Let me preface this review with a big, fat, grain of salt: I'm in love with Swedish Melodic Death metal – and I have been since the late 90's. So when the opportunity came up to review the newest from Dark Tranquility, I jumped all over the chance like ants on a Cheeto. Absolute pioneers in the genre, Dark Tranquility have been releasing albums for close to an astounding 3 decades.
To me, it's still 2007 and I'm living inside of their albums Damage Done, Fiction, and Character. The influence those albums had over me changed the what I liked in music, how I listened to music, and how I wanted to learn guitar. I wanted to make music that was… like that. Beautiful. Gritty. Explosive. These albums had a way of igniting the dormant neurons in my brain and Dark Tranquility may have well been one of the first bands that made me make 'ugly face' while listening to them. How else do you describe something that resonates with you so powerfully?
Over the years, Dark Tranquility's sound has held like a backbone in a body – keeping at their heart the vision of the melo death tried and true. Sure, they've gone through some more experimental phases, toying with a variety of temperaments from 'tougher' to 'sloggier' to 'gothy'. Still, for as long as they've been a band I have to say that they've aged relatively gracefully. Each release feels like Dark Tranquility picked a parallel lane to melo death and tried something a bit new or a bit different – maybe in the engineering or overall vision of the album.
And, to be fair, these experimentations didn't always work towards their favor – not each release was a 10/10. But such is growth and without Atoma, Construct, or We Are the Void, Dark Tranquility wouldn't be who they are today. They're not bad albums by any means, but you can tell that for them it was time to expand into something new. Without Dark Tranquility, alongside bands such as At The Gates and In Flames, perhaps the Gothenburg scene would have shriveled and faded. Without these substantial influences, we might not have had so many inspired bands creating delicious licks to listen to.
Moment, the last release before Endtime Signals, was crowd-pleasing. I liked it. I didn't have it on repeat like Fiction, but I liked it. Not much about the album particularly stood out to me, but I was happy for it's release because it's always good to hear 'classic' Swedish metal done well. However, it left me wanting… something more. I wanted something memorable, or a song to latch onto like "Monochromatic Stains". With that in mind, I had no clue what to look forward to with Endtime Signals.
Opening song "Shivers and Voids" had kind of a lot to live up to. Crisp and clean, the opening is immediately engaging, veering quickly into extremely familiar keys and tones signature of Dark Tranquility. The drums are notably distinct. Joakim Strandberg Nilsson, the band's new drummer, nails it on decades-old beats but adds a lil' spice to something I knew by heart. Little fills and trills add an unexpected and very welcome newness.
The tracks are short (short for metal bands anyway) coming in at somewhere between 4-5 minutes and before I could properly process "Shivers and Voids", "Unforgiveable" came on and I completely forgot what I was contemplating. There it was. What I was looking for had arrived. The chorus of "Unforgiveable" gave me that melty, hot bath, almost decadent feeling I was looking for. It's fast but has this new production that gives the song a snap like breaking a fresh carrot in half. Old meets the new in "Unforgiveable". Everything signature about the band has a fresh coat of paint on it and the song simply shines.
That feeling bleeds into the next song "Neuronal Fire". The song plays with a hugeness that is hard to describe – some kind of synth or keys swell alongside the entirety of track and just when you think it can't get any bigger, a deep major chord strikes and sits you back in your seat.
A few songs play with clean vocals that for the life of me remind me of Mikael Åkerfeldt's cleaner vocals at times – down to the slight warble and choral or reverb effects. "Not Nothing" is the first song to do so, and it feels very evolutionary in this instance. It's clear that Dark Tranquility are pushing themselves for greatness. "Not Nothing" sounds like the band is all grown up and ready to take what they've learned and put it into something that can easily slide into a modern lineup. I also appreciate that the lyrics are not cringe-worthy, so it's a moment of vulnerability you can enjoy in peace.
In comparison, the following track "Drowned out Voices" is more mid, but still a better song than they've released in years. Followed by "One Of Us Is Gone", this song is slower and more emotional than the prior. I appreciate it's placement and again the clean vocals are extremely welcome. The song has a nice build and a hint of gothyness, harkening back to their building roots. Mikael Stanne, vocalist, can really sing (relative to the genre, of course). This is a great moment to show you that he can.
Keeping the pace slower, the next track "The Last Imagination" is another mid-tier track comparatively. It's a good song as well and keeps hooks as traditional as they made some 30 years ago. "Enforced Perspective" ups the game and has the aforementioned "delicious licks".
In total, Endtime Signals boasts an impressive 14 tracks. Overall, it feels as though some new blood in the band may have spurred what was already there towards immortality. This album is thoughtful and hungry. With Endtime Signals, it feels as though the band wants to prove that they've earned their spot at the top of the melo death mountain. They didn't have to, and yet they've reawakened with an energy and fervor that I've been waiting for for a long, long time. Track "Wayward Eyes" is a perfect example of this energy. It's like they're saying "we've been around, but we're not worn out or broken". Frankly, this is exactly the kind of album I didn't know I wanted. It's new, fresh, and yet as inherently familiar as the patterns on the ceiling when you first open your eyes in the morning.
Endtime Signals will be a staple in Dark Tranquility's discography. They've managed to reinvent their very own wheel with an unignorable brightness. If I had to find fault in an otherwise phenomenal release, I'd say a track or two could've been left out and some of the key choices have been done so much that it feels a tad redundant. However, in tracks like "False Reflection", their ballad-style approach to new music is cathartic – probably as much for the band as for the listener. Developed and mature, Endtime Signals is the album I was wanting from a band I've loved for so many years.
