These are dark days, my friends, my children. Of late I have found myself standing in the shadow of winter, my health dwindling, the massive burden of work getting heavier upon my shoulders, my life itself crashing down around my ears - and to add insult to injury, this Saturday night, while on break (my vacation was fucking lousy. Who has a good vacation these days? Why bother asking?), I found myself watching, of all things, Headbanger’s Ball on MTV2. I don’t know why I did it. I knew it would be terrible. I guess it was just that as a metalhead, I’m so starved for talk, for music videos - by god, the very stuff of culture! - that it would be simply irresponsible of me to pass up the opportunity. Besides, as one of so few representatives of my subculture, it is in some way my duty to keep abreast of the face that heavy metal shows to the world.
And so it was that I found myself sitting in my mother’s house, knuckles whitening as my fingers tightened involuntarily around the longneck of my Corona (bless her heart, the woman wouldn’t know good beer if it smashed her over the head), staring in disbelief and righteous anger at this… this abomination, this mockery. To paraphrase the lovely Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, what… have you done… to MY SCENE?
If this is modern metal, ladies and gentlemen, then modern metal is dead. The program, for what it’s worth, was hosted by Jamey Jasta, of hardcore band Hatebreed, and featured - with a single, solitary exception, being Mastodon’s video for “Iron Tusk” - 2 hours of thick-skulled, lunkhead hardcore, preening eyeliner-slathered emo, and American ‘death metal’ bands populated exclusively by ugly, stupid, fat bald men in oversized cargo shorts. I nearly wept. By God, it’s gone too far. What has happened? Where have my favorite bands all gone? Broken up, or incarcerated (or dead), and in their place we have neanderthals or children. You bastards. You stupid, tasteless scum.
I need a hero, boys and girls. A rider from out of the sun, to cleanse the land of this mockery. To purify in fire. I need catharsis. Jesus christ, I need metal. I need it and you need it, for reasons personal and social, to dispense and dissolve the ego and self, to harden the body and clean out the soul, to destroy and to be beaten bloody. I need to rage, against the stupidity and the torpor in everyone else and in myself. It is desperately necessary.
Dark Tranquillity are one of the true greats of Melodic Death Metal. They fucking invented it, for chrissakes, the Gothenburg sound - they and In Flames and At the Gates were responsible for the birth of that little corner of metal and for the massive surge of interest and the burgeoning scene which followed - that same scene which has by now collapsed in on itself, having diverged into the equally execrable termini of the watered-down embarrassments that were once Soilwork or In Flames (how the mighty have fallen, indeed), or into that phenom of these first years of the new century, melodic metalcore, shamelessly and skillfully aping the riffs of their forbears and replacing the soul with… well, jesus, folks, there’s a reason this isn’t a hardcore column.
Dark Tranquillity never went sour, they just haven’t put a record out in a little while. Their latest LP was in 2002, but it feels like much longer - 1999’s Projector built on the model that DT helped forge, setting them in a slightly more gothic, experimental direction, but by 2002’s Damage Done they seemed to reach a synthesis of the experimental and the straight ahead.
And then they went away. There was label trouble, I hear - when is there not label trouble? - and a 2-disc retrospective earlier this year; the death knell for so many bands these days. The label cashes in, and that’s that. Everyone moves on, and next thing you know you’ve gotten through 2 hours of metal television without hearing the word ‘Sweden’ once.
Well, there is a glimmer, my friends, of light on the horizon. Earlier this month was released a 4-song EP, ‘Lost to Apathy’ (A new EP? Promising! But that name.), and what is there to say but that it fucking killed? I can now tell you: that EP did not prophesy falsely. I obtained through certain channels an advance copy of Dark Tranquillity’s new LP, Character set to be released on January 24, and it is precisely what this sad state of affairs has begged for. It is, briefly, highly melodic, utterly compelling, completely crushing, and most importantly, completely bereft of bullshit.
The production is full and rich, and is wonderfully polished without succumbing to the overly-compressed sound which is so often heard these days. There is no fat; doses of melody and heaviness are mixed in just the right proportion, and the band completely eschews the clean vocals and anthemic, soaring choruses by which In Flames, Soilwork and their progeny have induced so many winces of late.Immediately one is struck; the first track, ‘The New Build’, begins with a thick and speedy drum fill and does not stop, as the band barrels through the song as though imbued with a new purpose. The sheer energy coming out of the speakers thrills.
Simply put, this is the metal you remember; the razor-sharp thrash of ‘The New Build’ and ‘The Endless Feed’s epic crush wash that sour MTV2 taste out of the mouth, and that familiar feeling rises in the gut. The mouth curls into a sneer and you bang your head, and all is right with the world. It’s the Real Thing, baby. The Devil always knows his own.
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