Along with At the Gates and In Flames, Dark Tranquillity shaped melodeath genre. Back in the 90’s three bands from Gothenburg, Sweden made an entirely new genre, with the three becoming famous around the world for their music. At the Gates disbanded, and then reunited a couple of years ago only to release a mediocre attempt at coming back. In flames at the other hand remained on the map of metal, but it would’ve been better if the band just ceased to exist after the founding member, Jesper Strömblad, left the band since In Flames lost all of the band’s charm after Anders Fridén took things over.
Dark Tranquillity continued to play their thing, melancholic, at times immensely aggressive melodic death metal. The band never became more famous than the other two, but their discography is the most constant one. Quality records were published every couple of years, until 2010 and We Are the Void and an album that wasn’t in line with their previous releases. I thought that was just a single mistake, waited for the next offering. And when Construct got released back in 2013, I spun it once and said to myself that the band is lost to me.
Well, they are back again, with the new record, Atoma. I haven’t planned on checking it out, thought that Dark Tranquility fell into a circle of self-destruction and that they’ll never get back on the track. But since lots of metal forums shouted about how the record is awesome, I finally decided to spin it for a couple of times. Oh my, was I surprised.
Atoma is a definite back into form for Swedish metal juggernauts. The album kicks off with Encircled, a muscle composition filled with cool riffs and memorable hooks. It continues with Atoma and Forward Momentum, two tracks showing how a band can get out of stagnation while still keeping their signature sound, without experimenting too much.
The music is good old Dark Tranquillity. Melodeath riffs, superb keyboards, and Mikael Stanne’s haunting shrieks. Atoma is a great comeback, filled with great solos and intense riffs. The songwriting is a classic melodeath one, but with lots of variations, making the songs to sound fresh and memorable.
Other favorites include Faithless by Default and its true-to-the-bone lyrics, Clearing Skies filled with great solos and memorable chorus, dark and haunting Our Proof Of Life, and intense Force of Hand with an impressive bridge and cool chorus. The band’s use of keyboards in incredible, they are placed in the background but always present giving all songs a dark and melancholic feel, while never becoming dominating. I don’t really like keyboards in my metal, but Dark Tranquility knows how to use them. Atoma is a great album, without many filler songs, and while the band kept the sound they became famous for, there is enough variation in every song for the sound not to become stable and predictable.
There are a couple of issues, though. Songs can end too abruptly, without any meaningful finale, there are a couple of compositions that could’ve been left out of the record, and at times you’ll get the feel that the album is too streamlined, without many differences between songs. But, overall Atoma is one of the strongest melodeath releases of 2016, an album that brought back my faith in Dark Tranquillity, and I’m immensely happy for that.
