A powerfully melodic metal band that just seems to get better with every record they release, Sweden’s Dynazty (not a typo!) works feverishly to top each record with the next, striving to grow as individual musicians and songwriters, and as a collective creative entity.
Evidence for this is both profound and prolific as the quintet has released seven full-length albums over the past decade, which works out to less than one album every 18 months or so. The amount of time, effort, energy and talent expended for each of these collections of songs seems not to dampen the creative spark or diminish the quality of the music. Rather, Dynazty’s band members seem to revel in the opportunity to flex their creative muscles with regular dexterity and, increasingly, to both popular and critical acclaim.
Seeking a shift from the more Spartan, sparse and gritty 2018 album Firesign, the band has ramped up the compositional complexity, the production scope and overall ‘epic’ nature of their outpouring for their latest release, A Dark Delight, released April 3 on AFM Records worldwide.
“We started basically a year ago writing this album, and we were not even done the touring cycle; we were still in the middle of it, but we were writing stuff anyway. That’s what we have always done. After completing an album, we rest for some time, and then after the album is released and once we feel like starting up again and feel creative, we start to work on new material again. Once we have a lot of material, that’s when we start to formulate a plan to go into production for a new album,” said vocalist Nils Molin, the last member to join the band in 2008, a year after it was formed by guitarists Love Magnusson and Mikael Laver, bassist Jonathan Olsson and drummer George Egg.
“We write on the road; we discuss ideas on the road and what to do with them. Nowadays it’s so easy to send song ideas back and forth and to trade recordings and ideas and stuff. So, we’re very efficiently working from a distance when we’re off the road, at least at the beginning of the process, as we’re just sending ideas back and forth and discussing them over the phone. Once we have a bunch of ideas, we meet up and start to demo what we have ready so far. At that point we write, and we demo, and those two things go on simultaneously. As far as making a lot of albums, it’s something that I guess we are very comfortable in doing, and we don’t see any point in slowing down.
“With this band, we’ve always had the sort of motto that we always want to improve on ourselves and always try to be the better version of ourselves. There’re always things that you want to improve from the previous record that you’ve made, as far as the songwriting goes. It is a craft that we take seriously and are always trying to better and perfect. Overall, there is always this desire to want to write new songs. It’s a process that we all enjoy. There is always this overall general plan we have when going into the process of making any of our albums, which is to try to one up our previous material, and try to write better songs than we’ve ever done before, and bring out better performances that we have ever done before. And then we also have sort of a different approach to each album.”
For The Dark Delight, heaviness, intensity, lushness of production and a more searingly dark vibe were the overarching themes and approach that Molin and his bandmates staked out in preparation for recording the album, which they produced themselves, assisted by mixing maestro Jacob Hansen, known for his work with Flotsam & Jetsam, Volbeat, U.D.O. and Amaranthe {the latter of which Molin is works with.)
“We try to make every album unique in a sense. When we did the Firesign album, for example, we had the approach of it being a little minimalist in terms of arrangements and recording and things like that. With this new album, the overall approach was to go more or less in the opposite direction and bring out the big guns in terms of arrangements and production. That was definitely the game plan that we had from the start,” Molin said.
“It is a more epic feel for sure, and that was exactly what we went for after Firesign. And I don’t see it as necessarily wrong or right to go in this direction or go in that previous direction. It’s what we wanted to do with this one and an approach that felt right. We wanted to go all in with production and have this huge sound, and big arrangements. And we recorded a ton of backing vocals for the album, and things like that. That is the approach we felt was best for the songs and it creates this juggernaut sound that we think is perfect for the material.”
In times of trouble, whether it’s globally, or in the life of an individual, music – and metal music in particular, has proved over generations to be a salve for the lost, a anthemic form of music for those who feel on the outside of the mainstream, a rallying cry and a way to let out frustration, and anxiety. But there is also a sense of hope, a hope the comes at the end of trial and trepidation, and it’s all these elements that attracted Molin to metal music, and why he loves creating within this genre to this day.
“Music has always been a source of strength in darker times in my own life. You can always turn to music to feel empowered or just in your daily life in general. Many people use metal music when they go to the gym and they use it as some sort of therapy, especially in these pretty grim times that we are going through right now. I am pretty sure that music has a very important place in people’s lives and is something that helps them get through the day,” he said.
