Towards the Twilight

In the late '90s melodic death metal was very a phenomenon: the idea of taking an atonal, dodecaphonic genre like death metal and merging it with NWOBHM type of melodies and harmonies was really a winning solution! It might be true that death metal, in doing so, is losing the great majority of its own primal purpose, but if it's taking a step backwards, two or more steps are straight ahead: with this approach, death metal achieves a longer-than-life memorability, not far from what is usually associated with the classic melodic metal of, for example, Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. This hybrid genre, that gained soon a legitimacy on its own, was spawned in Sweden by the intuitions of bands like At The Gates, In Flames or Dark Tranquillity. If the fingerprint for the style was established nearby Gothenburg, at the point that the whole genre was "nick-named" Gothenburg-sound, there were others countries following this innovative style, at least at that time, and Night in Gales proudly represented Germany!

This debut full-length album is something really well written, perfectly executed, and tasteful in its production qualities: it clearly falls into the Dark Tranquillity's "The Gallery" kind of mood, which is slightly different from what was conceived by At The Gates or In Flames, even unlike what Dark Tranquillity themselves ended to play in the further part of their career! A continuous stream of melodic lines, with the dual-guitars phrasing strictly split and panned in the left and right channels. Quite every guitar section is in harmony with the other guitar working on the opposite channel, so the merging of the two lines is done directly by the b rain of the listener, thus giving the illusion of a wider stereophonic space. Nowadays there are a lot of extreme metal productions that overlap a lot of frequencies between the instruments, in order to achieve the "wall of sound" given by not so separated lines, often all played at unison. For my tastes, it is way more interesting and challenging to have independent melodic lines interacting with each other and letting the listener to join them and building the harmonic context.

Not as legendary as the early Gothenburg records, this album still has nothing less than the classic releases of the genre: over the top musicianship and exquisitely written and arranged instrumental sections, and a good, solid, raspy growl, which is almost a scream not so distant from what we hear in black metal: Mikael Stanne himself, from Dark Tranquillity, used this screaming tone in his early performances. You surely remember that Henke Forss, the excellent screamer from the black metal band Dawn also concurred in the recording of In Flame's EP "Subterranean": it's all still melodic death metal, simply you don't have to associate the genre to the growling vocals technique. All that said, this album is truly a valid competitor for every other well-known release from the Gothenburg scene, even superior in some aspects, as it's a complex album, but not over-lengthy or over-produced.

Don't be thrown off by their image!

When I first found this album lying around, judging by name and appearance I expected power metal, but lo and behold I has very wrong. This is melodic-death metal to the core and not many bands have done better. To my surprise, the integrity of this music deserves much more credit than it gets. The guitars, like most melodic-death, are the highlight of this album, with many leads and harmonies, but not overbearing and well structured. The drums are not spectacular, in a technical sense, but the slight lack of technicality works excellently with the rest of the music, setting excellent tempo's but not overshadowing any of the other music. Much the same to say about the bass. The vocals are pretty much typical melodic-death sound... with a raspy, almost At the Gates-Slughter of the Soul sound to them. There are some really nice clean/acoustic guitar pieces mixed in as well. All in all this cd has an excellent sound, with all instruments well mixed and very well played. I am a little short on words, but it is a must-listen for any fan of the melodic death genre.