The night time project
The dark prog supergroup tell us how they almost didn’t make it to album No. 2!
In 2010, Fredrik and Mattias Norrman should have been feeling at the apex of their career. The two brothers were, respectively, the guitarist and bassist for the Swedish masters of melancholy, Katatonia, who were then experiencing critical and commercial success with their 2009 album Night Is The New Day.
Instead, the increasing number of heads that they were turning and the escalating demand to tour and promote began to prove too much. So as the 2000s became the 2010s, they stepped away, leaving a group that had defined their lives for a decade.
“It all just got too intense for them,” remembers Alexander Backlund, the singer for the Norrmans’ new aural venture,
The night time project.
“They both decided to leave and, at that time, Fredrik had a lot of material that he’d been building up: songs that he wanted to use. That was the basis for The night time project .”
Norrman formed The night time project almost immediately after his career-upheaving exit from Katatonia. Armed with his collection of self-penned songs – originally intended to be used for his now-former band – he gathered up In Mourning frontman, and decades-long friend, Tobias Netzell and Mandylon drummer Nicklas Hjertton.
Musically, these three musicians could not have been more different. While Norrman emanated from a background of bleak, nihilistic prog, Netzell was a connoisseur of pummelling death metal and Hjertton spent most of his time with emo-tinged alternative rock. However, The night time project was able to act as a middle ground for the trio, exploring a softer but no less emotive side of their differing tastes. Their sound is best likened to a fusion of The Dear Hunter and latter-day Opeth: it gives gothic rock’n’roll overtones a more melodic edge, daring to be catchy while also exploring new, dark pathways.
“It was a matter of just putting ideas on the table ,” Back lund says of The night time project’ s earliest days, before he was a member. “Fredrik wasn’t Katatonia’s main songwriter, so maybe that’s another reason why he wanted to do this project: to follow his own ideas.”
I have so much creative freedom with this band that I want to push it as far as it will go.
Due to Norrman’s exhaustion after spending so much time on the road with Katatonia, he initially wanted to limit the band to the studio, never to tour. The power trio first began recording together in autumn 2015, expanding their guitarist’s original ideas into a full-blown, self-titled album, which saw the light of day the following January.
When it arrived to kickstart 2016 with the most deliciously morose soundtrack possible, The night time project was met with rave reviews. Its compromise between metal, rock and prog made it beloved underground – but this success was short-lived. Although The night time project attempted to capitalise upon their rising stardom by releasing a standalone single, The Anti-Meridian, in 2017, the rocket strapped to their backs soon began to veer off-course.
Seven years after the three-piece line-up first came together, Netzell and Hjertton quit the band – a move hauntingly similar to the Norrman brothers’ exit from Katatonia, which sparked The night time project’ s very existence to begin with. Just as his homemade triumvirate were beginning to get into their own prolific swing, Norrman was suddenly and unceremoniously dumped right back to where he started.
“They were a three-piece, originally, and then 66 per cent of the band just left,” says Backlund. “Nicklas and Tobias, they were just getting to that age where they each had, like, 50 kids. I imagine that most people would’ve called it quits at that point, but Fredrik has this weird energy about him… and he’s stubborn.”
During that period of The night time project’ s internal strife – which left their very future in question – Backlund was a full-time music producer with a band of his own, called Letters From The Colony, for whom he sings and plays guitar. He first met Norrman in January 2017, after the guitarist hired him to produce the Anti-Meridian single and made use of his recording studio, Nailvillage.
“We both live in a pretty small community called Borlänge, in Sweden,” he explains, “so a lot of the bands there share members.”
As a result, the pairing between Backlund and Norrman felt like a natural destination for The night time project. Back lund was familiar with the group’s work ethic and had formed a fast friendship with the project’s leader since their stint recording together. Backlund officially joined Norrman’s reinvigorated band that summer, along with Mattias, who was returning to his brother’s side as a bassist. Backlund’s Letters From The Colony bandmate, drummer Jonas Sköld, completed The night time project’ s rejuvenation, but– despite having new cohorts at his side – Norrman’s morale was at rock bottom.
Backlund remembers, “Fredrik was very hard to read, emotionally. I can’t tell you exactly how he felt, but his ambition to move forward was really low. He had two songs that were finished and he just wanted to record and release those as an EP. I don’t think that he was actually that super confident about the new material after the old members left.
“It was basically a matter of me and Jonas pushing him to make an album,” he continues. “We made him use his other, really good demos and it actually got him really excited; that’s what started our journey.”
At that time, Backlund and Sköld were hot off of making Letters From The Colony’s debut, Vignette: a Meshuggah-style effort in extreme, polyrhythmic metal. Still feeling bitten by the creative bug, Backlund was keen to explore new soundscapes and try softer, more subtle methodology.
“I think that part of the reason this band even exists is that a lot of metal musicians have ideas with a softer side,” he ponders. “I listen to all sorts of music, not necessarily just metal, so we have this outlet in the form of The night time project where we can try out some softer stuff. Otherwise, you’d end up with more bands like Bring Me The Horizon, who just do a total 180, genre-wise.”
Bolstered by Backlund and Sköld’s joint enthusiasm, the band returned to Nailvillage in 2018 to record their second album, Pale Season. With a title referring to the “lesscolourful patches of memory” and “the years that fly by without anything exciting happening”, this follow-up is a continuation of the band’s melancholic stylistics. It’s a nine-song existential crisis that ebbs and flows from the gorgeous melodies of Binary, to the grungy riffs of Embers, to Signals In The Sky’s ominous ambience. A re-recorded rendition of Anti-Meridian soars to greater heights than ever before, with Backlund’s operatic vocal delivery only amplifying the heartbreak.
Pale Season is an untouchable serving of audial gloom that is among the upper echelon of prog in 2019. With any luck, this second album will be the springboard to success that The night time project’ s de but should have been. And, already, things seem much more promising than before, with Backlund revealing that plans are already underway for the band to tour as soon as they can.
“Fredrik has four kids now, so he wants any excuse he can find to get away,” he laughs. “And, even though I have Letters From The Colony, I want to keep working on this band. It’s such an important part of my musical expression. I have so much creative freedom with this band that I want to push it as far as it will go.”
Pale Season is out on June 28 via Debemur Morti. See www.facebook.com/Thenighttimeproject for more information.
Fredrik wasn’t the main songwriter in Katatonia, so maybe that’s another reason why he really wanted to do this new project: to follow his own ideas.