we Are The Champuons

So consistent have Dark Tranquillity's albums been throughout the years, that it ironically takes an especially spectacular effort like 2010's We Are the Void to make one realize that the prior few - specifically 2005's Character and 2007's Fiction - had actually left something wanting. Yes, both of those releases boasted several standout songs, yet, as a whole, they retroactively seem somewhat unexciting as compared to We Are the Void‘s significant boosting of DT's alchemical interaction between death metal ferocity and melodic sensitivity. For as foreign as the notion of "hooks" may be to extreme metal's fundamental principles, the fact is that this latest long-player is just dripping with them - whether they take shape as contagious guitar lines, plaintive synthesizer figures, or even Mikael Stanne's fearsome death growl…