Review: "Damage Done" by Swedish Melodic Death Metal Band Dark Tranqullity

Swedish melodic death metal band Dark Tranquillity is like one of the gems in the history of the melodic death metal genre. Every single album that they put out is at least good. Following Haven which this writer feels is their weakest effort musically, they still rebounded quite nicely with 2002’s "Damage Done". The album title is misleading because this band actually did the opposite. They proved once again that they are on top of the melodic death metal scene, crushing bands such as Children of Bodom.

The song Format C: for Cortex is about being open-minded enough not to start a revolution but to assist the dying human race. Just like we reformat our computer hard drives if they fail, sometimes we have reformat our thoughts and way of thinking and feeling. The title track called Damage Done is a beautiful song that sounds like Finnish Gothic rock band To/Die/For. But since Dark Tranquillity began their activities in 1989, a full four years before that band did, we can then conclude that those guys were influenced by this band. Cathode Ray Sunshine is a song about being allowed to be absorbed by positive rays of light in order to rid the body of any toxins or filth that may have accumulated.

The Enemy is a song about someone who knows who their foes are and they manage to describe those kinds of people as a sort of social repellant. The acoustic nature of the band starts to take shape once again. The album ends with an instrumental song called Ex Nihilo.

The first song of the album called Final Resistance resembles musically the song Punish My Heaven on The Gallery album in a way because of the drumming. The song Hours Passed in Exile addresses the emotion of sadness, something that is so common in Western nations. Sometimes for some people, it takes them a long time to heal from their wounds and these people feel that what is broken cannot be fixed. The song called Monochromatic Stains is an example of the diversity of Mikael Stanne’s voice. At first he uses a sinister kind of vocal style and then he switches quickly to a good growl. One example of this is when he says: “like fingerprints on your heart, reading out the last lines of code, to the untrained eye of a secret.” He finishes off that verse very forcefully. Damage Done is not as good as the albums The Gallery or The Mind’s I but it is a very good way for this band to rebound. Haven wasn’t a terrible album but it musically just wasn’t enough to be an elite album. But Damage Done as an album is good enough to be on the level of 1999’s Projector.

Final score: 85 out of 100 points. The strongest songs include, The Treason Wall, Monochromatic Stains, Hours Passed in Exile, Damage Done, and Cathode Ray Sunshine.