{"id":3358,"date":"2014-05-20T14:27:31","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T18:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=3358"},"modified":"2014-05-20T14:30:01","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T18:30:01","slug":"insomniums-shadows-of-a-dying-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/20\/insomniums-shadows-of-a-dying-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Insomnium&#8217;s Shadows of a Dying Sun."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have two new posts up for ESPN.com Insiders today &#8211; <a href=http:\/\/klaw.me\/2004redraft>my 2004 redraft<\/a> and my review of <a href=http:\/\/klaw.me\/2004misses>2004 first-rounders who didn&#8217;t pan out<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Finnish melodic death metal band Insomnium have one of the broadest wingspans of any artist in that subgenre, incorporating theatrical and symphonic elements without eschewing the heaviness and rapid riffing that keep one foot firmly planted in the death-metal sphere. Their latest release, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00J84G422\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=B00J84G422&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=meadowpartyco-20&#038;linkId=PS3EZLTFUAJ2TLWG\">Shadows of the Dying Sun<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=meadowpartyco-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=B00J84G422\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/><\/i>, continues that tradition and then some, veering from over-the-top extreme\/speed metal to operatic tracks that you might even call death-metal ballads.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify:album:3LRfCxY4uMiRHHmoJtwWOS\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Melodic death metal generally includes two major elements: technically proficient, hook-laden guitar lines, and screamed or growled vocals. Insomnium adds many other twists to their particular flavor, with strings, pianos, acoustic guitar lines, and vocal harmonies (sung in normal voices) in choruses. It hasn&#8217;t been a straight line from the genre&#8217;s originators like Celtic Frost and Carcass, but the result is a more accessible brand of \u201cmelodeth\u201d that should appeal to fans of everything from contemporary extreme metal to the earliest waves of speed and thrash.<\/p>\n<p><i>Shadows of the Dying Sun<\/i> starts innocuously enough with \u201cThe Primeval Dark,\u201d a slow-building doom track that clocks in at barely over three minutes, a sign that Insomnium aren&#8217;t trying to pummel the listener with unnavigable ten-minute songs, and the song is just the teaser for the tremendous \u201cWhile We Sleep,\u201d into which it leads without a break. The lead guitar line is joined by a second axe for some parallel riffing before we get an actual sung verse, musical motifs that continue even as the song shifts tempo and direction multiple times. It&#8217;s among the most overtly listener-friendly death metal tracks I&#8217;ve ever heard: melodic, theatrical, even bombastic, and far more coherent than I&#8217;d expect from a six-minute snog of this complexity.<\/p>\n<p>The abrupt tempo shifts of \u201cWhile We Sleep\u201d are a recurring musical theme for Insomnium, driving other tracks as well. \u201cRevelation\u201d opens with a straightforward European speed metal riff, then drops the pace by more than half for the funereal verses, picking back up in the bridge to the initial tempo, then finding the middle ground for what passes for a chorus here. \u201cEphemeral\u201d is similarly catchy, an abject lesson to pop acts that try to appropriate punk or metal for commercial airplay, thanks to memorable guitar lines and a growl-along chorus that play well with the heavy rhythm lines and the rapid percussion that marks this clearly as death metal, while also playing around with timing and rhythm. Meanwhile, \u201cCollapsing Words\u201d dispenses with those velocity changes \u2013 the song drives in with a rapid-fire pedal-point sixteen-beat riff that evokes 1980s European speed metal and even its predecessors like Iron Maiden and Diamond Head, although it&#8217;s probably the one track that would have most benefited from a traditionally-sung vocal.<\/p>\n<p>The album&#8217;s centerpiece track is the eight-minute opus \u201cThe River,\u201d comprising several movements, including the juxtaposition of slow-changing guitar lines over blast beats, as well as an acoustic intro where lead singer Niilo Sev&auml;nen actually sings \u2013 although the lines sound more effete than he likely intended because of his accented English. The track builds from the slow intro into multiple swells of machine-gun drumming and fast-picked guitar leads, but the bridges between the choruses are major-chord interludes with clear and compelling melodies. That song and \u201cLose to Night,\u201d which I&#8217;d call a ballad if I didn&#8217;t think that would be offensive to Insomnium fans, show both growth in Insommium&#8217;s songcraft and breadth in their musical interests \u2013 you don&#8217;t write this kind of song if you only listen to metal and hard rock.<\/p>\n<p>There are misses here; \u201cBlack Heart Rebellion\u201d is just a giant blast-beat, a sop to the portion of the crowd that just wants it faster and louder and more annoying, while \u201cThe Promethean Song\u201d would have worked better at about half its 6:40 running time. Even the title track suffers from the same issue of bloat \u2013 and as the tenth song on the album, it ran into my own fatigue by the time I&#8217;d reach it on straight listens through the disc because of its length and languorous pace. That&#8217;s also a function of the overall ambition of <i>Shadows of a Dying Sun<\/i>, which, at 70 minutes, is almost double the length of some recent indie releases, and has appropriately high musical aspirations without forgoing Insomnium&#8217;s sense of melody and even commercial appeal. It&#8217;s the best new melodeth album since Carcass&#8217; <i><a href=https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/04\/arcade-fires-reflektor\/>Surgical Steel<\/a><\/i>, although with Arch Enemy and At the Gates coming out with new albums soon, it&#8217;ll be an epic summer for fans of the genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have two new posts up for ESPN.com Insiders today &#8211; my 2004 redraft and my review of 2004 first-rounders who didn&#8217;t pan out. Finnish melodic death metal band Insomnium have one of the broadest wingspans of any artist in that subgenre, incorporating theatrical and symphonic elements without eschewing the heaviness and rapid riffing that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[780,781,161,757,852],"class_list":["post-3358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death-metal","tag-finnish-music","tag-highly-recommended","tag-metal","tag-music","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3358"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3361,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358\/revisions\/3361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}