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Disarmonia Mundi: The Isolation Game
Disarmonia Mundi - The Isolation Game - [Coroner Records]

2009-12-19

You can expect the smell of a good Italian coffee, or the taste of pizza from Rome, but surly it is quite refreshing to hear an Italian melodic death metal act.
Disarmonia Mundi was formed at the start of the century, by Ettore Rigotti, who is responsible for all of the instruments and clean vocals and Claudio Ravinale who is responsible of the gore vocalic side. The band has established itself as a pure Swedish-like metal band. Just like its ancestors, In flames and Soilwork, Disarmonia has all the right ingredients that make a melodic death metal band: Great guitar riffs, tempo changes between songs, and a singer that screams his guts out.

After releasing their first album, "Nebularium", which got moderated success, the band joint forces with Soilwork's lead singer- Bjorn "Speed" Strid, and released "Fragments Of D-Generation". Strid continued playing with the band on the next album "Mind Tricks" and is now participating in "The Isolation Game". It seems like more than a quick romance for him.

The Isolation Game is well written, and well produced, but I have only one problem.

When "In Flames" broke announced themselves to the world with the Melodic Death Metal style, they emphasized the combination of melody and a growling vocalic style.
Until then, Death Metal was mostly influenced by Thrash Metal and most early Death Metal bands sounded like extreme Thrash Metal.
In the end of the nineties, Melodic Death Metal became one of the mainstreams in metal, and was in a need of a change. At that point the bands started to integrate "clean vocals" among the growl. Let me remind you that these were also the Linkin Park days, and it was a very much commercial thing to do. The record companies loved it, and as long as money is involved, the pattern will never change. I admit I got into it too, for a while.

You can guess easily that Disarmonia Mundi plays the same game. There are only 2 songs in this album that don't have clean vocals. Though Bjorn Speed Strid executed the clean vocals very well, I was bored after 3 songs. In some ways it all sounds the same, because the songs chorus sounds like Linkin Park. With all due respect to the American band, we are still talking about Death Metal.

I say, to hell with the companies and lets get back to the roots of melodic death metal like In Flames "The Jester Race" or Soilwork's "Steelbath Suicide". Those were classics for a reason. And I'm sure that Disarmonia Mundi could do the same.

In conclusion, if you like Swedish Death Metal, this album is for you. If you have never heard this style, you should take a bite, It's pretty tasty, but if you have heard the last Darkane album, you wont find anything new here.

Dolev Zaharony



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