the people don’t care about shit like that, whose name is on it, all they wanted was for me to make another melodic death metal epic album. The only reason why I used this name is that I was so disillusioned by the fact that the album “Moontower” sold so bad, because it was an unknown name, it was a new thing. If “Moontower” had been released as an Edge Of Sanity album, it would have been a major smash, it would have been something that people refer to as very inspiring and all that. But it was not Edge Of Sanity, it was only me, and sometimes one is not as strong as the band name. I just wanted to use the band name as some kind of revenge, because the other guys used it once without me, and I had all the rights in the world to use it once without them. I was always more than half the project, I always wrote 80 to 90 percent of the material, I did all the press, I did everything to keep that band alive, and they were just dead meat hanging round after we turned into a project. We were very close and a very cooperative democracy for the first two albums, then Edge Of Sanity died and rose again as a project with me as the boss and the other guys as the employed ones. It was never outspoken that I was the leader, but I did everything. But bands do survive without their leader, the four other guys just turn into one person, but we were never really that close personally, and I don’t have a problem. People can have problems with names and what I did from a friend-to-friend point of view, but listen to the goddamn album, that’s what counts, does it kick ass or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s called The Beatles or Ramones or whatever, just listen to it.

OK, and what are the rest of the Edge Of Sanity guys now doing?

I have no idea. I know two of them are not playing, one of them is a junkie, and one of them is a poser. (laughs) That’s all I know, I haven’t spoken to them in years.

But why do they need the band name, if they don’t use it anyway?

No, they don’t need the name. We had a meeting, the thing was OK with them. It’s one percent of the fanbase that doesn’t like the fact that I used the name, the guys are totally OK with it.

OK, going back to the “Crimson II” album itself, are you satisfied with how the record turned out?

Yeah, of course, it’s the best Edge Of Sanity album apart from “Unorthodox”, of course, which will always be the ultimate. This was the only album that we really should have done, to me. That was what Edge Of Sanity was all about. When you start a project, you have a goal, like you build a house and you see in your dreams what it would look like, and you know when the house is ready. “Unorthodox” was ready, Edge Of Sanity was at the peak, and then we started decorating this house and building additional gardens and tiny little houses around it. And all of a sudden you have a big mess, while all you needed was one big fucking album that was “Unorthodox”, and the rest – I could have lived without it. Some of the songs on the other albums are really good, but to me “Unorthodox” is the shit. And for the project thing, I think “Crimson II” is the shit.

How did you get Clive Nolan (Arena, Pendragon, Shadowland) for writing lyrics for this album?

He’s a friend of my ex-wife, she used to run the web-pages for Arena. I know him well enough to call him and say, “Hi, it’s Dan.” It’s fine, he will probably do some shit for Second Sky as well. He’s a very talented person and a very nice guy. He just felt like he wanted to write some lyrics without having to adjust to the music, and just write some kind of novel with rhyme, he’s an ace in doing that, he’s a great lyricist. I’m eternally happy that he did it.

Was he free to come up with the concept, or was it basically your idea that he put into words?

Well, I had an idea about the monastery, but only very vague. I sent him the lyrics to the other song (apparently referring to “Crimson 1” – ed.), and then he made up his own mind and sent me some kind of suggestion – “it could start like this,” and I said, “Yeah, fine, and you take it away.”

You learned to growl again while recording this album. Do you have any plans to use these regained skills in any other projects or bands?

No, it’s over. I’m very proud of my clean voice now, and there’s no way I’m gonna open that wound again.

All of the old Edge Of Sanity stuff and Nightingale stuff has been released in Russia by Irond Records, but “Crimson II” and “Invisible” are not even in their plans. Do you happen to know what’s the problem here?

No, I have no idea. But you guys just buy it on the black market, I don’t care. (everybody laughs) As long as you listen to it…

Now a couple of questions about your old days if you don’t mind. We’ve heard that your mother had to sign the first Edge Of Sanity contract for you because you were only 17 years old. What was her reaction when you came to her and said, “Hey mama, I’ve been offered a record deal, can you sign it for me?”

You know, she was, of course, very happy for me, because my parents have been extremely supportive, they bought my first drum kit when I was 5 years old. My father was driving me to all these shows all over the place with the drum-set. They’ve been super-parents, and for them when I was offered the first record contract when I was 17 must have been like your son has been accepted to Oxford University or something like that. I’m still pretty much working from that contract, I signed it myself now, but it’s a great feeling for all of us.

Have you ever considered re-releasing Unicorn demos on CD? We know how proud you are of them, but still most of the people have never heard them…

Well, I have released them in a four-CD box-set, 44 copies. (laughs)

Oh my God, 44 copies! Do you like this number? Why 44?

I can’t really remember, to be honest. (laughs) It was one hell of a lot of CDs to burn anyway – 44 times four, and all these covers to fold, and all these four-CD plastic box things cost a lot of money, and sending them all out and all that crap. I was pretty fed up by spending my time in the kitchen being a fucking record industry machine. There was a demand for 44 box sets, and for me that’s hilarious much. Unicorn didn’t sell that many demos back in the heydays, there was only interest in the underground, we sold it to friends. But if someone wants to release it, call me.

