In a scene dominated by bands like
Children of Bodom,
In Flames,
Dark Tranquility, and
Arch Enemy, it seems to be getting harder and harder for bands to “break through”, if you will. In the melodic death metal scene, there has always been a collection of fairly popular bands that seem to represent the entire genre; but what if you were dig deeper and look for the bands that don’t have the resources to break through? You know, the bands that have been slaving for years and constantly producing good music, regardless of their status to the mainstream. If you were to dig deep enough, and look hard enough, chances are you would come across
Disarmonia Mundi.
Formed in 2000, originally as a progressive metal band by
Ettore Rigotti, the band has released three full length studio albums to date, with
Mindtricks being the most recent. The band decided to make the switch to melodic death metal sometime between 2001 and 2004, in between the release of their debut and sophomore albums, respectively. In doing so,
Rigotti would sift through several band members until finally coming upon what would seem to be the final line up in
Claudio Ravinale
and
Bjorn "Speed" Strid (also of the band
Soilwork).
Disarmonia Mundi consists of:
Ettore Rigotti - Guitars, Drums, Bass, Keyboards ,Clean Vocals
Bjorn “Speed” Strid - Death Vocals, Clean Vocals
Claudio Ravinale - Goth Vocals, Lyrics
The vocal contributions on the album by
Bjorn are well done; his scream is clear and able to cut through the music, and his clean voice adds a nice touch to almost all of the chorus’s on the album. He tends to rely mostly on his upper register when singing, but mostly to harmonize with
Rigotti. Many of
Bjorn’s vocal melodies tend to follow the guitar lines, which is some songs, is a nice touch, but doesn’t work through all of the songs. For example, on such songs as
”The Resurrection Code” and
”Nihilistic Overdrive”, the vocal and guitar lines are extremely similar, and it just adds to the power of the songs, respectively. However on songs with weaker riffs, such as
”Venom Leech and the Hands of Rain” and
”A Taste of Collapse”, it drags the songs down to a very mediocre and boring level. In short,
Bjorn’s vocals are a plus on the album, however, the same can not be said for co-vocalist
Claudio Ravinale.
Ravinale, unlike
Bjorn is unable to pitch his screams for a large majority of this album, and comes as inexperienced. For the most part, his vocals on the album will only hinder the listening experience; this is because his scream is high pitched and annoying, and it is a constant. On the title track
”Mindtricks”, the verses are split between
Ravinale and
Bjorn, and the song quite literally goes from being annoying to listenable every ten seconds or so. Many of the chorus’s also feature
Ravinale’s screaming…underneath the vocal harmonies. Needless to say, it hinders the harmonies.
All of the music on the album was written and played by founding member
Ettore Rigotti. He does a great job of arrangements and displays his talent on all of the instruments very well. The first thing you will notice as a listener, is his use of the keyboards and synthesizers. About half of the songs will start out with an atmospheric synth line, and
all of the songs will have predominant synth lines. The keyboards quite as well done as is the case in many of their metal brethren {
Symphony X, Dream Theater), but for the most part add to the driving force of the songs and help to create a dark atmosphere throughout. Many of the guitar parts off of the album will leave you with the feeling of Déj* vu’, in the respect that many of the riffs sound almost exactly the same. For example,
”Celestial Furnace” contains an intro riff that sounds much like the intro riff in the song
”Nihilistic Overdrive”, which sounds like…well, I’m sure I don’t need to go on, but you get the point. Fortunately, post-intro the songs begin to develop their own identity, but the fact remains, the beginning of every song shows no diversity or real creativity. For the remainder of the respective songs, some interesting thrashy riffs are displayed, as is the case in songs like
”Parting Ways” and
”Liquid Wings”. For a short moment, the listener may seem to think that the similarity in intro riffs is sheer happenstance, but then the thought will be trampled s soon as the chorus of each song arrives; this is so because of quite a few contributing elements, mainly the clean vocals, and once again, you guessed it, the guitar riffs. Almost every chorus will feature the same riff as the introduction, and harmonized clean vocals, layered with the goth vocals. Needless to say, frustration while listening may occur. The guitar solos however, are another topic entirely. None of the solos consist of finger blistering licks, but are a bright spot in each song. As opposed to using speed,
Ettore Rigotti relies more on the melodic side of soloing to add to the songs, and does so nicely.
The rhythmic section of the music leaves something to be desired. For almost all of the album, no excuse me, all of the album, the bass is not heard. I’m not really sure why it’s even mentioned in the band member contributions, even with a bass booster, it’s inaudible. The drumming doesn’t quite make up for the absence of the bass, seeing as the beats remain the same in almost every song. A mid-tempo double bass beat is present throughout almost all the verses and introductions, and is sometimes used even in the chorus’s. Ok, ok, I know, in metal, that’s common, but at the same tempo in every song? Needless to say, it is fairly boring and contributes little to nothing to the music. If anything positive were to be said about the drumming off of
Mindtricks it would be that it is solid. The drumming is never loose and sloppy, and creates a solid level for the guitars and vocals to build upon…never loose or sloppy, but never really creative either; a rather mediocre album percussively.
All in all, despite all of its flaws,
Mindtricks makes for a somewhat enjoyable listen. The album is nothing new or progressive, and it’s a must for fans of melodic death metal, but for someone looking for a new band, or a die-hard fan, it’s worth a listen. Fans of
Soilwork may want to give
Disarmonia Mundi a listen, seeing as the two bands sound fairly similar.
Pros:
-
Bjorn’s clean vocals are well done
-
The guitar solos
-
The synth/keyboard lines are creative and interesting at times
Cons:
-
Repetitive
-
Drumming is mediocre…very mediocre
-
No bass
Recommended Tracks:
-
Celestial Furnace
-
Nihilistic Overdrive
-
Resurrection Code
Overall: 3 out of 5
