DARK TRANQUILLITY have officially confirmed the departure of lead guitarist and co-founder Niklas Sundin, who had been taking a break from the band for several years to attend to his family.
Sundin has issued the following statement:
“As some of you know, I’ve had a break from playing with D.T. since 2016 in order to focus on family life. With the ‘Atoma’ touring cycle now completed and a new album recording about to commence, the time is right to officially announce my departure from the band.
“I’m very grateful for the experiences that the past 30 years have brought. We founded D.T. as teenagers without any musical knowledge, and somehow our songs took us all across the world, helped establish a new subgenre of metal, brought us several Grammy nominations and – more importantly – had a positive and life-altering impact on people all over the globe. This is extremely humbling, and more than what most artists ever could ask for.
“However, it’s no secret that I always enjoyed the creative process more than the performance aspects of being in a band, and the required extensive touring held less and less appeal with every album. The band and the fans deserve members that want to be on the road as much as possible in order to keep the (forward) momentum going, and for this reason I prefer to step aside and direct my musical creativity towards other areas. I’ll still be involved in the visual side of D.T. and am working on the cover illustration for the next album as we speak.
“I send my warmest regards to the guys in the band, the incredible crew and of course to everyone that supported us over the past three decades. As for future musical endeavours, my electronic project Mitochondrial Sun released its debut album last month, and there are several other projects and collaborations (both metal and non-metal) in the pipeline. Onwards!”
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