In your opinion, why did Unicorn fail to get the status of, say, Arena or Pendragon? It’s still pretty much a cult thing that you need to be a fan to know of.

It’s because symphonic progressive rock at that time was just as popular as the plague. Nothing happened at that time. When Dream Theater came along, everything started happening again, but not even the prog bands were playing prog at the moment – Genesis, Yes and all these bands were playing pop, and we tried to play prog. We were young, we were still at school, goddamn, you have to remember that it was a teenage project. It doesn’t really sound like that, but we were teenagers, all of us.

But re-releasing the demos now could probably attract much more attention to this material…

Yeah! But some of the songs are so much better in my mind than on the demos. They’re great on the demos, but I know that if I could re-record them now, they would kick every prog band’s ass, and I am planning to do that for the next Second Sky album. It will take a couple of years, but I’ve already found the guitar player that can do the same wacky shit that Anders did, and I’ve found the drummer, because he’s already playing on the first Second Sky album. But me and Peter, we will go back to our roots and re-record the best tracks and maybe write a few new ones, and that will be the second Second Sky album.

We’re not sure whether you know about it, but two albums of Pan.Thy.Monium have recently been re-released in Russia…

Cool, which ones?

“Dawn Of Dreams” and “Khaooos”.

Yeah! (laughs)

What memories do you have about recording these albums?

The recording of “Dawn Of Dreams” was very funny. I don’t have any good memories about “Khaooos”, that was always a bit contrived, I felt like I could have done without that album. But “Dawn Of Dreams” was magical, because it was one of the first full-length albums I recorded in my studio on this 8-track machine. I remember that we had problems because we didn’t have any lyrics, so we just ordered some really cheap LP through mailorder and used their bands’ lyrics for our songs. (laughs) We just bought albums that cost one dollar, then took the inner sleeve and gave it to the vocalist, “Hey, here, sing!” You couldn’t hear what the fuck he was singing anyway. (laughs) I think you can hear “society” at one point, and that pretty much sums it up – very bad hardcore lyrics! That’s one of the memories I have. We were recording it very fast and very live, apart from vocals and keyboards. It went great, great fun, we did it in maybe three or four days for an extremely small budget. Most bands spend more on food during the recording than we did on the whole recording.

The Russian label that released these two CDs was later getting some messages in the guestbook like, “Hey, where the hell is the tracklist for “Dawn Of Dreams”?”

There are no songs, it’s all just music. There are no titles or anything, it’s a strange poem.

Who was in the band apart from you?

The drummer from Edge Of Sanity, and two guys called Robert. The singer was the same of Edge Of Sanity’s “Cryptic”, and the guitar player Robert was playing in some local bands. He was also playing with me in the band Wounded Knee.

Listening to these albums it’s easy to notice jazz influences. Are you (or were you) listening to a lot of jazz?

No, that was my brother, the saxophone’s fault. There’s no jazz in the music apart from hilarious saxophones, the riffs are not very jazzy. But my brother was there, and he was in his free-form-jazz phase, so he was making weird noises from that strange thing. (giggles)

What’s up with Infestdead? Is there a chance that there will be a new album one day?

No, never! That project died years ago, because it died with the label. I swore allegiance to Invasion Records, and when that guy disappeared, so did Infestdead. Then the other record label called Hammerheart re-released the albums, and that might have made people believe that it was still around, but now this project is dead and over, there’s no point in making Deicide albums anymore. (everybody laughs)

We wonder is there any style of music that you would never agree to play?

Rap music. It’s the worst thing in the world.

If you were offered to take part in a country project, would you agree?

Yeah, of course, I love country. I have maybe 20 country albums. No problems there, guys! Jesus Christ, right? (laughs)

No, we were prepared! We have read some of your previous interviews, so we know your passion for country.

Yeah, I like it. Kick-ass music!

More about labels – are you satisfied working with Black Mark? Bands like Lake Of Tears and Cemetary only have bad things to say about them…

What can I say? I could be more satisfied, but I’m a human being, I cannot expect too much, because I don’t really do too much myself. If I worked hard enough and got a management and a manager and whatever you should have in this world, like being on tour all the time, trying to get on the radio, trying to be on the TV, maybe I would change to a bigger label so they would help me. But at the point where I am right now, just wanting to release albums every second year, I don’t deserve a bigger label. And I have learned from some of my friends that have been on Century Media, Earache, Nuclear Blast that it’s the same, but the disappointment is even bigger - you’re on the big label that makes big bands happen, but you don’t happen. No bands from Black Mark have happened, so it feels better that way, because I feel safe there. And it’s important for me to be able to call them and say, “Hi, it’s me,” and not have this fancy operator asking me who the fuck I am and who I want to talk to. It’s important to have a closeness, the higher you climb, the lower you fall.

We’ve noticed that you are frequently visiting and posting on your official webforum. How do you manage to maintain this very positive atmosphere there? I mean, I don’t see anybody posting things like, “Dan has sold out!” or “Start growling again or I won’t buy your records”?

