Description

At the very least, Dark Tranquillity must be admired for their vision to experiment with different musical flavors. While inertia is a powerful factor to many metal bands (or artists in any genre for that matter), favoring adventure to refinement takes a certain artistic character. Dark Tranquillity has it. Projector is quite unlike anything they did prior, such as Skydancer and The Gallery. The album immediately before, The Mind’s I, gave no indication of what to expect with this release. Keyboards, clean vocals, electronic beats — all find a place alongside ultra-melodic riffs, snarling growls, and speedy attack. For the death vocals, I much prefer Stanne’s improved growly singing heard on Haven and Damage Done. Here, and on previous records, he is more rrrrr and less rrrroar. I don’t really care that much though, since the highlight is his ‘real’ singing, which is abundant on this record. Deep, melancholy, emotive — Stanne’s voice often lends the songs their most memorable quality. Dark Tranquillity’s penchant for amazing guitar work is still intact: the mesmerizing dual guitar harmony of “The Sun Fired Blanks”; the double-bass driven melodic punch of “Doberman”. These songs are all well and good, but the stronger tracks, in my opinion, adopt a more experimental style. The opener “FreeCard” splits the fluid guitar melodies with a keyboard generated orchestral piece. “UnDo Control” combines eclectic tempo changes, female vocals, torrid screams, and surprising musical twists. “Day to End” is a slow, haunting piece coated in pulsing electronics and glassy guitars (this song will make the hardcore choke on their juice boxes). “Auctioned” is a ballad featuring beautiful piano melodies that support one of the band’s most emotional performances. “ThereIn ambiguous lyrics are enwrapped in an intensely burnished guitar melody, which subtly grows more intense each time it appears. The coarse vocals of the verses toggle seamlessly into the chorus’ stunning clean refrain, which may eloquently describe Dark Tranquillity’s changes better than anything else: It was solid yet ever-changing It was different and yet the same. Many would prefer to spin The Gallery another time before ever touching this album. Others may desire partaking in the experiment of Projector and find it to be a worthwhile dark horse. Dark Tranquillity probably won’t ever do another album like this, and I consider it a good thing that the band took the risk and did it. Change is good, right?

Track listing:
1. FreeCard
2. ThereIn
3. UnDo Control
4. Auctioned
5. To A Bitter Halt
6. The Sun Fired Blanks
7. Nether Novas
8. Day To End
9. Dobermann
10. On Your Time