Having helped to formulate the Gothenburg(Sweden) melodic death metal sound, they've released their 9th full length album, 20 years after their first demo(Enfeebled). The band worked on these songs for about a year. They spent months rehearsing and brainstorming for new ideas, to improve their songs. The process included lots of changes, until the whole band felt that each song sounded just right.
The drummer, Anders Jivarp, was very meticulous on how he tuned his drums, and made lots of tonal changes, with the advice of a sound engineer. Another sound engineer also spent a lot of time tweaking his equalizer, while the stringed musicians rehearsed their licks. In the studio, it took them about 4 hours to record each track. Scores of tracks may be used on 1 song, for instance, there might be as many as 20 keyboard tracks used on one song. They are perfectionists and do a lot of re-takes. Mikael Stanne, likes to spend a couple of hours practicing his vocals in the studio restroom, to prime his voice, before he starts to have his vocals recorded. After the long recording process was completed, the tracks were sent to Denmark, to be mixed. This album contains 13 songs and lasts for about 48 minutes.
Shadow In Our
Blood starts out with a groovy keyboard intro, then breaks out into some energetic shredding. It's a very melodic song. The songs; In My Absence and The Grandest Accusation, thrash mildly with relaxing piano interludes. These songs are atmospheric. Her
Silent Language features clear vocals that help to add a gothic mood to the song. The whole song is actually structured like a goth metal song. I'm not a big fan of goth metal, but this song does sound very good. I Am
The Void thrashes relentlessly, with a couple of
Judas Priest like guitar hooks. Their is also a flowery guitar solo that sounds similar to those by Roope Latvala of
Children Of Bodom. Surface The Infinite starts with a catchy guitar lead that resembles the one on the
Bush song,
Machine Head. But soon the song reverts to their usual style. Iridium starts off like a goth metal song, with clear vocals. This alternates with an epic Scandinavian style of metal, with a melancholic mood. Star Of Nothingness is a 2 minute instrumental, though it's a slower song, it sounds like they've borrowed a melody from the song ,Black Magick, by
Satan's Host.
Most of these songs seem to sound alike, but they're not, they've got subtle differences. It just seems like that, because it's such a highly polished production, and flows very evenly. They've smoothed out most of the rough edges. I listened to their previous album,
Fiction, on line, and I like this new album better than that one. This album has a very relaxing atmosphere, though there is plenty of mild thrashing and shredding. It is death metal, although it does lack the wildness, rawness, and elements of hatred that are associated with many other death metal bands. This album has a lot of progressive influences and some goth influence. At some points, the album resembles Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, by
Dimmu Borgir. Their music sounds a lot like
In Flames, but they were actually just a spin off of this band. Considering that vocalist Anders Friden left this band to join
In Flames, which sounds very similar to
Dark Tranquillity. Fans of
Dark Tranquillity or
In Flames will not be disappointed with this album.
: Uncaught Error: Attempt to assign property "cercle" on null in /home/spiritofmetal/public_html/class/f_groupe.php:251
Stack trace:
#0 /home/spiritofmetal/public_html/album.php(635): affiche_commentaire()
#1 {main}
thrown in