(N)Utopia

(N)Utopia can be considered a major changing point in Graveworm's history. While previous albums had a serene, symphonic gothic metal style, albeit a bit melodramatic sometimes, more recent Graveworm albums have been focusing more on heavier music as a whole, trying to be more catchy at the same time, but still not trying to lose their melodic touch. (N)Utopia can be argued to be the first album where these changes occur, but unfortunately, creativity, variety, and musical depth have taken a fall in return for more mainstream exposure. This is a shame, as many bands end up doing this throughout their lifespan and more often than not, they can't ever go back.

Of course, there are plenty of good things to say about (N)Utopia. First, the music is a lot heavier than previous albums. If you thought older Graveworm lacked a bit of a punch in their music, they make up for it here. Secondly, the music is a lot more catchy this time. Nearly all the tracks are fast paced, with a somewhat memorable chorus, and the riffs, although not the most intricate in the world, do their part in hooking the listener in. The lyrics still have a bit of the "woe is me" attitude, but those ideas make a much more diluted presence here. Despite the style change of the band, Stefan's vocals still work incredibly well. He still uses those growling grunts and mixes them well with his higher pitched shrieks.

Some of the tracks really have a lot of drive to them - an example would be "Hateful Design". The structure in this song is quite simple: verse, chorus, coda, repeat, but man, for a song like this, I never feel so alive. The riffs in the beginning draw you in immediately and the song really wants to make you run across town with a ton of energy, ready to kick someone's ass. You wouldn't find music this upbeat and powerful on earlier Graveworm albums. As I described above, the vocal transitions do very well here and are perfectly in sync.

Now here's where the album fails - creativity and depth have taken a plummet. All of the songs have the same simple style - it became so apparent , that I could predict what was going to happen in songs I wasn't finished listening to yet and be somewhat correct about my hypotheses. This disappointed me greatly because I kept waiting for some awesome lead guitar riffs to clinch many of the songs or some really interesting keyboard passages. Graveworm had no problems with this on previous albums, so why did they have trouble here? I'm sure they could have found a way to make it work. The more I think about it, (N)Utopia reminds me of a much more inferior version of Dark Tranquillity's Character album. In fact, even the track titles on (N)Utopia are very similar to what can be found on that album. The difference is that Character is a lot more dynamic than (N)Utopia and any problems I had here, are really a non-issue on most of Dark Tranquillity's work. I wouldn't go as far to say that many songs on (N)Utopia left me with an empty feeling after listening, but I was overall disappointed with the lack of depth throughout and this made it tougher to enjoy repeated listens.

For an album like this, you're bound to like 2-3 songs, but whatever doesn't stick out will be easy to forget anyway. (N)Utopia isn't a bad album, but many Graveworm fans may be disappointed in its lack of creativity and this will be the ending point for a lot of them. If you're a big fan of melodic gothic metal, I would still give this a try. It's also a decent "entry level" album to start with.