Fiction [New Album Spoilers Highly Likely. Read At Own Risk]

[KitKat]

KitKat: Did you mean to write "lose" the magic? If so, I'm pretty sure I still understand the meaning of your post, but I really like the post the way it is... (let) loose the magic!

and God bless the multilinguals.

I'm sorry for that mistake. I'm not a perfect bilingual I tried hard, and thanks for mentioning actually. I need to know, so I can be better

 

[wildfyr]

Kit: Don't be sorry. Your English skills improve every day. I thought you were multilingual, too. Sorry, my mistake. God bless bi- and multi-linguals.

 

[KitKat]

Kit: Don't be sorry. Your English skills improve every day. I thought you were multilingual, too. Sorry, my mistake. God bless bi- and multi-linguals.

I speak french and english. That's it for the moment. I'm trying to learn swedish also...

 

[IntoPhagist]

The vocals are so diff

 

[Arch]

Sounded like he was singing "pick up the shoes" in the beginning.

 

[La Rocque]

I'll try this here
DT are going to tour the US before the new CD is released?

 

[Jolty]

it's cool how fans think they know what is DT better than the band members themselves. you want to lock them in a silly little box and preserve them criogenically. probably if they had just tried to copy themselves since their second album we wouldn't like them at all.

Lock the obnoxious fans in a little box and preserve them cryogenically? Sounds like a plan. Let's start rounding them up.

I quite love Focus Shift.

 

[rahvin]

I completely agree that all of the song titles contain strings of words DT has never used before.
The fact that a band may choose not to play scramble with words they've already used and actually come up with new concepts for the names of the songs is disconcerting: everyone should be like Manowar and sing lyrics made entirely of a 50-word vocabulary with multiple instances of the term "glory". How dare Dark Tranquillity pick a title like "Focus Shift" without at least a four-year warning to the fans! Are they playing ska now? Have they become a Morrissey cover band overnight? I'm outraged, and not knowing exactly why just adds to my outrage!

 

[BreathingShadow]

no one here thinks the new song sounds like they are releasing the same album for about the 4th time in a row? come on, dont be scared to say it.

 

[InsArtTure]

I have listened to Focus Shift about 20 times already. It IS good. Much more, it holds DT in it with everything. Changing tempos, melodic choruses, a killig solo and wonderful vocals.

But I don't think a single song could mean anything. DT have always shown that the Album at its wholeness is what holds the magic. Songs themselves are only elements. As the notes of the instruments are.

But still Focus Shift is great. A spit in the face of all metalcore/new wave/bla-bla stuff.

Regarding the lyrics, they are still totally indecipherable but isn't it what we love in DT? They sure have their thoughtfulness for Stanne. And they sure can have their sense for you.

 

[Killermik]

That said, i agree with the person who commented on CM's idea of a press release. Uploading a song and putting some info on the side, without even dedicating a couple of lines or a link in the "news" page, in my opinion shows lack of interest and professionalism. I hope they will at least put a note in their news soon.

You always agree with that person

And that person agree with you 100% on your Character related comments.

 

[t.a.j.]

I like the song so far, even if it does seem rather formularic and the chorus reminds me of Lost To Apathy just a tad too much.
The productioin seems a step back from the wall of sound effect DD and, to a lesser extend, Character had and that's another thing I like. All in all, I'm looking forward to the album.

 

[hyena]

Icipher:

Option 1. I am nothing (see cipher in the dictionary - the following is excerpted from the merriam-webster online)

Main Entry: 1ci·pher Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: primarystresssimacrfschwa(r)
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French cifre, from Medieval Latin cifra zero, from Arabic sifr empty, cipher, zero
1 : the symbol 0 denoting the absence of all magnitude or quantity : NAUGHT, ZERO -- see NUMBER table
2 a : a method of transforming a text in order to conceal its meaning (1) by systematically replacing the letters of the plaintext by substitutes in the same sequence either singly or in pairs or other polygraphs (as by writing 1 for A, 2 for B, etc., or F for A, S for B, etc., or QL for AB, etc.) or (2) by systematically rearranging the plaintext letters into another sequence (as by writing them normally in a rectangle and then copying them off from the columns taken in an arbitrary succession) -- called also respectively (1) substitution cipher and (2) transposition cipher; compare CODE 3 b : a prescription for a cipher system : a key or memorandum that enables decipherment c : a message in cipher : a text in secret writing
3 : an arabic numeral : NUMBER, FIGURE
4 a obsolete : a symbolic character (as a letter, hieroglyph, or astrological sign) b : a combination of symbolic letters; especially : the interwoven initials of a name : DEVICE, MONOGRAM <an engraver's cipher> c : a sign in Karl Jaspers' existentialism serving to mediate between the existent and the transcendent
5 : one that has no weight, worth, or influence : NONENTITY <doomed to die as a cipher in some vast statistical operation in which our teeth would be counted ... but our death itself would be unknown -- Norman Mailer>
6 : the sounding of an organ pipe caused by a mechanical defect

