Review Summary: For an album widely acclaimed as top-drawer dark metal, I do not find myself in a position to concur.
Judgment has never been my forte. You could say, as a seasoned Sputnik user, my head is filled with digits. There is a fine line between junkie and pro, and having found myself in the position of missing out on a bass shred, minute drum rolls etc. I can say right now that I’m not the most on-spot critic you’ll ever meet. There are other digits as well, simple arithmetic which fabricate the pointy stepping stones of my musical ascent. Now, at my right-hand I do not dispose of mammoth phoenix eyes for subtleties, and rest assured that I have no right-hand instrumental skills, and to top it off, I’ve got a fantastic wordplay thing going on. But essentially, my hand is practically never used as anything other than a Jack & Coke holder. So how do my bodily functions have anything to do with the fact that Dissection’s
Storm of the Lights Bane is easily one of the most overrated albums ever? All quips aside, I tried.
Come to think of it, it’s a rate, hate or masturbate kind of ordeal. My brain attempts to jump to an opinion, while my hand exercises the latter. But this time, it is neither. In short,
Storm of the Lights Bane is the most over appreciated black metal album ever created. Among a legion of unwarranted satanic rockers, Dissection were founded somewhat in the 11th hour, The Somberlain being their first beast. Lights Bane is Somberlain, but instead of crafting thick melodies interwoven with stout drumming, the release oinks out a bedlam of fragmented melodies and botched transitions. Take ‘Night’s Blood’, the most song-gratifying track on the album; scurrying in with a chord so broken, it literally sounds like the fret work is manhandled to pieces. The same chord is played a few times over after the hammering drums leave their ado, and then acquaints the melody, which follows a similar pattern.
Dissection promotes a mixture of impure black metal, albeit generic melodic death metal into an album which can’t even be considered black metal in essence. Nodveidt’s vocals go hand in hand with the music that accompanies it, but even if the album preaches clear-cut production, it hardly goes anywhere with the potential that is rather palpable. It is hard not to think of a sigh through pale molinia-grass. The first overblown single on the album comes under the name ‘Where Dead Angels Lie’ which is actually one of the best on the outing, embracing a pigmy-folk lead melody that breaks out from the severe ravaging of the riffs. The oxymoron speaks for itself, turbulent beauty, and all this shines through the roughly 5 minute songs. Everything from the guitars to the blast beats is satin-polished, yet the bass work can nearly never be heard throughout the songs.
‘Retribution’ seems to share an affiliation with ‘Unhallowed’ in its less dynamic approach, and both are more reminiscent of traditional black metal, although the resemblance can almost hardly be validated. Both songs have the same constancy of drum patterns and short-winded riffs, bleating of lead guitars. As a slivering fan of rawer black metal, and death metal that doesn’t lead astray at any given second, the album simply doesn’t have much give. Even having left it the benefit of the doubt, and shown more appreciation for tracks such as ‘Soulreaper’, the album ultimately doesn’t live up to its montaged hype. A lot bears affinity with Vinterland’s LP ‘Welcome My Last Chapter’, which only came out a year later.
Clocking in at 43 minutes, the album packs very little into such a sufficient span of time. Dissection’s Storm of the Lights Bane is an almost criminally overrated album which perhaps stands tall in its drumming patterns, but slips by creating a generally bland cacophony in metal music. To my great surprise, the album wore off on me in the early stages of my listening. That first blow will never grow back again, but until then, it is fair to say that Dissection is nothing but a fairly good band notorious for lame murders and deaths.
