Dementia
Dreaming in Monochrome

They are dreaming monochrome dreams, maybe a romantic throwback to a time when the movies on the silver screen came without colour. The German quintet’s fifth album certainly looks very interesting and with the label calling their music art death metal one could imagine that they break away somewhat from the mould. And they do, sure their music is firmly rooted in the classic death metal with guttural vocals and all of that but they do venture away from it with long tracks and songs that offer more rare elements.

Good production, I think the soundscape might be their biggest asset. The vocals aren’t all guttural growls but a big majority is and those growls are ordinary, very ordinary and the clean vocals are that as well. I was mentioning the more rare elements added to their death metal before and they come through as artistic additions in parts of the songs, many times though I would say that they kind of feels like the long middle part of Iron Maiden’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner meaning that it feels separated from the song in general.

What is good is that they at least try to make something different, something that breaks from convention – that I like. I also think that the album is predominantly good even though I think that all of the songs could have been a lot shorter or separated into more songs with slightly different approach than it has now. It kind of seems as though they have added lots of things just to make the songs longer and that detracts from the overall feel of the album, an example is the almost nineteen minute long title track that feels almost painful at times and then it starts really good but the middle part is really dull.

The best track is the fourth called Monologue, it is a bit different but the real shame is that it has a pointless one and a half minute end that would have been much better on the editing room floor (to quote a movie phrase). In the end I am left feeling that it could have been better had they paid a bit more attention to the flow of the songs, they are close to making a great album but not quite there but it is still a pretty good album.

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