DISSONA

Dissona deliver one of the best records of this young year with a great progressive metal album with varied influences as some dark death and gothic approaches reminding me of Opeth, some rather jazz influenced scale choices that make me think of Southern Cross and some very technical moments that sound like Symphony X. A couple of atmospheric interludes, exotic folk driven vocals or harsh metal passages always keep the attention high and this album never gets too boring. The strongest thing about this output is the dark and slightly depressive atmospheric note that keeps the whole first strike together like a clear guiding line.

While almost all songs have something interesting to offer, too many tracks sound alike and need a lot of concentration, patience and time to grow. The album kicks off rather slowly and ends on a more or less convincing note. These are the only negative points which you can resume under the famous category called lack of constancy. A few tracks less and the whole thing would not weight that much anymore and a record of forty-five minutes would have been easier to digest. The best tracks can be found in the middle of the record in my humble opinion once you got used to the band's identity and once they found an efficient way to catalyze their different influences. It's when the mixture of all these elements works best that the band sounds more than just promising but almost like talented professionals who know exactly what they do. They really don't sound like beginners.

The songs that particularly stand out are for example the dark album highlight "Avella" with some musical passages that make me think about the amazing horror metal genre that are mixed with some mysterious folk chants and haunting but simplistic female vocals. This song could please to those who like acts such as The Vision Bleak. The slow and melancholic "Eccentress" grips some attention thanks to strange whispered vocals over sad guitar melodies and a dominant bass guitar that lead to gothic vocals accompanied by out of space guitar riffs as if Moonspell and Voivod had joined their forces to work out a song together. The dreamy and jazzy "Fawn" proves that the band has its strength when they work with strong contrasts and emotions. The song features calm and minimalistic patterns with desperate up tempo breaks underlined by varied emotional vocals and sad violin melodies making me think a little bit of The Old Dead Tree.

If the band focuses more on these variations or contrasts and is able to catalyze its ideas on the upcoming records, than we have a progressive metal band that could go very far. They definitely have the potential to find their very unique vacant space in the genre because they already take only the best influences from the mentioned bands and luckily don't just sound like a copy of them. The surprising passages are easily the best moments on this atmospheric record. Be sure to check this stunning debut record out if you like atmospheric progressive metal of any kind. This is easily one of the best debut records in the whole metal scene I have heard in quite a while.

Originally published on www.metal-archives.com on February 27th of the year 2012.