Artist: Dark Tranquillity
Label: Century Media
Release Date: 8/20/02
Average Rating: 3.33
Go to Judgment Committee Reviews of this Album
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Title: Damage Done Artist: Dark Tranquillity Label: Century Media Release Date: 8/20/02 |
There are currently 6 Reader Reviews of this album.
Average Rating: 3.33 Go to Judgment Committee Reviews of this Album |
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Submitted by faisal (111/3/02):
This album stinks....Abyss, Hel and Death are cock suckers for giving this a 5 out of 5.Clearly they have no idea that this kind of music has been around for a decade, starting with In Flames' Lunar Strain.
Do yourselves a favor, don't waste your money on this pile of garbage. There's nothing metal about it. There are no solos and shitty drumming. This is just the Swedish version of Korn, only melodic. Anyone can tune down and play cheap "riffs".
Dark Tranquility can suck my fucking dick...Even their "classic" album The Gallery stinks.
Submitted by batara_zahidi (10/21/02):
HELL YEAH!!!!! This is the best album of 2002. After the bad album, Haven, DT kicks my soul with this awesome album. Sorry to In Flames coz you can't challenge the lord of Gothenburg's palace. Great music with great production. All songs in this album fucking rule!!!!!!
Submitted by ATTITUDE (10/12/02):
Having had my interest piqued after hearing FEAST OF BURDEN, a song taken from their previous release HAVEN, I was hopeful that I would hear something special and I sure wasn't disappointed. FINAL RESISTANCE is a great way to start an album that just keeps getting better with each and every listen.Constantly unfolding a feast of all that's good about the GOTHENBURG scene but leaving out the shit DARK TRANQUILLITY have made an album that will hopefully take them up to the next level where they can deservedly take their place among METAL's elite.
Also included on the CD is the film clip too - the first single, the heaving MONOCHROMATIC STAINS. ALL METAL BANDS take note as it is a way of assuring your fans get to see your clips!
Submitted by Locrian (10/10/02):
I bought this on the strength of the Metaljudgment reviews, but after a month of constant listening and re-evaluation, I still just can't get myself to evaluate it as more than a "three skulls" album.
First the bad (so I can get it off my chest and play nice):
1. the guitars are mixed somewhat in the background, behind the vocals and the drums. This is not good, it just feels to me like the album is "blunt" somehow, or too "atmospheric" with not enough grit and focus.
2. the vocalist is singing ALL the TIME. He rarely ever shuts up to create space for the music to BE. I find this extremely irritating - death metal in whatever flavour was never meant to be a vocals-focused art. Go listen to Britney if that's what you want. Go sing for a boy-band if that's what you want to do.
3. Riffs. There aren't many. And yet, when I listen closely, they ARE there, but hidden. The vast sea of vocals, drums and keyboards just blunts them (This word "blunt" comes up a lot when I try to describe my feelings towards this album). There are very few moments (like in one or two songs maybe) where the RIFF takes centre stage, or where dazzling twin-guitar lines amaze and excite.
The good:
1. This is a solid record - very solid. Excellently produced (besides hiding the guitars in the background, see gripe #1 & #2)
2. Highly skilled execution, multi-layered song structures, lots of stops, starts, accents etc.
3. The guitars do sound good - nothing wrong with the tone or heaviness of this record - its definitely not wimpy-sounding.
In conclusion, this album in no way has the dynamics, focus or creativity to make me return to it again and again like any of, say, In Flames or At the Gates' work. The goose-bump factor here is negligible for me. I think people should hear a dissenting voice on this before rushing out to buy it on the strength of its glowing press reviews. For the lack of guitar-aggression and guitar riffs, as well as the too-atmospheric feel that this together with all the synth sounds give it, I subtract 2 skulls off of the "perfect score" that seems to be the norm for this release. This is a 3 out of 5 piece of work in my book - OK, pleasant, solid, but not riveting or revolutionary.
