Dark Tranquillity
The Gallery

THE REVIEW

South of Sweden, the city of Gothembörg: land of Vikings and Nobel Prize winners, land of heavy metal and particularly of that metal subgenre commonly called melodic-death metal.

Perhaps expressed for the first time by Tomas Lindberg's At The Gates band, which started a year after DT and In Flames, but these would quickly take on the role of main protagonists on the stage of this genre, giving rise to what became famous as the Gothembörg sound. In Flames were for a long time the "champions of Orthodoxy," but their evolution and ultimately inevitable quest for newness has today led them to slightly decline. In contrast, Dark Tranquillity have always been resistant to external pressures and have consistently followed a path of their own making, often experimental, which from my point of view has kept them at the forefront of death metal from their founding to the present day.

Two years were enough for DT to refine their sound sufficiently to move from the fire and ice lashes of the debut album "Skydancer" to the majestic perfection of "The Gallery": the epitome of the Gothembörg sound and unequivocally in the top five heavy metal of all time. An endless inspiration, a persistent state of executive grace from the first note of "Punish My Heaven" to the last of "… Of Melancholy Burning." Respectively a melodic scourge of absolute suffering and a powerful but balanced closure in its ferocity. Between them, the universe: a kaleidoscopic astral tunnel poured into the listener's soul, to be traveled at warp speed. Yet loving sometimes to pause to reflect, philosophize, or simply contemplate the surrounding world, gently wrapped in dark and secluded melodies. My limbs vibrated as rarely before when I first heard the opening of "The Emptiness From Which I Fed" and its roaring rhythmic-melodic accelerations, or the bloodthirsty madness of "The Dividing Line." And the pleasure of savoring the silence after the end of the last song is also due to the extraordinary emotional charge of this album and indeed, an integral part of it.

Listening to music is the deepest pleasure a man can indulge in over his lifetime; it is what nourishes his existence when the other great pleasure, love, becomes unattainable. Sublimate your sufferings in melody, human being, or for what else is it worth living this existence?!