Dissection - The Somberlain
In music, the spirit of youth often expresses itself in restless innovation that forges ahead beyond the limits of a young band's skill. Dissection's debut, The Somberlain, is an album overflowing with youthful creativity, but also burdened by a youthful lack of discipline. And yet, while it lacks the refined craft of the band's later releases like Storm of the Light's Bane, it possesses a passion, inventiveness, and authenticity sorely lacking in the albums to follow.
The term 'blackened death' metal is often thrown about liberally, with no real concern for its accuracy or the veracity of its usage, but the phrase is aptly used when applied to The Somberlain. By applying black metal technique to a riff lexicon steeped in the traditions of Swedish death metal (with occasional nods to classic doom metal in the vein of first album Candlemass or perhaps Pagan Altar), Dissection forged a truly hybrid style that married the melodic fluidity of the former to the percussive and structural complexity of the latter.
While The Somberlain occasionally genuflects in the direction of traditional heavy metal (most evident in the lead work), the overwhelming NWOBHM influence found on Storm of the Light's Bane is notably absent (and mercifully so). Instead, it features songs epic in construction and spirit (and sometimes in length as well), built from riffs that, while often resembling the work of God Macabre or contemporaries Necrophobic, are laid out so as to suggest the reconstructive spirit of black metal rather than the deconstructive ethos of death metal. Similarly, despite the frequent twists and turns of rhythm, each piece is defined in narrative by melody rather than percussion, with variations of mood suggested primarily by neo-Baroque acoustic breaks and shifts in riff texture rather than by time changes (which, while numerous, tend to be fluid rather than abrupt).
Where this material is strongest is in its ability to capture an eternal instant and hold it for a moment's contemplation. Indeed, much of this material is simply beautiful, despite the darkness at its core. That these ecstatic moments are accomplished with a minimum of the cloying, Maiden-style harmonies and bouncy rock rhythms that undermine Dissection's subsequent releases only enhances their power. Nodtveidt, too, is in fine form, thankfully finding a happy medium between vocal formlessness and the sort of sing-song preciousness that made later material like "Thorns of Crimson Death" almost unlistenable. Here, he imparts his vocal lines with a sense of driving rhythm that compliment the music without simply doubling the dominant cadence in boring, anthemic fashion.
The Somberlain is far from perfect, however. At times, these songs bog down, and, like much of the death metal that inspired them, collapse under the weight of their own overly elaborate musical embellishments, their lines of narrative hopelessly fragmented by a riff salad approach that needlessly burdens the compositions with rococo adornment, rendering some pieces more effective in revealing moments of insight than constructing a coherent creative world to explore in depth. But, like an 18th century chateau, the formal beauty of most of The Somberlain makes it an album worth visiting, despite occasional lapses of taste and editorial judgment.
8.5/10
