Review Summary: Amazing album that will simultaneously charm your ears and beat the hell out of you. Taste it
Adaen is a prog-rock/post-metal Russian band and whoever says there is no quality Russian progressive music in English is obviously wrong. Need some proof? Here it comes.
‘Dancing Metropolis Burial’ is the first full-length album of Adaen, which at that particular time was rather a one-man project than a full band. The album was released on April 1, 2009 (not a joke, still). Valentin Berezin, the group founder, took part in several bands before (diapAson, ISO, Medulla) but this one was initially considered to become his first solo-project.
DBM consists of 5 tracks so it could be called an EP unless the actual length of the album was 32:00 which is now enough for what’s called a long-play release.
The first track, ‘Airships’ begins with a recognizable, atmospheric delay-guitar pattern (those times Valentin used to use lots of effects like delay, whammy etc.) and continues with a more or less generic metal riff. ‘Airships’ is a strong, heartfelt song which is eating into your brain with its desperate, crying melodic passages and these lines: ‘Madness is over the aerial, dancing metropolis burial’, the main lines of the album. Putting it in the beginning of the album as an intro was obviously the right desicion. Closer to the end you can hear the solo which probably reminds you of the one from Dream Theater’s ‘Never Enough’. Actually, many album moments remind of some of Muse-ish songs played by someone progressive like DT. The band leader himself admitted having been influenced by both of them, to say nothing of such guys as Silverchair, Nirvana, Tool and A Perfect Circle.
The second track, ‘Disconnected’ begins with a silent, gentle finger-picked melody reminiscent of some earliest things of Porcupine Tree. It melodically supports the atmosphere of desperation and isolation which began in the previous song, even in its name. Perhaps a bit overlong, but still really good. It has an interesting, unusual structure consisting of many parts (not just a verse followed by a chorus followed by a verse and so on).
Sound-wise, ‘Sound Of Running Trains’ is similar to ‘Airships’: the delay-made guitar intro again. It sounds like rain in the beginning, you can almost hear raindrops dripping down the window of a passing train. Or it may be associated with some abstract computer 3D-model spinning in all directions on a screen, pulsing and transforming into something else. There is an almost sudden micro-section opening with words ‘In your tears, in your eyes nothing but my sacrifice’ which sounds really hardcore and this is even more underlined by the song desperate ending ‘Come on tie up my eyes!’. Here is probably the origin for a more hardcore-influenced Adaen sound on later EP’s such as ‘No Trees, No Sons, No Homes’, ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Hearts True… Bypassed’.
The next song, ‘Cameras Set Within’ is very melodic (damn, what are we talking about, the whole album is filled with truly amazing melodies!), beginning with a silent, gentle guitar finger-picked melody. Yeah, again. Notice some internal compositional album cross-links between 1st and 3rd tracks and between 2nd and 4th ones (needless to say of the obvious link between the first and the last tracks). Speaking about the composition on the whole, it’s really great; it really feels like the creator had it on his mind from the very beginning. ‘Cameras Set Within’ has a very dynamic, sensitive chorus that you instantly memorize: ‘Sometimes I feel like numb, I’m feeling the sun that suffocates’.
The last one… ‘The Second Wave’. You know, it begins like an atomic explosion. Literally. The filthy, distorted sound in the first seconds – the first wave, the sound-wave, and then – the second wave, the thermal one, with a full-on sound. And if you somehow managed to survive after the first one, the second will certainly crush you into little pieces: ‘The second wave ruins me down’. An astonishing album outro (where the words ‘Dancing metropolis burial’ appear once again, closer to the ending), not long at all, it lasts for only 2:32, but it slays like hell.
Someone could blame that album for getting too much from Muse, Dream Theater etc. You know what? I think there’s much more Adaen then these two mentioned above. To me what the mastermind shows us himself in DBM sounds far more interesting than all that we’ve heard from ‘the references’ before. Just find half an hour to listen to it, because damn, it’s really worth it.
