Over the years Dark Tranquillity has established themselves as one of the biggest bands to come out of the Swedish metal explosion of the early and mid nineties. The first three albums by the band helped establish the blueprint of melodic death metal Swedish style and since then the band has simply been refining their style and becoming more accessible.

Fiction is the band's eighth full length and was released earlier this year. Now, since the release of Project-Bore the band has been getting more accessible, using catchy keyboard hooks and lessening the impact of the guitars from previous albums to focus on groove and something to nod along to. Fiction pretty much stays in the same direction. You've heard most of these songs all ready on Damage Done and Character. The songs here are mostly one dimensional melodic Swedish death metal with some syrupy keyboard parts. In fact just about every song on this album has a cheesy synth melody that just sucks away the aggression. Case in point is Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive) with a synth melody that could have come out of a 2Unlimited album from the 90s. That's how lame it is.

Even when the band get aggressive, it never elevates the songs above average. While I have to say that Dark Tranquillity should be given points for not including too many trendy elements like some of their peers, it's also pretty apparent that the band and has hit a creative trough. The music on this album for the most part sounds like Damage Done meets Children Of Bodom's Hate Crew Deathroll. Too many syrupy synth melodies and too much lapsing into self imitation.

When the band do get it right, like on the very cool Inside The Particle Storm with its complete old school The Gallery feel, Dark Tranquility still sound quite captivating. This song reminds me a bit of Hedon too and it's quite kickass. Notice, no saccharine sweet synth on this one.

Then again, there's a song like Misery's Crown on the album that just ruins things completely. Coming off like a hard rock HIM rip off with clean vocals and that pretty fucking synth the song just makes me want to chuck this out of the window.

Dark Tranquillity on Fiction sound like a dumbed down version of their previous selves and in the final analyses, Fiction fails because it lapses into self imitation too often for its own good and also because the band seem intent on writing songs targeted at fourteen year olds.

Label - Century Media

Year - 2007