DARK TRANQUILLITY

One rarely acknowledged fact is that DARK TRANQUILLITY were always the most forward-thinking of Gothenburg's pioneering melodic death metal bands. Long before their peers began to dismantle the formula, they were releasing albums like 1999's polarizing "Projector" and its underrated follow-up "Haven": melo-death records in spirit and by design to some degree, but also deliberate attempts to broaden the genre's horizons.

Some 25 years on, DARK TRANQUILLITY are a very different beast from the one that first caught the world's attention. Only vocalist Mikael Stanne and keyboard maestro Martin Brändström remain from "Projector" days, and a new rhythm section of Christian Jansson (bass) and Joakim Strandberg-Nilsson (drums) has only been in place for a couple of years. Guitarist Johan Reinholdz, who debuted on 2020's excellent "Moment", has swiftly established himself as the right man for the job, and a suitably creative foil for Stanne. The band's 13th studio album, "Endtime Signals" amounts to a showcase for a newly refreshed entity with a real spring in its step. The Swedes have thrown everything at this.

There have been multiple highs over DARK TRANQUILLITY's more than three decades of service, from the seminal likes of "The Gallery" (1995) and "The Mind's I" (1997),  to the grown-up experiments and melo-death refinement of "Construct" (2013) and "Atoma" (2016). The coolest thing about "Endtime Signals" is how it attempts to assimilate all of those creative peaks into a single, streamlined stride into the future. The opening "Shivers And Voids" is classic, late-period DARK TRANQUILLITY, with its morose but stately gait and crystalline, tech-tinged production. Next, "Unforgivable" delivers a furious, death metal master class, embellished with Reinholdz's virtuoso shredding, before "Neuronal Fire" fires up the gothic metal atmosphere machine, for a lush, melancholy and anthemic storm of soft-focus keys and razor-sharp hooks. In the past, songs as different in tone and delivery as these would not always have been such comfortable bedfellows, but thanks to Brändström's production and the holistic nature of the songwriting, "Endtime Signals" makes a virtue of its diversity, gluing everything together with a subtle but unmistakable air of wide-eyed newness.

Throughout, DARK TRANQUILLITY sound enraptured by their own music, which is no mean feat after 33 years. Whether it is something like the grimly dramatic "Not Nothing", which is low-key progressive and surprisingly gnarly, or the lighters-in-the-air symphonic goth balladry of "One Of Us Is Gone", these songs reveal a band with absolute confidence in their art. More excitingly, perhaps, there is real glee in the album's heaviest moments. From the aforementioned "Unforgivable" and the brutal and speedy "Enforced Perspective", to the scabrous riffing and blackened bite of "A Bleaker Sun", DARK TRANQUILLITY have not been this intense or this much fun for a long time.