MTV.com has issued the following report from Chris Harris and Jon Wiederhorn:

For the past 14 years, DARK TRANQUILLITY have been at the forefront of Gothenburg, Sweden's melodic-death-metal scene. But as bands there started copping the style, the harder it was for the pioneers to remain ahead of the pack.

On past efforts, such as 2002's Damage Done and 2005's Character, Dark Tranquillity trumped their peers by making their songs as multifaceted as possible. Guitar riffs were stacked to the sky, synth breaks abounded and melody splashed through the bludgeoning constructions like hot fudge through a banana split. But for their upcoming album Fiction, which comes out April 24th, the band has taken a different approach.

"We wanted to take a step back and not focus on making things as involved or complicated as they could be," singer Mikael Stanne said. "We thought, 'Let's experiment more with each song instead of trying to make each song chock-full of things.' "

The technique worked. Fiction is eclectic, immediate and enticing. It's still musically accomplished, with finely honed riffs and well-crafted arrangements that veer from sweeping classic metal to pummeling black metal, but the constructions on songs like 'Nothing To No One', 'Terminus' and 'Icipher' remain coherent, no matter how many pinch harmonics or goth keyboards swim through the mix.

"We really didn't want to do the same thing over and over again," Stanne said. "Rather, we wanted to focus on what felt important in each song and to focus on each individual emotion and feeling. So, when we started making a really heavy song, we put all our effort into making it as heavy as possible instead of mixing it up with all the fast stuff and technical stuff. It was fun and it was actually very liberating to work that way."

In addition to embracing a different music-writing technique, Stanne approached his lyrics differently as well. Instead of addressing the frustrations in his own life, as he had in the past, he wrote about imaginary scenarios - hence the album title.

"I came up with fictional characters and put all my feelings and problems on these individuals," he explained. "And I was actually able to be more personal and honest than ever before because I could get everything out without getting too close."

While Dark Tranquillity had the skeletons of four songs together early last year, they switched into serious writing mode in April 2006 and spent the ensuing five months writing and fine-tuning. "We wanted to make sure everything was perfect before we entered the studio in October," Stanne said.

Once the songs were written, the bandmembers entered keyboardist/electronics manipulator Martin Brändström's studio to record. Since there were no studio expenses and the bandmembers handled the initial production work, they could spend as much time as they wanted on the songs. "We really deconstructed and reconstructed the songs over and over so we could explore them from all angles," Stanne said.

By the end of 2006, Dark Tranquillity were happy with all 10 songs on Fiction, but when they listened back to the recordings, they couldn't believe what they heard. The songs that sounded so good while they were jamming didn't translate, and for a while, they wondered if they were going to have to redo the entire album.

"It was so depressing," Stanne said. "The songs had no effects and no compression and were totally flat-sounding. And we were like, 'This is horrible.' It sounded like crap. So we were really nervous when we gave the files to our producer, Tue Madsen."

There's a saying that everything can be fixed in the mix. Usually that's not true - as many bands will attest - but in Dark Tranquillity's case, the axiom was proven correct: Once Madsen finished tinkering and tweaking, Fiction sounded as epic and resounding as any of the band's releases.

"When we got the actual mix, we were so happy it was ridiculous," Stanne said. "Tue Madsen is definitely the star player on this one."