Submitted by Deacon Frost (9/5/02):
It has been a debate inside my head whether or not I could come up with a fair critique of Dark Tranquillity. Ever since I heard The Gallery and The Mind's I they have been one of my favorite bands out there. They took a U-turn of sorts with this album - that is least that I can describe it. I can go on and on about them trying to recapture some of the aggression of their old form while maintaining the integrity that they have laid down with ''Projector'' and ''Haven'' but you have heard that already from the other metal reviewers about how they can maintain some sort of the ''Jeffersonian'' integrity of their core sound while still pushing forward their ability to take a back step and ''GOING BACK TO THEIR ROOTS!'' which leaves me feeling dirty when I hear those statements. It’s so damn used that it makes me feel like I’m listening to my Theology teacher about how masturbation is some sort of spiritual rape and that makes people dehumanized to the extent that all souls are dirty and needs to seek redemption by having last rites performed when they die so that it will cleanse their soul and all sins forgiven which makes Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Alexander The Great and Jesus Christ chumps since they have not ask for their last rites which, leaves them tattered, raped, and unforgiven.Let's go with the actual review or you might expect another hundred or two words about the abomination that Jean Paul Sarte has in regards to In Flames recycling the ''Jotun Riff'' over and over again. The album starts with a somewhat uneven ''Final Resistance'' which has somewhat of a kick-ass verse riff which shows that they are still angry midgets after they started their journey into being the first band to sound like ''Depeche Mode'' which their comrades in arms from their country have started to do also. The band then begins to build steam when ''Hours Passed in Exile," ''Monochromatic Stains'' and ''Single Part of Two'' shows what the band does best. The songs have a sort of atmospheric feel into it that can make it sound soothing yet still can cut like a hot knife to a 3 month gouda cheese. The lyrics provided and penned by Stanne has always been topnotch which has always made them a step above their peers. The keyboards/synthesizer sort of adds to the mystique of each song but as much as it adds to the song, it does leave a room for mocking that some of it sounds like something out a Nintendo game and that you'll expect Link to just come out and whack you with his saber. The song that really has me smirking is ''White Noise/Black Silence'' which really makes the album stand out in a way that it won't be just piled into the ''Back To The Roots... Megadeth style... good try but you failed!''
In closing my melancholy review just like DT did with the song ''Ex Nihilo''... I feel the void has enriched the train of my consciousness letting me reach another arcane nirvana where all people are created under the image of Maynard James Keenan who would wear face paint and act mysterious, spiritual and at the same time satanic while being called Intelligent.
Submitted by Locrian (8/7/02):
Track 1: Wow! What a nice melodic keyboard loop-melody thing, smothered in heavy-as-shit rhythm guitars...dreamy, beautiful, heavy, what excellent vocals, so well ritten, what production...
Track 2: What a nice melodic keyboard...
Track 3: What a nice melodic guitar...
Track n: Yawnnn...Haven't Paradise Lost been making this album ever since whatever came after Shades of God? It's not a bad album, in fact it's damn good. It carries you away on streams of melodic "atmospheric" keyboards, heavy, heavy, heavy guitars, it makes you dread the moment when the CD finishes...but WHERE ARE THE RIFFS? Are RIFFS not what define metal, what made Jester Race great? Clayman, Predator's Portrait, Terminal Spirit Disease, were these masterpieces not constructed of RIFFS? Was the intricate double-guitar work not astounding, amazing, at times baffling?
This certainly is the best GOTHIC/atmospheric-sounding metal release so far this year. If you want atmosphere and heaviness, you've got it. Song construction - it's there. Production - oh brother, is it there. But do not besmirch the "G-word" by applying it to this overproduced piece of candy floss! Did no-one - not the band, the producer, (the guitarists, perhaps) at any stage during pre-production, production, mixdown, pre-release listening sessions etc, think "Hey, let's add some GUITAR RIFFS? Not just chunk-chunk rhythm ones, but ones that take centre stage, that are intricate and leaves the listener at times baffled"?
So, if you like your Depeche Mode with some heavy guitar, if Linkin Park was your last favourite purchase but you don't want the rapping - get this today!! Seriously, it's good, it is. The hypnotic-type melodies will not vacate your head for days. The heaviness will immerse you. But it does not in any way belong anywhere in a sentence that contains the words "Gothenburg" or "classic". Or "metal". OK, it is metal. Probably. It's riff-less melodic Depeche-metal. One word review: huh, what?
Were you talkin' to me, sorry, seem to have dozed off...
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