genres: experimental metal + djent
Looking forward to 2022 releases, this may have been the one I was least sure about. The Dali Thundering Concept are one of the most aggressively experimental bands that can still be roughly characterized as metalcore, and at times it feels like their music is more interested in pushing boundaries than being content to just write great songs. Normally, this is the blueprint to get me more excited about a band’s new release, but in this instance their most recent album, 2018’s Savages, happens to be my all time favorite ‘djent’ album. It really pushed the limits of mechanical noises a guitar could produce while retaining stunning melodies, and I would have been completely content to get another album in just that style. However, that’s not the band’s method, and the early singles for All Mighty Men hinted at a very different sound in an incredibly ambitious package.
What I was not prepared for was just how lighthearted and playful the end result would be. Most of their original deathcore elements are completely dispensed with, and even the majority of the djent writing is stripped back significantly. In its place, we get modern progressive metalcore fused with industrial (“God is Dead”, “Long Live Man”), jazz (“Lost in Transaction”, “Serenading Silence”), a classical interlude (“Styx”), and even an Middle Eastern influenced take on groove metal (“The Sea Starts Here”) that is surely making Born Of Osiris incredibly jealous. It rarely feels as technically impressive (owing more to a focus on atmosphere than truly being simpler) as earlier albums, but the songwriting has no doubt improved with moments on “Lost in Transaction” and “The Sea Starts Here” being the catchiest they’ve ever written. The biggest curveball is the focus on vocals. While TDTC have always been more than serviceable vocally, they’ve tended to augment what was going on instrumentally rather than take front position for extended periods of time, and don’t necessarily have the widest of ranges to carry a full album on those terms. However, this is hardly an issue when you bring in three of metalcore’s best and most versatile vocalists for extended features in Mattéo Gelsomino (Sal3m, ex-Novelists), Ryo Kinoshita (Crystal Lake), and Aaron Matts (ten56., ex-Betraying The Martyrs). Most impressively is how seamlessly these duets integrate in, especially on “The Sea Starts Here” as TDTC vocalist Sylvail Conier plays off Ryo’s ridiculous range to a point it’s tough to tell them apart.
Then there’s album closer “Candid Monster” which is unlike anything else here, and even as adventurous as the band has been, comes out of left field. It starts off with a dark electronic beat under raspy spoken word before opening up to…soulful R&B (courtesy of Clément Richard)? The energy slowly builds via more rhythmic pop elements, before fading out again at the 2:50 mark, still no guitar. There’s still a couple minutes left, so we’re probably getting one last big breakdown, right? It does explode back in seconds later, but instead of chugs and growls, we get some incredibly moving lead guitar work and distorted cleans that sound almost exactly like All Our Gods… era Sam Carter. And maybe that’s the best summary of this band. The biggest, least expected twist is to go out with the sound every other metalcore band has tried for the past ten years, and then somehow do it better than almost any of them.
Overall, while this album doesn’t quite match the consistent ingenuity of Savages for me, it’s an excellent release in its own right, and might have more individual moments I’ll frequently return to. Oh, also it’s a concept album about the adventures of a plastic straw, if you needed any more motivation to check it out
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