Option 2. I am nothing because I live in a mechanized, soulless sociey (iPod, iTunes, iCipher etc). This sounds like something Bad Religion would write, but then again, some of the lyrics on Character had this slant

Option 3. Wordplay on Lucifer, including or excluding the previous ideas, but that's farfetched because the spelling is not "Lucipher".

 

[La Rocque]

^ WTF

 

[Villain]

Some of the names of the songs are very non-dt (Terminus, Focus Shift, Inside the Particle Storm), I really would have liked some Skydancer-like lyrics, that would have been awesome!

Funny you'd say so, because as far as I can remember the only occasion I've ever seen the word Terminus used before is, indeed, on Skydancer (Crimson Winds to be exact).

I think all the song titles for Fiction are very DT in the sense that they are different and unique and can have multiple interpretations. Like those on every other DT album. I see no drastic stylistic change here. They are new song titles, yet just as clever and interesting as all those that came before them. If they had given all the songs titles that we'd have expected, I'd been disappointed. And InsignifiCunt would've been stupid, but I knew it wasn't an actual song title as soon as it was mentioned the first time (just like I knew The Mundane and the Magic wasn't going to be the title of the album).

I'm yet to twist my head around the concept of Fiction, as I'm sure I'll need to have all the lyrics from the album at my hands before I can make any sort of analysing. But I'm rather sure the meaning of it will become obvious soon after that. It was the same with Character - at first the album title appeared meaningless, but after listening through the songs and readind the lyrics a couple of times it all became perfectly clear.

Oh, and Focus Shift rocks.

-Villain

 

[rahvin]

I'm going with hyena's first explanation, although I kind of see it as screaming "I AM A NUMBER" and it's not a slant I'm exceptionally interested in. Hopefully there will be other themes in the lyrics as well, such as references to the possible puns involving ice.

@t.a.j.: Love your observation about the wall of sound effect. It's exactly what was at the back of my mind and what I'm currently liking the most about Focus Shift.

It still bugs me that the connections with earlier titles are not more obvious to some: it could have been plainer only if DT had titled the new album Persona. At the very least, the concept of a filter between the self and one's perception of it dates back to Monochromatic Stains, and it's undeniably one - if not the - of the main topics of Stanne's lyrics since he started writing for DT. Sure, the keywords for filter have changed since, say, 1996 ("... as the writer defies the empty page..."), but that shouldn't put anybody too off-track.

 

[Dark_Silence]

i cant connect to the new song at all... it sounds like heard before, and the guitar riff sounds boring to me (ie it doesnt make me take my guitar and want to play it). The solo is pretty cool , but it sounds weird for a DT song

The only thing that breaks a bit the monotony of the song is the keyboard part that comes after 1 min... i like it.

I mean, the song is not bad, but it i not what i would call DT at their best.

For the connection between Focus Shift and older stuff, i dont really see any.

 

[InsArtTure]

Hmm, the very first time I listened to the song I thought the same. But give it a try or a couple. It's getting better and more genuine with every neew listen.

Yeah, it sounds kinda generic, kinda "heard-before" but it is just an initial illusion. It does hold the spirit of DT, it's getting more and more interesting to me.

And the riffs, these, exactly these DT trademark riffs are so touching that I appreciate they have chosen to play this and nothing else.

 

[Child of Time]

As I'm at work I can't listen to the tune right now, but I think the song titles are very (neo-)DT. Which means that they're intriguing.

 

[Villain]

At the moment, the only thing that bothers me about Fiction is that with a limited edition (with bonus DVD!) and bonus-tracks for both the Japanese and Australian releases, I'll need to buy at least four different versions of the album, two of which probably need to be imported.

What about the possible EP-release which was discussed earlier? Are there still more recorded songs in addition to the twelve mentioned thus far?

-Villain