Review Summary: Melodic death metal is dead. Long live melodic death metal.
It’s 2025 and I am ready to call it: melodic death metal is the first genre in the history of music to be solved. You can gussy it up any which way you like -Amon Amarth’s drinking horns, Dark Tranquility’s murky synths, In Flames’ lack of shame, etc.- but the boundaries have been pushed as far as this unholy crossroads of melody and death metal will allow without crossing the rubicon into some other sound. This isn’t a particularly new revelation to anyone who has kept up with the genre (and, lord help you if you have), but it is necessary plate-setting to acknowledge that the “scene” -whatever is left of it- is in the best spot it’s been in since its heyday. While I no longer expect any of Gothenburg’s finest to crank out any work that elbows out the albums that propped up the scene in the first place, things have settled into a spot where most albums can be reliably fun and crank out one or two tracks that manage to stand out. More importantly, nobody (read: In Flames) is extending beyond their reach and approaching the sound as something it’s not (
Foregone was pretty dang good!).
The Halo Effect is the most pure distillation of the state of affairs. For those not in the know (and, again,
bless you if you are because there have been some dark days), its members are all comprised of the old guard from In Flames before it became a Ship of Theseus, plus Dark Tranquility’s vocalist, Mikael Stanne…who was also the vocalist for In Flames in their earliest days. While fate and bottom lines had torn them apart, the need to bust out sick ass harmonized leads and pummeling riffs brought them back together. The supergroup’s first effort,
Days of the Lost, had one of the teed up elevator pitches one could ask for (
Colony-era In Flames with the polish and occasional synths of Dark Tranquility) and was every bit as good as its billing suggested. It may come as a shock, then, that
March of the Unheard is more of the same -and that’s a damn good thing. Mikael sounds as fierce and operatic as ever, the leads are soaring, the riffs are sticky, and the rhythm section makes me want to headbang like it’s 2007 again (much to my 30-something neck’s chagrin).
And, in the interest of Keeping It Real, that’s all you
really need to know. It’s a melodic death metal album. A pretty binary thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach is all that is necessary, and this gets the up. Sure, there’s a micro-suite (“This Curse of Silence” and closer “Coda”) that seem poised to suggest something bigger on the whole with some fanciful motifs, but they sound more like interludes that will play while the band takes a mid-set bathroom break rather than something to anchor an album to. And that’s okay! The effort for the veneer is more than enough to show that these veterans still care about putting on a show. “Between Directions” is the best song on offer, managing to hit a devilishly catchy groove that harkens back to In Flames’ “Only For the Weak” while incorporating some genuinely cinematic strings (and a key change!). While this isn’t demonstrative of an old dog learning any new tricks, it’s a reminder that these old ones can still very much hit. If you need more examples, “Detonate” kinda sounds like “Pinball Map” and the title track sort of resembles “Swim.” We’ve moved the bizarro timeline of Dark Tranquility-In Flames cross-pollination from
Colony to
Clayman
But really, it’s In Flames. It’s Dark Tranquility. There’s melody… in my death metal. Call me a simpleton, but that's all I really need.
