Artist: Dark Tranquillity Album: Character

Year: 2005
Duration: 48:32

A Journey Through the Character of Dark Tranquillity's Album

Dark Tranquillity, a Swedish melodic death metal band, has been in the industry for over thirty years. The band has seen many line-up changes and released thirteen studio albums, making it difficult to choose their best work. In this blog post, we will take a closer look at their 2005 album, Character. We will provide a brief history of the band, the music genre of the album, the best songs from the record, the most innovative parts and provide constructive criticism to the album.

Dark Tranquillity's journey began in 1989 when founding members Mikael Stanne (vocals) and Niklas Sundin (guitar) started playing music together. The band's name Dark Tranquillity was influenced by a poem by the English poet John Milton. Initially influenced by bands such as Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, Dark Tranquillity's music evolved to incorporate influences from progressive metal, thrash metal, and melodic death metal. The album Character released on January 24th, 2005, shows the mature side of the band's sound.

Character's music genre is melodic death metal, a subgenre of death metal that incorporates melodic and harmonic structures into its songs, giving it a more melodic and accessible sound than typical death metal. The album features ten tracks that are filled with blistering guitar riffs, pounding drums, and Mikael Stanne's growling vocals. The record's overall sound isn't groundbreaking, but the band's precision in playing their instruments is something we can't ignore.

The best tracks from Character are The New Build and Lost to Apathy, which perfectly captures the signature elements of the band's sound. The former contains a catchy guitar riff that will stick in your head for days, while the latter has a memorable melody that's full of passion and sorrow. The rest of the album is great to listen to just to hear the band's execution and the technical skill in their playing.

A significant innovation of the album is the band's new use of clean vocals. The Endless Feed features a clean-sung chorus, which provides variation in the album's sound, making it less repetitive. While the cleans didn't feel out of place, it didn't complement the harsher vocals well enough to stand out.

However, Character's songwriting can feel formulaic. The tracks sound similar without having any clear distinction between them, and the album lacks defining moments to stand out in their extensive catalog. Nevertheless, the album's impeccable execution in playing the instruments makes Character a solid album.

In conclusion, Character is a well-executed album that encapsulates the band's sound. The record shows the maturity in the playing and provides subtle innovations that bring freshness to the genre. While it doesn't stand out as the band's best work, it's still worth a listen. We hope this review has provided enough insight for listeners to check out Dark Tranquillity's vast collection of music.