9/17/2012

Insomnium - Since the Day It All Came Down (2004)

If you go back to my Insomnium review from earlier this year than you may recall how I was a bit of a late comer to this Finnish melodic death metal bands discography and although I certainly could have bought all their albums by now I've taken it slow. Mostly because my own personal tastes have largely been more centered around older releases, but also because I've wanted to really absorb everything the band has to offer and its paid off listening to their music slowly and discovering new and interesting traits each time.

'Since the Day It All Came Down' is the bands second album and although similar, it seems like a great deal of growth and development exists over this and their debut, 'In the Halls of Awaiting.' Opening with a piano/synth pieced called, 'Nocturne,' the band immediately plows into 'The Day It All Came Down' with mid-paced heavily melodic guitars and a greater deal of progressiveness within their sound. While this song and the following do tend to offer a lot of the same core elements it feels like this album is slightly faster, has more acoustic parts and the atmosphere and overall performance are improved too.

Insomnium: Melo death saviors
An aspect that really sticks out on this release are the calmer acoustic progressive tinged parts, especially those in, 'The Moment Of Reckoning' or 'Death Walked The Earth,' which to me sound distinctively Opeth in character, though honestly far better and more engaging than anything those Swedes were coming up with at the same time. The leads are incredible in this record too, the beginning and basically all of 'Bereavement' is simply gorgeous, likewise 'Daughter Of The Moon' is breathtaking, as well various parts of, 'Disengagement' simply make the hairs on the back of my neck rise up. Some people have said that, 'Resonance' feels like a rip off of Opeth's, 'For Absent Friends, which is fine, but overlooks the simple fact that Insomnium does it better.

The aforementioned, 'Death Walked The Earth' is my personal favorite and a song I didn't even take notice of until 5 or 6 different spins into this record. Opening with a catchy and headbanging riff, the first couple of minutes of the song are just solid well wrote melo death, but at about the half way point an acoustic break with heavy progressive flavor chimes in and takes the song to territories of inescapable beauty and melancholy and eventually returns to heavier ground with one of the most memorable but sorrowful riffs I've ever heard in a melo death song. Generally though each song has something special, be it a certain riff or acoustic part the whole album is nearly perfect and flows entirely well throughout its eleven song fifty three minute duration.

Even as I am now only familiar with two Insomnium releases I tend to view these guys as melodic death saviors, simply because Insomnium's debut in 2002 marked the official end of the old kings in Sweden, especially In Flames who once reigned supreme before becoming predictable, lame and utterly boring music makers already two years earlier. Their divergence also seemed to mark the inclusion of awful metalcore, nu metal and other trend shit within a once great genre and spawned an act like, Sonic Syndicate, whom in case you didn't know sucks enormous amounts of male cock. Fortunately nowadays through five records, which I all hope to be excellent, Insomnium has kept real melodic death alive and expanded it even further.

I suppose its a bit odd sporadically checking out a band that's so far blown me away through two releases, but its allowed me to really get the most out of their music and lyrics, whereas sometimes I'll simply take a bands whole discography in within a month or two. 'Since the Day It All Came Down' is definitely worth checking out, likewise I look forward to seeing what the band comes up with on their third release, 'Above the Weeping World.'

No comments:

Post a Comment