Skydancer (Dark Tranquillity album)
| Skydancer | ||||
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| Studio album by Dark Tranquillity | ||||
| Released | 30 August 1993 | |||
| Recorded | May–June 1993 at Studio Soundscape, Gothenburg, Sweden | |||
| Genre | Melodic death metal, black-doom | |||
| Length | 47:45 | |||
| Label | Spinefarm | |||
| Producer | Dark Tranquility, Dragan Tanascovic, Stefan Lindgren | |||
| Dark Tranquillity chronology | ||||
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| Alternative cover | ||||
1999 Reissue
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Sputnik Music | |
Skydancer is the debut studio album by Swedish melodic death metal band, Dark Tranquillity. This release was the last recorded output to feature vocalist Anders Fridén, later of In Flames, who was fired and replaced by then rhythm guitarist, Mikael Stanne. Incidentally, Mikael Stanne was the lead vocalist on the first In Flames studio album, Lunar Strain.
The album was re-released in 1999 by Century Media Records as Skydancer/Of Chaos and Eternal Night. Skydancer is set to be remastered and reissued later in 2013 in celebration of the album's twentieth anniversary.
Sundin described Skydancer as "unique" within the band's catalogue due to its "weirdness and eccentricity", which caused him to look back on the album as "more of an acquired taste rather than a breakthrough release." When asked how far the band has come since the release of this album, Niklas Sundin stated:
Skydancer is a very weird album and there really isn't anything else like it – for good and bad. Most of the songs contain 20+ riffs that never are repeated in the same way, and the integration of clear vocals and acoustic guitars were extremely unorthodox for its time, as were the advanced use of counterpoint and recurring musical motifs. Not to mention the lyrics. It's unashamedly pretentious and a good example of the kind of over-the-top seriousness and attempt to define the world that one only can achieve with a young person's worldview. The teenage mind that knows and understands everything.
Sundin recalled "a real sense of excitement throughout the songwriting process, and it felt like we really were onto something new and original that we needed to capture on tape and let people listen to as soon as possible."
Sundin, while noting that the band were well prepared, recalled that "studio recordings back then were always stressful. Our budget only allowed for ten studio days for recording and mixing, so there wasn't any time to fine-tune things, and we often had to use first takes even if they weren't perfect. There was a good idea of we wanted to accomplish, but we lacked the studio knowledge to communicate it to the engineers, who in turn were clueless about extreme metal, so there were lots of tension and misunderstandings."
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