Dark Tranquillity
Damage Done

THE REVIEW

The culmination of Swedish death metal.

Bone-crushing riffs, fearsome melodic openers, all the anguish, impetus, and ferocity imaginable etched on the grooves of a CD. Supported by a production, gracefully, up to the band's ideas (due diligence demands a comparison with their early works, which suffered considerably from the poor recording performance of the bold song structures). Fortunately, however, “Damage Done”, like its predecessor “Haven” (2000), is well-produced. Especially the work on the effects gives shine to the pieces' arrangements, now accompanying the vocal outbursts of the singing, now in the classic "carpet style."

Heavy sounds, built on the sound wall of a massacre divided into twelve tracks and spanning an entire Dantean circle. Just on the fade-in of "Final Resistance", it feels like a coronary plunge. Mikael Stanne bursts in with his feral scream, kicking off the first intense verse, marked by the drum's bass-snare play. The keys do not make an assertive appearance right away: the six Swedes first want to stun us. Only then will we be allowed to take part in their choral hallucination. The effects of “Hours Passed In Exile” then proceed ominously, Stanne resumes roaring in an inquisitorial tone: “What if… some things are destined to failure… some things are never meant to be…”. At this point, the airy openings of the choruses begin to be heard, whose sounds, I repeat, are truly superb. I’ll also point out “Single Part Of Two”, where again the keys add the decisive touch to the song, which is well-arranged on its own. The title track is more in the “Haven” style, though still along the same lines of “aggressive verses/key-heavy choruses”. Majestic are the strings in “Cathode Ray Sunshine”, which follow the notes of the guitars without ever dulling the piece's aggressive appeal. It closes with “Ex-Nihilo”, an instrumental episode, steeped in the group's decadent style.

I give it four because the genre, for those unaccustomed, is a bit challenging on the first listen. But it's a work that, if you love death metal, should be rated five and is indispensable. As they say... For many, but not for everyone.