In the Court of the Dragon

Whatever they had been setting up on The Sin and the Sentence and What the Dead Men Say had truly come to form here on In the Court of the Dragon. A sound that’s a culmination of their career from the demo days leading up to The Sin and the Sentence, and what do they do to follow that up? Refine it! True, What the Dead Men Say has a more boneheaded approach, but the more forward-facing melodies make for more invigorating songs. But then how do you follow that up? It’s an interesting methodology. On one end, it has its melodies not only facing even further forward, but with their chests out, strutting with a confident stride. On the other, the compositions have that Mt Olympian scale to them that make the melodies really stand tall.

It certainly starts with its best foot forward, with “X” setting up this grandiose atmosphere with the medieval cult-like chants and subtle orchestral strings before transitioning into “In the Court of the Dragon” breaking down into a razor-sharp groovy riff that grabs you like bald eagles grabbing fish with their talons. The real deal with this song, however, comes in when the chorus explodes with this cavalcade of leads and blasting percussion juxtaposing Heafy’s slightly gruff but nevertheless desperately-toned vocals. In the court of a god-killing world-ending dragon, only one of us survives, and Heafy’s ever-improving vocals excellently conveys this alongside the rest of the music. Quite a ways away from the days of old where his vocals ranged from passable to bad; now, they’re genuinely impacting, with the screams accenting the harsher melodies, and the clean vocals cycling through different inflections at just the right moment to perfectly push that more melodic moment further.

Though “In the Court of the Dragon” immediately showcases the album’s qualities rather strongly, it hardly diminishes the rest of the album – far from it. Especially in the balladic “The Shadow of the Abattoir”, with the crooning downtrodden beginning lamenting the endless shadows leading the way for the eternally exiled king and the high-octave call telling him it’s not worth searching for the battle. The riffs and desperate screams bridging the song to the fiery solos, as well as the final chorus refrain having these subtle leads and more upbeat percussion show a deterministic vibe to rise to the heavens. However, knowing the following song, “No Way Back Just Through” is effectively a descent into madness manifested into the way forward as conveyed convincingly by the crushing chords, the hard-hitting speed metal riffs, the black metal riffs leading up to the chorus and the overall cold, rough and increasingly desperate vocals, it’s clear where this tale’s about to go, and it’s already gotten worse before it’s about to get better for our protagonist.

Just the general flow of the songs from one to another creates a compelling narrative, each going over a significant portion of the story to make themselves significant across the board, but having striking melodies that let them stand out on their own terms. Even songs that seem more like single bait like “Like a Sword over Damocles” and “A Crisis of Revelation” come across massively thanks to their more pronounced melodies in conjunction to the surrounding songs. The latter showcases this better from an instrumentation perspective, with its lead-drenched bridge and escalating riffs before exploding into a melodic break – quite a bit like they did in “Ascendancy” back in the day, actually, although its chorus didn’t have the mind-conflicting duelling vocals like “A Crisis of Revelation” does – before it breaks down into an explosive groove bridging the rest of the song together. The former, however, is more compositional with the vocal and riff interplay, with the verses having the vocals and thrashy riffs drive one another forward with their hard-hitting rhythms before positively exploding into an ultra-melodic and insanely catchy chorus. But even these songs manage to continue the story. The dragon-slaying king of a decaying land, exiled and waiting for the world beyond to open its gates for him. The song in-between, “Feast of Fire”, certainly holds up its weight with its more contemplative structuring between the bass-y verses and more emotive vocals, and the more deliberately-paced leads and chords during the chorus like it really is sinking down and keeps sinking down until these feelings begin to blur.

Would love to give this one a 9.5, perhaps even a 10/10, but a couple of songs do stop it a bit short of that mark. “Fall Into Your Hands” starts off pretty well actually, thrashing about and escalating as the verse goes on, and the chorus even throws in this hopeful-sounding violin string, though the break does dampen the flow of the song a bit musically-speaking. It always seemed like a hard-hitting thrasher trying to be a big massive epic, rather than a regularly-paced thrasher with the violin still making its significance nonetheless. “From Dawn to Decadence” has a grand, impactful chorus, but bugger if the rest of the song has all that striking of a melody, seeming more like a pure mood-maker than anything else. Two songs that would still be amidst the good cuts from the last two albums and succeeding most of them, but this album’s just too strong across the board otherwise; these two are like a couple of generally good songs amidst a bunch of genuine greats.

It would seem like In the Court of the Dragon is the true successor to Shogun, but it’s also clear as rain that everything that makes this album work is a result of the development that they had undergone since Shogun came out. What worked was expanded upon and what didn’t was either refined, redone or gone. Even considering that, it’s the kind of album where it’s not enough to just say that the songs are well-composed (for the most part), that the production’s razor-sharp to perfectly accentuate the riffs, that the solos positively rip and tear as always and Heafy’s vocals are on-fucking-point between his silky smooth cleans and hard-hitting full-throated screams (with proper technique, not the one that sounds like he needs a litre jug of water at the end of each take). It’s where the individual pieces both within each song and across the entire album flow so splendidly as to be utterly captivating throughout. An album that stays torched into the heart.