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Back under the iron for the first time since getting back, after a week off. Held all lifts, it's going pretty well.

More importantly, there's a new Dark Tranquillity album, so I'm going to be listening to this a lot!

This is the most gothic metal leaning DT release in a while (since Fiction, perhaps?), and it's unashamedly emotional, with a stronger emphasis on clean vocals than we've heard in a while, and Stanne's precise harsh vocals supporting his emotive lyrical work.

You can hear Martin Brändström's electronics and composition underpinning much of the album - this is perhaps the most heavily synth driven DT release since Haven (my personal favourite DT album), although Endtime Signals is stylistically very different, and far more contemplatively paced.

Our Disconnect in particular is evocative of Brändström's work with synthpop outfit Kennelklubben. Also that is some Ghost-ass retro synth voices he dropped into Wayward Eyes - let me be clear that I am fully here for this.

I've said this in other conversations (notably with @tautology ), but Niklas' Sundin's departure (before the release of 2020's Moment) has left an audible absence that I'm not sure I'll ever entirely become accustomed to (note, though, his composer credit on False Reflection and multiple visual contributions to the album as an artist).

Johan Reinholdz's guitar work and composition, although firmly within the Gothenberg sound and DT's style, has the kind of classic metal characteristics that you'd expect from Michael Amott (whose sibling and former Arch Enemy bandmate, Chis, was in DT for a while recently.) I think Reinholdz's composition actually shines more on tracks such as opener Shivers and Voids, where he doesn't so closely echo his predecessors'' styles.

In composition terms, I think I prefer Reinholdz's take on DT's sound to the previous couple of albums,, but I'll genuinely have to do more comparative listening to pin that opinion down.

I've not really listened enough to pick favourites, but early frontrunners include Neuronal Fire, One of Us Is Gone, Drowned Out Voices, Wayward Eyes.

I've become very attached to July single Not Nothing in particular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBsVsLRSgfE&list=OLAK5uy_ml8qtc9Hc1-EYC1AAmJ0y5hNV5Bp9JsIE&index=4

"we are not nothing
we serve our purpose here
we tell ourselves what we need to hear
to make our mark
we are not nothing
it has got to be
the emptiness we are here to resist
we are here to defy"

Fundamentally, if you're into the particular thing that they do, Dark Tranquillity is a band that has famously never had a bad album, and still has not.

#MittwochMetalMix #DarkTranquillity