Review Summary: This is not a metal album with melodies all over it. This is a melodic album with a metal sound underneath it. Notice the difference?
For many years the Metal genre is looked down by people as noise. Mainstream metal bands only helped them shape that thought, and people were stubborn to surrender to the fact that most of the metal music took a lot of skill to produce. Emotion in metal was a taboo, and was completely turned over by calling the deep raspy vocals “mindlessly shouting”. People couldn’t be more wrong.
The album is a sad and gloomy record. A look at the first track title concludes it.
Nocturne is a saddening piano ballad with low melodies slowly progressing into the first metal track:
The Day It All Came Down. When the song starts, it’s easy to reckon the overuse of the melody. This is however not a bad thing. Insomnium quite put it out well. They set the melody on the front step, yet they didn’t forget the importance of the rhythmic section. The whole album is packed together with an extremely big load of melodies. They harmonize, put a sad tone down or make a song sound more aggressive. The difference of a lead riff and another lead riff is quite easy to recognize, yet doesn’t completely differ much from it.
The reason why this band is called “the second Opeth” is because of the extensive use of acoustic parts. Almost every song has 1 or more acoustic parts where the listener can relax from the fury that the band made a minute ago. It’s hard to switch from a heavy part to a relaxing part. Insomnium however perfectly executed in every song. Their songwriting in terms of switching from different riffs is incredible tight. Just like Opeth they tend to forget the standard formula and just write what their heart brings up. Songs like
Disengagement reach a fairly long length, while some shorter songs such as
Bereavement and the depressive album closer
Song of the Forlorn Son have reached climaxes where words are just inconvenient to tell the beauty from it.
Of course, it’s not the Valhalla of music. The approach towards the switching themes between acoustic and distorted remains the same throughout the album. The melodies always take the frontline while the rhythm section tends just to follow the lead guitar. This leads sometimes to some generic chords. The chords however always go nice along with the melodies, making it somewhat less bad. Another negative thing is Nillo’s voice. His growling is fantastic, and his spoken word is decent. His flaw lies in the fact that he barely changes his voice. It’s just like the music every time the same approach. It’s not that band though because as I already mentioned, it’s mostly about the melodies.
Although the definition: “The album starts overwhelming, and ends emotional, but lacks in between” is vaguely true, the album deserves no statement like that. No single song is unnecessary or bad and differ enough from the other songs. With only some minor flaws in the two songs
Death Walked the Earth and
Disengagement, and primary perfection in every song, it’s fair to say we’re talking about a classic album. An unknown classic album it is.
Top 6 songs:
1. Song of the Forlorn Son
2. Nocturne
3. The Day It All Came down
4. Closing Words
5. Bereavement
6. Under The Plaintive Sky
Songs I don’t care for
None. Every song has a different feeling, and every song should be considered as a classic.