“Once I started discovering music, I decided I would play an instrument. I didn’t have a plan or anything where I said I will try to do this for the rest of my life, it was just more of a subconscious choice that was being made and I never really thought about it. I never looked back. It’s a thing that I see as a calling in my life. I sometimes say that music is both a blessing and a curse. I could never live without it, even though sometimes it brings troubles in life. But it’s all worth it at the end of the day. Music is important and metal for me, is the one thing that I have gotten a great source of energy from, and not just physical energy, but any kind of energy to go out and do my stuff. I will always be indebted to music.”
And that spirit infuses the lyrics that accompany Dynasty’s musical masterworks, as Molin is the chief lyricist for the band, and always tries to add some positivity and uplift to even the darkest, moodiest of songs, such as Presence of Mind, one of the first singles and videos to be released from The Dark Delight.
“It was actually one of the very first songs that we worked on for this album. It started out as this guitar riff, the main riff in the song. I had this idea for the verses, so we started experimenting with it. We had quite a clear vision with what we wanted to do, and that was to make this atmospheric and kind of minimalistic verse, and then have it all explode in the chorus and become very full and very melodic. We pieced all that together and the we actually put this song aside for a bit and started working on others. We came back around to it and added all the ending parts and the middle section pretty late in the process, actually. We knew from the start that this was a very, very cool track and could potentially be a song that would be a single for the album right from the get-go,” he said.
“Overall, the song is about overcoming obstacles in the right way, and realizing that failures are, in this sense exemplified by crashing and burning in this song, are natural parts of life and something you should not be as afraid of. You’re supposed to treat them as learning experiences and the way that you handle it all stems from the mind, the power of the mind, or the presence of mind you have in those moments. And like I said, from the start, it felt that a strong contender for being a potential single. Once we got the whole song together, we felt it would be a great first single to introduce the audience to what will be the feel of this album, and a great song to spearhead this release.”
Hologram is one of the most melodic songs on the album – catchy and hooky without being repetitive or derivative, Molin said it will be a single and video down the road, but that initially the band didn’t think it warranted such treatment. Proof that sometimes expectations can be exceeded through the entirety of the creative process.
“You are the third interview in a row that says Hologram should be a single. And of course, we noticed this as well. But it was extremely difficult to choose singles for this album because there are many candidates. Hologram was one of those songs where once it was finally recorded and we had the mix nailed down, the song just soared in a way that it did not do in the demo phases. It can always be a little difficult to predict that. And we chose singles based partly on the music video recording schedule and before we had all the final mixes for the album. But Hologram is definitely a very, very strong single, and we will do a video for it. We were actually supposed to do it the last week of March, but this Covid-19 pandemic put a halt to that plan. Hopefully it will be possible to do it in a couple of months and release it later in the summer or something like that,” Molin said.
“The song is really about loneliness and longing for connection with people and how we look at other people’s lives and are always comparing it to our own, even though you don’t know these people, but you think that you know them. You think that they are extremely happy by just viewing their lives from a distance, especially today through social media and stuff like that where everybody is posting the perfect version of their lives. People compare themselves to that and feel that their lives are not as excellent as these other peoples are.
“And that can make you become shallow and make you become introverted and become void like a hologram. I wrote it from that kind of perspective, an this is another example of me just trying to observe the world through the trials and tribulations that, especially younger people are going through these days with the modern technology that we have that you can never escape from.”
The climate of the album gets super heavy and a tad more on the doom and gloom side with the bombastic and badass From Sound to Silence, which features the first-ever guttural vocal element, courtesy of special guest GG6 of Amaranthe.
“We felt that this album needed a really heavy, dark song, and that’s where From Sound to Silence came in. That was the game plan from the start to create this really dark atmosphere, this really brooding and heavy track. We also experimented with some elements that we never experimented with before, like adding growl vocals to the song. That was something we thought would make the song even more unique – this is a first for Dynazty,” Molin explained.
“It just felt that the song had sort of an In Flames vibe in some parts, so it was just a natural thing to say, ‘hey, maybe we should add some growl vocals to this one.’”
With touring plans up in the air, and the practicalities of making any more music videos pretty much nixed, Molin said he and his bandmates will do whatever they can to continue to draw attention to The Dark Delight, with hopes of getting on the road before the end of the year, including hopefully opportunities to play in North America.
“We played some shows in L.A. some years back, and two years ago we were in Atlanta at a festival, but as far as any proper tours in North America, that is something we hopefully can pull off in the near future. And if you go to the States, you usually take the opportunity to go up to Canada as well. We know that we have a lot of fans in North America in general, but it’s such a huge continent and it’s never easy to go there and tour. I think the logical step would be to find another band and go with, or maybe open for a band from over there or which has been there before,” he said.
For more information, visit Dynazty on social media or at https://www.dynazty.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
