Deja vu is a bitch. You may wonder why it happens or if it’s actually happening, but either way you’re just annoyed. Insomnium are one of those bands that develop a sound but don’t take it anywhere, so you can’t help but wonder what they’re trying to accomplish. Across The Dark was hyped up to be this fresh, provocative melodic death metal record with clean vocals, something far ahead of what they’ve previously done…can you guess how true that is?
In a nutshell, that’s the antithesis of the “truth”. Insomnium is apparently malnourished and in turn this has stunted their growth, turning them into the epitome of stagnation. The rhythm guitarist is still stuck playing the same down-picked riffs, the lead guitarist is still playing all his parts with one-string open notes (which extremely limits what key the song is in, in turn extremely limiting the variety of sound), and the vocal patterns are unchanged. The guitarists also need to note that even though you want to sound melodic you don’t need to have every goddamn harmonization or riff pattern be in thirds. Even with the addition of more keyboards, the atmosphere is dying down. Yes, the clean vocals are new, but honestly would sound better if someone else did them because they lack emotion and energy.
Basically what Across The Dark does is begins with a very Insomnium-sounding intro track, then diving into the relatively enjoyable Down With The Sun, enjoyable because of the sole fact that the guitarists are actually moving their hands around the neck rather than staying next to the root chords. After these two tracks, it all goes to a very..very boring hell because the band makes the same mistakes as they always have, but for a moment retain a sense of flow, which alone could have been considered a feat in itself if it weren’t for all the bull***.
Insomnium are a band who used to have some amount of potential. Why they chose not to embrace their talents is an enigma because with all these extremely standard piano breaks and monotonous compositions they’ve basically slapped ingenuity in the balls. If they decide to really try to write something special someday then they can probably redeem their career but as of now they’re just another band that plays melodic death metal. With four albums under their belt, a band usually has learned that it’s not about writing better songs than before, but writing because you have something unique to express, a mark they couldn’t have missed more.
