Lord of the Alien Seas (异海之王)

I've been meaning to write about 郁 aka Die From Sorrow for some time, ever since one of my students saw me wearing a metal t-shirt in class and introduced them as his favourite band. This record, although classified as an EP, represents one of the major efforts from the Chinese group, counting as at least as much of a full-length as the recent Grand Carnival record, seeing as it's about the same length as this if you remove the doubled instrumental tracks. Notably, the style has changed a lot in that time, with this 2016 recording seeming a more logical melodeath and power metal cross, while the new material contains metalcore elements to a much greater degree. I saw them live earlier this year and the audience was really quite young compared to other metal gigs I've been to in China. Anyway, 异海之王 Lord of the Alien Seas remains my preferred outing by Die From Sorrow.

For one thing, the 5 tracks presented here fit together extremely well, making a 30 minute experience into a single connected listen that relies on clearly-defined instrumental tones and some supportive ambient sounds to create this effect. Since the EP is ocean-themed, those ambient sounds relating to water, boats, ports, seagulls, etc. really makes sense, and they allow for brief lulls between songs even while the music itself remains reasonably intense during 5 to 6 minute tracks. The approach itself seems pretty interesting, sort of taking an extremely accessible and melodic angle to what Kalmah was doing early in the 2000s, making a lot of movements like Arch Enemy did when they were shedding Angela Gossow, and generally dialling back the actual riffing content from both to arrow in on strong rhythms during verses and sumptuous melodic sections elsewhere. The raspy, semi-clean growl possesses one of the typical features of modern Chinese metal groups by remaining pretty staccato, although here we also get a few clean choruses, though again this just goes to emphasize the split between rhythmic parts and melodic parts. The final piece to the puzzle comes with the keyboards, which the band don't use much anymore. These keys bolster smooth melodic guitar lines that contribute a heroic yet modern cheese to proceedings, hitting vague video game or Dragonforce parallels on '在风暴的中央 In the Eye of the Storm'. This may all sound like a lot, but it fits together to give the album the desired nautical character, becoming fearsome and glittering by turns.

With this formula, Die From Sorrow also do enough to make sure that each song justifies its runtime. Occasionally the keys allow the music to divert totally from modern metal, such as when '云雾湾 Bay of Mist' moves from a practically neoclassical solo into a gorgeous piano interlude that uses a sweep of keys to mimic the sound of a wave breaking over the rest of the band. In cases like this, I don't feel that Die From Sorrow get distracted from the structure of the song, but these additions emphasize the luxury of the listen as a whole, wherein these sprawling moments of picturesque musical description offset the more rigid verses that honestly don't have a great difference from song to song. The guitar solos do this too, and the melodies, not to mention that the choruses often arrive with a cresting sensation, all the spray and sweat left behind for a moment. Without the copious lead instruments, I reckon Lord of the Alien Seas would err much closer to metalcore than it appears to, seeing as beatdown patterns arrive in transitions, while any heavier riffing parts owe more to The Black Dahlia Murder than any European melodeath act. The combination of influences remains far from a rip-off though.

After listening to this quite a bit I still feel impressed with what Die From Sorrow were able to create by following their own path, and I'm more than a little disappointed with how common they sound now. I'm fairly sure that their audience has become bigger as a result, but there was clearly nothing wrong with this stage of their development, as proven by their success in the Metal Battle at Wacken shortly after this release. For anyone into what commercial European melodeath was doing circa 2006, this also takes that style seriously and gives groups like Children Of Bodom and perhaps Nightwish a run for their money in terms of creativity. For me at least, Lord of the Alien Seas seems well worth half an hour.