Artist: Dark Tranquillity
Label: Century Media
Release Date: 8/20/02
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Title: Damage Done Artist: Dark Tranquillity Label: Century Media Release Date: 8/20/02 |
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Abyss's Review:
Holy shit! There's actually a band from Sweden who's still pissed off! Dark Tranquility has returned to take their proper place atop the heap of Gothenburg bands. Don't get me wrong, I liked Projector and Haven, but those were albums that we accepted, Damage Done is what we really wanted. This album should single-handedly remind you of why you should be disappointed in Soilwork's last two completely overrated albums. In Flames' Clayman? Yeah, I liked it too, but it doesn't hold a candle to this release.
"Holy shit! There's actually a band from Sweden who's still pissed off!" This album is the best in the genre since The Gallery and Slaughter of the Soul, but it is no throwback, although it sounds like it on first listen. This album constitutes the sound that I think all of these Gothenburg bands have been striving for. It maintains an awesome sense of melody, but it also refrains from the happy sounding efforts that we've heard recently. This actually, song wise, is somewhat similar to Clayman, but its production makes it come across as much heavier. Basically this sounds like In Flames do live.
I made the mistake of listening to this long before I was supposed to review it, and consequently I found it was robbing time from the releases I was reviewing the last few weeks. From opening track to closing track this album is vital, exciting, and immaculate. I honestly don't think I've ever been quite this satisfied with an album by an established act that was so dear to my heart before. It blew away my expectations. I expected to like this record, I didn't expect to be able to compare it to the classic albums that defined the genre over seven years ago. This album stands right up along side them and never shows even a blemish. If you get this album you might as well throw out all of your melodic death metal discs of the last year or two, you won't like them nearly as much. In fact, donate them to some needy metalhead, for when you own this album you're a rich person already.
"I honestly don't think I've ever been quite this satisfied with an album by an established act that was so dear to my heart before." The most satisfying part of all of this is that you no longer have to make excuses. I will never have to say, "Sure it's not like their older albums, but it's really good in its own right." This album isn't "good in it's own right" it's just good, period. Who would have believed that you can "mature" and "expand your sound" without re-hashing old new wave songs. A lot of the success of this album has to do with its production, which is polished and pissed at the same time. I hope all of the other melodic death metal bands are paying attention. One word review: Refreshing.
Death's Review:
As Famine put it in an email to the Metal Judgment team the day the Damage Done promos came out - this one really hits the G-Spot. As in Gothenburg.
"Personally, I was totally taken by surprise by this killer release." Personally, I was totally taken by surprise by this killer release. Sure, I had always known Dark Tranquillity to be one of the founders of the Gothenburg scene along with At the Gates and In Flames (Andres Friden of In Flames actually appeared on the 1993 debut Skydancer), and I had appreciated the band's more recent material, but I was totally unprepared for this amazing new record. Combining the aggression of At the Gates and The Haunted with the musicality and melody of In Flames and well-executed keyboard accents reminiscent of Iron Maiden's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, with the bounce and commercial sensibility of the best Soilwork material, Damage Done literally is, in many ways, the best of all worlds.
It starts right out of the box with the awesome "Final Resistance": a song I cannot for the life of me get out of my head (sure, it reminds me in the verses of In Flames' "Only for the Weak" but only slightly and that song doesn't have anywhere near the balls on display here anyway). What rocks so perfectly about this tune and this album is the way they combine balls-out aggression and speed-thrashiness a la At the Gates with the bouncier commercial riffs--right in the same fucking song! Other tracks continue the trend of delivering absolutely first-rate quality metal that makes you want to kill and sing all at the same time (e.g., "Monocromatic Stains," "Damage Done"). And--somewhat surprisingly for a band that can't spell it's own name (doesn't "tranquility" have only one "l" in it? Or am I making that up?), the lyrics are downright poetic and really add to the experience. Sure, "Single Part of Two" is lyrically kind of a "love song" but the lyrics really, really work: "A distance kept that never fails to close us in, and forget the days that still linger on, inside the single part of two, we'd rather leave no trace and not look back than face the anxiety here and now." Or how about the cool "Format C: Cortex": "There is no need for you to start revolutions, I don't want you to talk to the minions, just show me a brand new face, an open mind against a dying race"? I love it.
This is top notch material all around. From the production to the songwriting to the lyrics to the riffs to the fact that this is a new Gothenburg album with almost no clean vocals, bucking the trend. Fast parts, thrashy parts, headbanging riffs, great lyrics, great production: Damage Done has it all. If In Flames gets big and goes mainstream Dark Tranquillity is right there to step into there place. This album is better than the last In Flames and Soilwork albums anyway.
"Fast parts, thrashy parts, headbanging riffs, great lyrics, great production: Damage Done has it all." Too bad there's no guitar solos, otherwise this might be bordering on perfect. Definitely top ten of the year material, I'd expect this one to be near the top of most metalheads' year-end list.
Hel's Review:
Ah, Dark Tranquillity. I have fond memories of Haven. Unlike some of my peers, I did not hold this record up to some ideal of how I felt it should sound, I merely enjoyed it for what it was: a stellar work of metallic wonder. Nor do I choose to hold Damage Done up to these kind of comparisons.
"Ah, Dark Tranquillity. I have fond memories of Haven."
"Damage Done is a dynamic and intense album that every metalhead needs to have in their collection." In general, this is my philosophy on reviewing records, as individual entities, more than as markers in a particular band's career. I believe that doing the reverse is folly, as each record is a reflection of the state of the members of the band at that moment in time, and therefore the value of each is derived as much from those experiences as from what it sounds like when compared to a different record they released at a different point in time. But, to each their own, I suppose. Abyss can always be counted on to provide the perspective of where an album falls amongst a band's prior releases, so if this is what you need, you know where to find it.
My vaguely irrelevant ranting aside, I believe that regardless of which approach you choose to appraise Damage Done, you will find that it is a most outstanding album. Musically, it is a wonderful conglomeration of melodic guitar riffing and sing-along death vocals. The musicianship rivals that of any of their Swedish peers. But what truly makes this band, and by extension this album, truly incredible is their songwriting ability. Each song is well structured, with a complexity of construction which is largely unrivaled in the metal world, and is combined with catchy lyrics that manage to make the entire record completely irresistible. Damage Done is a dynamic and intense album that every metalhead needs to have in their collection.
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