Dark Tranquillity are basically the stalwarts of melodic death metal, being the oldest and longest lived of any bands in the genre, as well as remaining in the confines of their style unlike some of their fellow countrymen. It can also be argued that they’re probably the most consistent band of their type too, having never put out a stinker in all their years in the business. However in this particular case that isn’t a good thing. For my money, I’d argue that DT have never really put out a good album (outside of Character, which honestly seems like a fluke), with every single one suffering from pretty much the same problem: They’re boring. In later cases this is down to writing songs that dither about without integrating any memorable hooks or leads, or indeed not performing with any real energy, but on earlier efforts like this the issue is down to something far more frustrating.

This album is archetypal melodic death metal, and it basically set the template for a lot of the more orthodox bands in the style that would come about later. It’s full of, and I mean *full of* melodic leads. Riffs of the more normal death, thrash or even groove metal persuasion are virtually nowhere to be found, literally all the guitar work on this album is a lead, and there isn’t a moment on this album that isn’t absolutely sugar coated in a melodic lead of some kind. The guitars have almost no distortion on them at all (much like a lead tone, unsurprisingly) and the bass reminds me a lot of what Steve Harris would do, given that it complements the guitars very well with its rather notable plugging. It’s easily the best thing about this album, if only because it reminds me of Maiden so much.

Obviously saying that this is exactly like Iron Maiden isn’t really correct. There’s the obvious difference of Mikael Stanne’s growls, which are typical melodeath vocals in that they’re like less abrasive and more intelligible death growls. As far as the style goes he’s worlds above Anders Fridén, being entirely serviceable if perhaps a little unremarkable compared to what Tomas Lindberg could do around this time. That said however, the comparison to Maiden is, to be blunt, a massive insult to Iron Maiden. That band had two things Dark Tranquillity completely fails at – the first of which is restraint. As stated, Dark Tranquillity completely let loose on the melody here with no let up and it becomes unbelievably tiresome after approximately two minutes into ‘Punish My Heaven’, with its constant noodling that sounds nice at first, but simply grates. The problem is that there’s a melody every 5 seconds, since a more simplified album like The Jester Race is notably more effective despite being just as melodic. That album works much more effectively because it develops one or two melodies over the course of a song, making for a more flowing, measured and coherent listening experience. Here, the guitarists simply noodle away or throw every idea they can at you in order to impress and dazzle in a flurry of sugary technicality, but it simply fails.

There’s also a second, more serious problem here, which largely stems from the first. While the band had the right idea on this album, that being throwing in melodic hooks into the songs to keep them memorable, they overdo it so much that rather than being a recurring motif in a song they are the body of the song. This has the added effect of a dearth in memorable riffing as it is overtaken by the lead work. This is a problem in and of itself because the guitars are noodling constantly, rather than playing something memorable. Hence the songs tend to meander and lose focus and tend not to be very memorable. In fact, it’s normally the bass that prevents the songs from devolving into a blur when trying to recall them. And perhaps worst of all, the songs themselves are totally flat and one-dimensional. There aren’t really any climaxes or overtly emotional moments (apart from some pretty poor female warbling at times, along with Stanne’s decent cleans), there’s very little in the way of an atmosphere; it almost sounds as if the songs were hastily assembled to be vehicles for some soloing. Very few memorable ideas are offered up by a song during its running time, forcing one to focus intently on largely shallow and irritating music.

What makes this technical failure so frustrating is that everyone here is clearly talented. The guitarists, while not very good at reining it in or writing, can clearly play their instruments well, the bass is great, Mikael is a solid vocalist and the drummer is good as well. It’s just that the guitarists went so overboard with their Iron Maiden worship as to forget about writing something memorable and with adequate riffs. I also have another minor quibble – there isn’t really that much aggression to this album at all. The guitars are very sugar-coated in tone and substance, with only a modicum of aggression coming from the vocals. Otherwise the whole album is overblown, melodramatic and shallow, as well as being like a bad parody of Iron Maiden musically with decent growls on top.

Reunion albums are never an easy thing to pull off; there’s a lot of expectation riding on them especially when they’re from a much loved artist, and they can go one of a few ways. Sometimes you get an actual improvement due to experience taken from the intervening years like Black Gives Way to Blue, producing something fresh and new. Sometimes you get something totally and completely removed from the past that can lead to mixed results, and other times you get albums like this. Surgical Steel represents probably the most disappointing route a reunion album can take, a safe and inoffensive rehash of past material that amounts to a career summary by a decent tribute band.

The sound displayed on this album is derived almost directly from Heartwork, with some nods to Necroticism and Swansong. Much like Heartwork the album is very riff-driven, with it being full of grooving, mid-paced to fast and chunky melodic riffs, generally a small handful per song, that proceed to work their way into your head and become the principle motif of the track. The songs are largely simple in construction as is the way on that album, having distinctly rock-based structuring. The hints of the more progressive Necroticism only really shine through during a contrasting bridge section that mixes up the basic formula at work here, while Swansong is audible during some of the more rock-infused stop-start riffing and indeed the more rockish lead work. The vocals are the same hoarse rasps of their ’90s albums and are executed well; I’d say the vocals are the best thing about the album because they actually measure up well to their classic albums.

The problem I have with albums like this is not that they don’t expand their sound, but more that they seek to emulate their classic albums while not doing as good a job. This album pretty much emulates Heartwork, and it does sound a lot like that album, but without any of the memorability and impact. The guitar tone isn’t as slick and heavy as it was on that album but more importantly the riffs simply aren’t as good. None of the riffs here stick in my mind like the riffs to ‘Heartwork’ or ‘Carnal Forge’. One problem is that the band now sounds like an imitator of that specific sound rather than the trendsetter. The riffs sound stale and rather weak in their delivery, in fact this whole album does. The blasting sections are similarly lifeless, for instance, and the drums themselves don’t feel nearly as energetic or hammering as they did before, despite playing a similar sort of straight beat. It feels like that the band only play this sort of stuff to please the fans, because at no stage does this album strike me as especially inspired or passionate.

And then there are the general problems this album has. The extended and unusual bridges inherited from Necroticism feel totally unnecessary and shoehorned in. The lyrics, which are the surgical themes of their gore era, similarly feel completely out of place amongst the melodic riffs and the rock bounce some songs exhibit. I’m not the biggest fan of death’n’roll, but the rock influence at least makes sense on a purely death’n’roll effort like Swansong, however the cheesy rock noodling on this album feels really inappropriate given the mostly groovy and modern melodeath riffing and the general aggression. All this said though, the songs are fine while they’re on and the album remains of a consistent quality throughout. Barring these blemishes there’s nothing wrong here at all. The songs are constructed well for the most part, the riffs are decent and the vocals are good – but that’s it.

The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s one thing for an album not to blaze new trails, but it’s another for it to go along old trails while not blazing at all. Everything on this album feels like it’s there only to please a certain portion of the fan base, not because they wanted to play stuff like this or write lyrics like them. And for all I know maybe they did want to play this sort of stuff, but if so they’re being lazy about it and should try harder. If they did something to progress their sound then at least they wouldn’t be able to look entirely to the past and have to provide a fresh spin on their sound and challenge themselves. As it stands however, like At the Gates on At War With Reality Carcass here have run out of ideas, and created a skippable, disposable album unworthy of their career.