lista zespołów Melodic Death Dark Tranquillity We Are the Void

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.

I never have been an enormous Dark Tranquility fan, but that's not saying that I don't really like their music, and after hearing their latest album, "We Are the Void", my opinion of them has raised dramatically. In other words, I am personally very impressed with this records use of piano synthesizers and unique melody. This album really surprised me after hearing their other records, and almost could be considered an improvement over earlier releases.

As far as technicality, this album is so-so. The music is not very fast most of the time, which isn't really a problem, but just is something to note because everyone is different. The element of this album that I really enjoyed was it's piano accompaniment to the chorus and other verses. This album is heavily keyboard oriented and uses a lot of ambient qualities in the music. The melodies are both creative, and ear candy. It's that type of melody that doesn't follow traditional patterns and takes particularly pleasant sudden turns in it's course often, keeping us interested, which is very important as far as music in general goes. The drummer isn't extremely talented, but he certainly isn't bad either. As I said, this album isn't that technical, relative to other melodic death bands I've heard. The guitars have a nice and heavy sound though, and their are a few interesting solos here and there which adds even more variety to the music. The vocalist definitely has a decently developed voice that manages not to be annoying (as some bands I've heard from this genre lately).

In a nutshell, when you get down to it, this album is actually really beautiful and impressed me fully with it's polished feel and tight instrumentation. Definitely a solid 17.5/20.