Dark Horizon were born in the September 1996, as a power metal cover band. After several local live-exhibitions, in 1997 the band decided to write their own songs and began to create riffs and lyrics for a fantasy concept-album which contained eight songs. Four of these were recorded in May 1998 into the demo-tape “Legend in opera”, that received good reviews and approval from the specialized press…
The shifting tempos, rhythms, and time signatures of Dark Tranquility's 1993 debut, Skydancer, limit the record's appeal, just as the inspired performances of challenging material offer promise for the Swedish death metal band's future. The only recording to feature vocalist Anders Fridén's throaty vocals, Skydancer also includes performances from original bandmembers Niklas Sundin and Mikael Stanne on guitar, Anders Jivarp on drums, and Martin Henriksson on bass. Jivarp has the most difficult task of setting the percussive tone for music that stutters and shakes constantly. Each player handles his assigned role with precision and the production is competent enough. The material is the only thing that holds this disc down…
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are one of the earliest, most commercially successful, and enduring synth pop groups. Inspired most by the advancements of Kraftwerk and striving at one point "to be ABBA and Stockhausen," they've continually drawn from early electronic music as they've alternately disregarded, mutated, or embraced the conventions of the three-minute pop song. Outside their native England, OMD are known primarily for "Maid of Orleans" and the Pretty in Pink soundtrack smash "If You Leave," yet they scored 18 additional charting U.K. singles in the '80s alone. These hits supported inventive albums such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and commercial suicide-turned-cult classic Dazzle Ships (1983)…
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) return with their 14th studio album Bauhaus Staircase, over six years after the triumph of their Top 4-charting record The Punishment of Luxury. The album was born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when as Andy McCluskey admits: “I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom.”
Intricacy, musicality, craftsmanship, and nuance are words that, back in 1989, were hardly ever used to describe death metal - a style so extreme, so ferocious, so intent on annoying parents at any cost that it seemed destined to self-destruct. But Dark Tranquillity and their expansive colleagues in Gothenburg, Sweden, refused to believe that death metal could not be musical, nuanced, and melodic, and that outlook continues to define them on Fiction. This rewarding CD was recorded in 2006 and released in 2007, the year that marked Dark Tranquillity's 18th anniversary. Perhaps 18 years isn't all that long compared to the Rolling Stones celebrating their 45th anniversary in 2007; nonetheless, 18 is an impressive number when one recalls all the naysayers who, in the late '80s, thought death metal would be long gone by the 21st century…
Dark Tranquillity is able to find beauty - as odd as that may sound - in the extreme elements of death metal. Much more than mere noise artists, this Swedish sextet understands the importance of melody (usually minor key) and texture (occasionally ambient), and their hurtling aggression is imbued with a dark, neo-classical sense of composition, rather than the atonal chromaticism favored by similar (particularly American) acts. Damage Done should please metal fans who appreciate both death metal's extreme qualities and progressive metal's musicality, but it may not appeal to purists from either camp.