My thoughts on Exposures:
First I'll go through the seven first tracks one-by-one and then I'll pay a short visit to the remastered EP and demo songs.
Static is a magnificent opener for this album. It contains all the best qualities of modern DT: lots of melodic hooks, polished aggression and excellent lyrics - all in a form that is both strikingly original and suprising, yet so inherently Dark Tranquillity. A real masterpiece! Jivarp's drumming and Brändström's keyboards here are IMHO some of the best these two maestros have created this far! And Stanne is awesome as always!
I can't but wonder, what were the band-members thinking, when they decided to leave this out from DD; "we have too many great songs here, let's toss one of the best away", huh?
Perhaps they were thinking ahead, wanting to spare one excellent song for this forthcoming "rare-tracks" album... Anyways, even though Static isn't quite in my top-10 DT-tracks from all time, it is pretty damn close; and surely would have been among the better half of Damage Done.
The Poison Well is another good song, although not nearly as great as Static. Nevertheless, it is still the best of the three previously released bonus-tracks (Cornered and Exposure being the other two).
In Sight was at first the biggest disappointment for me on Exposures. It simply felt like a bad song during the first couple of times I listened to it, and almost made me skip it. I have learned to accept it now, although I still don't like it much. It appears to lack that very something that most other DT-songs have that touches me in some way. I think In Sight tries to stand somewhere between Auctioned and Day to End, and sadly leans more towards the latter than the former. Even the lyrics seem a bit lackluster, and I can clearly see why this wasn't included on Haven.
Misery in Me, on the other hand, is far more exciting, especially as we are already somewhat familiar with the long evolution of this song. Comparing the early version the band performed on the Projector-tour (found on the Live Projector -bootleg) and this final version is very interesting. The melody-lines are basically all the same, but somehow this album-version is much more powerful, more touching. The best of these three Haven-era songs found on this album, and should have been included on Haven, IMHO.
When I first heard Cornered years ago, I thought it was good, but since I got the Japanese edition of Haven, this song has become quite boring in my ears. It definitely has the worst keyboard-sound of all DT-songs and I'm damn happy Martin B. didn't try to apply this style to any other songs. Still, Cornered is an okay tune.
No One is slowly becoming my second favorite of this album, right after Static. It is so very
Projector with the clean-sung parts and the familiar guitar-sound that it feels almost nostalgic to listen to No One today. I can't yet quite say, how I will eventually feel about this song, but for now I'm quite happy it wasn't on Projector - there it would have been left in the shadow of Nether Novas, To a Bitter Halt and others, but here on Exposures it stands out in a very positive way.
Exposure was never among my favorites on Projector, but all in all it is a decent song. But aren't the lyrics here on the booklet a bit edited?
The two songs from A Moonclad Reflection do not benefit much from the remastering. They remind me of some Skydancer-songs, just with weaker riffs and worse lyrics. Yesterworld is better of these two and I think it could have replaced My Faeryland Forgotten on the band's debut album.
The improved Trail of Life Decayed sounds pretty good, and although the material is generally below the level of later DT-songs, there are some very interesting moments on these three songs - much of the same dynamics that were later polished into trademark DT-songwriting can be found here in a more "primal" form. Void of Tranquillity is still my favorite pre-Skydancer song.
Overall, the first disc of Exposures is exactly what I hoped it to be - a collection of interesting songs of various styles from both ancient and relatively modern days. The fact that there are no leftover songs from the band's first three albums that could be presented here is a pity, but there's no use complaining about that.
The second disc is quite useless to me (I think I've listened to it only twice), as I own the DVD and would rather watch it than just listen to the same show, but as I have said before, it is a good recording with a solid setlist with many of the bands best tunes performed very well. I can understand that they left UnDo Control out due to time-limitations and also because it really wasn't the best performance by the band for that song - but I would just rather have removed Format C: for Cortex, as there are already a bit too many DD-songs on the set.
I must also comment on the album-artwork that is just wonderful: it gives an impression of a very simplistic style, yet on closer inspection the details catch your eye in a nice way. Some of the old band-photos are funny and the tattoo-page is great - too bad I could't get a better pic of my tattoo, as the other pics look so great.
-Villain
