Dark Tranquillity
Haven

THE REVIEW

Discovering a new musical genre is always nice. Just listening to a single song can open up a broader horizon for you, ready to be explored. And usually, the song or album that allows you to do so stays in your heart. It was like that for me with death metal and with "Haven" by Dark Tranquillity. I had never heard anything like it, and although I now handle much heavier stuff, at first listen, the album hit me like a sledgehammer on the head. But beyond the violence, and this is what made me fall in love with the band, there was the melody, there was Stanne's singing expressing anger and, at the same time, emotion, with his nihilistic, existential lyrics.

An album that amazes with its immediacy: short, direct songs that hit you like a punch in the stomach, yet are at the same time engaging and compelling, almost forcing you to listen to the CD in one go, and then to listen to it again. And so the various "The Wonders At Your Feet," "Not Built To Last," "Feast Of Burden," "Haven," "The Same," "Ego Drama," "Rundown," flow one after another, with their moving keyboard inserts, with their explosive riffs that are always captivating and never banal. I've practically mentioned all the tracks, and I have a valid reason for doing so, because it's hard to judge one as superior to the others: they are all technically perfect, fitting one after another in a sequence that offers no respite. In reality, a separate discussion should be made for the concluding piece, excluding the bonus track, "At Loss Of Words," which I personally consider the best track on the album, because it encompasses all the individual nuances, with a musical theme that engages like few others. Looking back and after having listened to all and more from the six quiet Swedish guys, I consider "Haven" instrumentally an album of compromise between the strokes of brilliance of their early work, the violence of "The Mind's I," and the perhaps excessive experimentalism of "Projector." After "Haven," Dark Tranquillity returns to the glory of "The Gallery" with the excellent "Damage Done," and surely these last two titles are the true 5-star masterpieces of their production. But since the rating is subjective and this album is rich in meaning for me, I'm giving it a nice five in the face of the person who, after buying it just because he liked the cover, gave it to me saying that "the singer sounds like he has a rat in his throat, you decide. . ".