Dark Matter Dimensions

I’d stated in an earlier review a short lamentation on how melodic Swedish metal has hit a serious creative and evolutionary snag in recent years, with only so few bands carrying the torch. Those who remain are still required listens, but for what it’s worth no one’s had the tenacity or vicissitude to reclaim the mighty, abandoned mid-to-late-90s throne of Swedish metal supremacy. And while I’m not one to try and advocate a complete and utter rebirth of the whole shebang (that’s neither fair nor up to me), I honestly wouldn’t think it would kill a group to try and do the style justice, at the very least.

And as a result of it, I started to check out this here SCAR SYMMETRY to see if THEY were able to rekindle such fires…

If I may be as objective as possible, I’d honestly say that this SCAR SYMMETRY band has a LOT of potential, energy, and sweetening melodies that more than gets your attention. Taking a DREAM THEATER-ish progressive nature to a sound akin to early-to-mid-era SOILWORK (up to “Natural Born Chaos”), the “Dark Matter Dimensions” album explodes from the speakers/headphones/what have you with a torrent of brutal riff-work, mesmerizing guitar harmonies/solos/leads, artificial-yet-working-in-its-favor drumming and undermixed keyboards that, like the earlier mentioned SOILWORK, works better as underscored ambience; should it have ended up as the primary instrument it would’ve been a major hindrance. All these fancy-dancy elements come together in tightly-wound yet free flowing arrangements that stack the riffs in nice, neat little piles of musical tastiness with a good amount of staying power, elements of bone-crushing brutality and a sense of controlled chaos…a Ritalin-medicated schizophrenia, if you will. But for as great as the songs are, I’d have to honestly say that the dual vocal approach isn’t quite as natural as some of their contemporaries; the clean voice is powerful in a Bruce Dickenson sort of way (sounds like him, too), but it seems like it would fit better in a more traditional power metal band…and the death growls are a little too deep and inhuman for this sort of upbeat style (a regular Gothenburg rasp would’ve been MUCH better). And when you put them together in the same song it just sounds like both voices are fighting each other to get noticed with nary a sense of camaraderie or togetherness…but that’s neither here nor there, where the musical end of songs like “The Iconoclast”, “Noumenon and Phenomenon” and “Nonhuman Era” make up for those vocal shortcomings.

In the end SCAR SYMMETRY’s latest is quite the impressive bout of melodic metal monstrousness. While not really single-handedly reviving the old Swedish metal spirit, these guys seem like they’re on the right path towards the genre’s once-dominant heydays. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.