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Dagoba > Dagoba > Reviews
Dagoba - Dagoba

Inversing values. - 45%

Diamhea, August 27th, 2014

While I still consider Dagoba one of the more respectable options when one is in need of a specific epithet of quasi-industrial groove metal, the further I dig into their catalogue the more embarrassed I become. The problem here with Dagoba is that it is very much a product of its time. There just aren't enough keyboards here compared to later efforts like Poseidon and Post Mortem Nihil Est, and the songwriting isn't as cogent or convincing as on What Hell Is About, making this an easy one to throw to the bros at the end of the day. The band seems to be too preoccupied with trying to evoke the spectres of a style that was honestly more or less dead on arrival in the '90s, and by 2003 the list of excuses was growing thin.

To be candid, I still enjoy the stripped-down bounciness infused into many of these tracks, as the occasional screeching sample gives way to some nifty keyboard effects and the occasional melodic interim. Nor do I mind the gruff, atonal inclination these guys are working with here, but the better moments of the album tend to revolve around small hints of what was to come from them later on. Izakar can wield a groove with passion, sure, but his riffs aren't exactly of the load-bearing variety. Without much else going on, it just grows far too tiring after a short while. Dagoba more or less treads a thin line between Roots-era Sepultura and Fear Factory, with a marked preference for the former, what with the tribal undercurrents that Costanza has always infused into his playing style. For what it is, it isn't horrible, but the band would undoubtedly improve later on.

Taking all of this into account, "Another Day" still stands out for a number of reasons. It was obviously the attempt at a single, and while it sounds like Linkin Park at times, it is pretty catchy and has some (relatively) clean vocals, which is a welcome deviation from the exhaled bellowing that dominates much of the vocal palette. Things improve once the album breaches its halfway point, as "Dopesick" has an appealing amount of tension injected into its inner workings, and "Act 1, Part 2" is also a decent pit opener, solidifying the fact that Dagoba was always destined to suffer endless rotation as an opening act for live shows. The rest just doesn't do a whole lot for me. I really miss the keyboards here, as they are mainly hoarded for some of the short interludes and are constantly interrupted with random samples that don't really add much to the scope of the sound.

People often compare Dagoba to Sybreed, but the gap between the two is marked here, as this is just straight up groove metal without much heterogeneity in tempo or time signature. It will get your head bobbing, but is only worth ingesting in small doses to help circumvent the dearth of variety. The vocals may kill this for many people, and I can understand why. Oymyakon comes off a bit lost here, almost as if he was propped in front of a microphone and told to sound tortured and angsty. His grunts are okay, but I'm really not feeling the half-shouts that he occasionally employs.

In the end, Dagoba is without a doubt the last album to check out from the band, as all of its younger siblings do exactly what it does, only better. Regardless, I would still take this over Sepultura's output from this period. Check out "Another Day" if you are really that curious, or want to get a kick out of the band's humble beginnings. I can do without this one on the whole, though.