The upshot as I saw it then was that it would give guitarist Tommi Holoppa more time to work on Greenleaf with Vaka-mainman and ex-Demon Cleaner drummer Karl Daniel Lidén. As it turns out, Holoppa is going to be working with Lidén, and Dozer bassist Johan Rockner as well — and a yet-unnamed singer — but on a new project, which The Obelisk is glad to reveal will be called Dahli.

Lidén has hinted that Dahli‘s music will take a heavier direction, but in the brief Q&A below, the talented multi-instrumentalist and producer gets more specific than he has yet about the project and what the goals are for the new band. As ever, the interview is after the jump. Enjoy.

This band was together before Dozer went on hiatus so Fredrik could go back to school, but is it more of a full-time (at least band-wise) project now? Does it have a name yet? How did Johan wind up on board?

Yeah, before Dozer went on hiatus we rehearsed very sporadically and it didn’t really sound as it sounds now, and also it was just me and Tommi. It’s definitely more of a full-time thing now. It’s the main focus for all of us.

Johan came on board right after Tommi told me that Dozer was gonna take a long break and that he now had time to pursue our thing. My first thought for bass was Johan since he’s the best bass player I know. Tommi agreed, we asked him, he accepted, and here we are!

The name will most likely be Dahli. You heard it here first, folks.

How will this affect Vaka? Is writing with Tommi any different for this project than for Greenleaf? Are both of those bands now going to take a back seat to this one?

I really love doing Vaka stuff, but I really missed being in a band. Just being able to throw ideas back and forth and actually being able to play the songs and hear how it sounds, you know? Since Vaka is just me and I brought everyone in for the Kappa Delta Phi album after it was written and the drums were recorded, none of it has actually been performed live as a whole, not even in a rehearsal space.

So it’s nice not having to rely 100 percent on your vivid imagination on how it might sound when all instruments are in place.

Writing for Dahli is pretty much the same as for Greenleaf. Either we start out with a riff, a drum beat or just an overall idea on what type of song we wanna do and then we take it from there. Both Greenleaf and Vaka will take a back seat to this one. Dahli is our number one priority.

Can you give any insight on what the music sounds like at this point? It’s been described in terms of chest hair, but how are the songs actually coming out?

It’s hard to explain (the standard answer). I’d say it’s about 70 percent new school Dozer but a bit more, for lack of a better word, metal. But it’s the good kind of metal. The chest haired kind. The bombastic fury kind. Also, I started using double kick drum pedals on the Vaka album and that’s been carried into Dahli. I wanted more punishing and less wussying around.

And even if some parts are a bit more melodic and “pretty” it’s still played with pummeling fury. There’s no sissying around what so ever in that department. The thing that I really think — and hope — will set the whole thing off is the vocals. I mean, the music will be the most badass we’ve done to date, no doubt, but we did not want to put the most obvious testosterone-infused vocals to it. We wanted to try something a bit different. Don’t get me wrong, I love those type of vocals and I’m sure we’ll squeeze ‘em in somewhere but the main lead we knew exactly what we wanted and who we wanted, so as soon as we’re 100 percent sure he’s on board, you’ll all know. I think the combo of the slightly more aggressive music and his particular type of vocals will create something you haven’t heard before.

It’s lumberjack metal in touch with its feminine side.

Do you have anything planned in terms of recording yet? I know the situation with the singer is still nebulous, but do you have any idea when there might be a demo or other release available?

The plan is to record a handful of tracks in late March just for ourselves to basically just get a good overview as to what we’ve created and hopefully find a label for the album.

And if everything goes according to plan (which things seldom do) we’ll record a full album late this year and do a European tour Spring 2011.

Will you be recording the band yourself or looking for someone else to do it? Are there any other plans or projects you’ll be taking on personally you’d want to mention?

I will most definitely record and mix the album myself. I don’t trust anyone else to do it.

Okay, I’d trust Steve Albini or Dave Sardy to do it, but we can’t afford either of ‘em. I know exactly what I want and most of the time I know how to get it. That’s basically the reason I got into audio engineering in the first place; I was never really happy with the sound of our recordings so I decided to learn how to do it myself.

As it looks now I may actually have a few things coming up this year. Only thing 100 percent confirmed so far is to record and mix the sophomore album from a band called Digression Assassins who play a type of spastic Dillinger Escape Plan mayhem metal. Calculated chaos. It’ll be the first thing I do outside my comfort zone, so it should be interesting (and hopefully good).

Stay in school, dudes and dudettes.

Karl Daniel Lidén on MySpace

That said, a Neurosis comparison isn’t necessarily inappropriate, and there are some Enemy Of The Sun-isms present for sure, but the brand of crushingly atmospheric experimentalism Vaka emit strikes even more like a hyper-realized version of Enslaved offshoot Trinacria, who released their Travel Now Journey Infinitely debut last year. There is a weighty darkness to the music that strikes as pure Scandinavian, rather than born out of US hard/metalcore as so many other post-metal acts are. Sounds more like itself, in other words. Not a bad thing.

Interestingly, the times listed on the inside panel of the gorgeous digipak for tracks two and three — “Born to Secrecy” and album highlight “I of Everything” — are wrong, which speaks of a change in the splitting between the two; 30 seconds of ambience is added to the end of “Born to Secrecy” and missing from “I of Everything.” Doesn’t affect how Kappa Delta Phi sounds at all, is just interesting to note, as though Lid?n had a last second change of mind, for whatever reason. Maybe he was hoping by starting it quicker, “I of Everything” could be more effective as a single. It’s certainly catchy enough.

Dozer guitarist Tommi Holappa guests on that song (he and Lid?n were in Greenleaf together), and the rest of Kappa Delta Phi is rife with appearances as well, including Dozer bassist Johan Rockner, former Sunride guitarist Wille Naukkarinen and Manne Ikonen, both of Finland‘s Ghost Brigade, I are Driod‘s Peder Bergstrand (ex-Lowrider), who also handled the layout,? Misha Sedini of Lingua (who donates an aggressive Scott Kelly impression to “Stalemates” and “Somersaults”) and producer Erik Nilsson, who contributes guitar to “I of Everything” and closing duo “Stalemates” and “For Redemption.”

Given the involvement of so many people, the musical scope of Kappa Delta Phi and the fact that recordings took place in no less than five separate studios in Sweden and Finland with three engineers beyond Lid?n himself, that this album didn’t turn into a colossal mishmash of unintelligible, chopped up noises with absolutely no cohesion or sense of flow is either a miracle or a testament to a genius Lid?n has been sitting on lo these many years. Not only does Kappa Delta Phi sound like an album from a band, it sounds like a singular vision brought together with precision far too exceptional for a debut release.

Vaka‘s niche is carved by extensive synth use, Lid?n‘s creative yet non-?tribal? drumming, varied vocals (delivered by various people), the piano and string mellotron. It?s more satisfying the louder it?s played, but at any volume, it?s good to hear a post-metal “band” unsatisfied with simply aping the subgenre?s founders. In a movement getting staler by the minute, this kind of creativity is just what could make keeping it going worthwhile.

Vaka on MySpace

Murkhouse Recordings