It’s just because I haven’t sold out! (everybody laughs) I will never sell out, I’m afraid of selling out, that’s why I don’t have this as a day job. I have my feet firmly on the ground as a traditional salesman for eight hours a day, then I come home and live my little rock-star dream. I mean, what’s the purpose of acting like a rock star if you’re not a rock star? (laughs) It is very stupid.

Working in a music store you must be hearing music all day long…

Yeah, but I wouldn’t call it music! (everybody laughs)

OK, do you ever get tired of music?

Yeah, but not of my own. I have a period now when I don’t really listen to any music at all, I just try to write. But there have been moments when I have a walkman on pretty much all the time, when I find a new album or something. I listen to music around the clock at work, but now I want silence, I come home and I compose, because right now I am writing in my head. It’s like two people talking at the same time - I’m writing in my mind, and I don’t have to listen to other music, it’s just in the way. Sometimes when I’m not writing, I’m looking for new fragments to start writing from, to be inspired by, but now I’m in the phase of writing new material, in the very first stages, and that is when my mind is writing for me. All I have to do is to sit down every now and then and just let it out through the fingers onto the computer.

We’ve heard that with Nightingale you recorded cover versions of “Stealing” by Uriah Heep and “Before The Dawn” by Judas Priest. Have these tracks been released anywhere?

Yeah, they’re on Black Mark Tributes, volumes one and two. I’m not sure if they are released in Russia, not in the legal way anyway. I think I saw them on the Internet yesterday, you can download them from pretty much anywhere.

We have an official bootleg of Nightingale. An official bootleg sounds very strange to us…

(laughs) It’s because we released it ourselves, and it’s kind of official. I think we stole it from Aerosmith, they have something called “Official Bootleg”. When you make a bootleg yourself, other guys don’t make that much money. And it sounds like a bootleg, it’s cam-corder sound, but we wanted to do it for the ProgPower thing – to do a unique album to sell to all these die-hards that came there from all over the place, to give them a special treat, a very limited edition of 100 copies or something like that.

You already have five albums with Nightingale. Will you only stick to the Nightingale material at live shows, or will there be something else?

No, in Germany there will be a lot of Edge Of Sanity shit, because that’s what people really come for. I’m not stupid. (laughs) There will be a section, the first encore, where there will be a couple of Edge Of Sanity tracks and some kind of medley where you put together some classic moments from Edge Of Sanity songs that people wanna scream out, some of the soft parts from “Twilight”, “Enigma”, “Crimson” and shit like that. And then we’ll probably play some more Nightingale, and then it’s over. When I go see a band, I wanna hear some of the old shit, I don’t wanna have “This is something from the new album” all the time. You have to do that to satisfy yourself, but you must never forget to satisfy the other part, which is the audience. If these guys wanna hear “Black Tears”, “Sacrificed”, whatever, give it to them, that’s why some of them are there. Why upset the people that made you go there? It’s a very stupid thing to do. It would be strange if we were playing Iron Maiden covers, but I wrote the fucking songs only using a different name to release them. (giggles) These are my songs, and these kids are dying to hear them, so why not play them?

If you had a chance to re-record any of the albums that you’ve done with your current knowledge and unlimited budget, which albums would you choose?

All of them.

Even “Crimson II”?

Yeah, all of them, always. There are always things to improve. And that’s what keeps me going. I think one of the albums that would be unnecessary to re-record would be “Moontower”, but I could find improvements – there could be a better snare sound, tiny little things that disturb me. But on the big whole I would probably come to the conclusion that some of the albums are unnecessary, because I would only do it different, but still wanna do it again, if you know what I mean. There would be some re-recordings of Nightingale songs, and I think that will give you guys an idea of how much better things would be when I re-record them. I’m not gonna change them into some fucking hip hop, I just gonna make them sound the way they were supposed to sound when I wrote them, but the technology got between me and my vision.

If Metallica asks you to produce their next record, would you agree to do it?

Yeah, of course, without a doubt.

What kind of sound would you create for them?

I would create a sound that is somewhere in between what they have on the new album and “The Black Album”, what they were heading for but the real way. These guys turned a little bit too chaotic. I know what they were looking for, but they were not looking back, they were only looking forward. And this four-microphones-on-the-drum-kit crap sound, a little bit out of tune, that whole “this is the way we sound naturally,” it was a little bit over the edge. I’d back it off a little bit and get some more high fidelity into it, they would have a good sound, you know. Something that sounds raw, live and dirty, I would go for that – a natural but professional sound.

What is next for Dan Swano? On what albums shall we be hearing you in the next few months?

I’m currently mixing a local band called Dishaven, and when I am done with that, I will go on making demos for the re-recordings of the Nightingale tracks. Right after that I will probably start working on the Second Sky shit. And I’ve also finished mixing the Novembers Doom album, it’s a kick-ass groovy doom album with some death metal overtones that you guys will love. It’s a really good album.

Special thanks to Jan Hoffmann (Century Media Records) for arranging this interview

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Felix Yakovlev
December 7, 2004
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