Review Summary: A glimpse into 90s death-doom from rose colored glasses.
All the way back in the early 90s, progressive death metal could be separated into two contrasting categories. One was the movement that was inspired by technicality and jazz influences (Death, Cynic, Atheist, etc.); this style has been slowly evolving alongside the rest of the tech-death genre and is standing proud and tall to this day. However, the other category was the moodier arrival of progressive melodeath which often included doom influences. Some of the well-known bands that fall under this category are Edge of Sanity and Amorphis but other notable bands that really defined 90s progressive death-doom were Phlebotomized, The Chasm, and none other than Dark Millennium.
In fact, I have accredited Dark Millennium for some time now as being one of the very first pioneers of progressive death-doom with their debut album Ashore the Celestial Burden which came out a few months shy of 30 years ago. Unfortunately, this early style of progressive death-doom seems to have dwindled out a bit, partially because Dark Millennium‘s follow-up album (lengthy and avant-garde) was hit with mixed reception, then they broke up. And now after Opeth got big, most progressive death-doom sounds like some variation of Swallow the Sun, or Katatonia.
Following up my brief history lesson of progressive death-doom, modern Dark Millennium has not stylistically changed very much since their hay-day in the 90s. On the surface, their 2022 album Acid River sounds like it could have come out of the original death-doom movement that has seemingly been long-forgotten. This album can easily be seen as a kind of time capsule into what progressive death-doom sounded like in the 90s, now with trippy, psychedelic atmospheres. But don’t get it twisted, this is a 90s revival album in its cadence only, while the songwriting is more a product of modern progressive metal.
This album has all of the elements of 90s death-doom. It has those evil Morbid Angel esque growls. It has riffs upon riffs, and good ones at that. Dark Millennium‘s drum style leans heavily on a lot of cymbals and blast beats. And I think the main thing on this album that really makes it vintage-sounding, for all of those people nostalgic for the good ‘ol days, is how everything is recorded, mixed, and mastered. This just sounds so old, yet so 90s, especially when comparing it to other aforementioned death-doom bands of today.
However, psychedelic influences of Acid River aside, there is one very clear differentiating factor between this album and most other albums from that glorified time period. It’s in the songwriting. Indeed, the way these songs are layered, written, and structured are unfortunately not on par with what was produced back then… Yep. That is because when you truly, whole-heartedly compare the songwriting of Acid River to the celebrated albums of old, especially back-to-back, this absolutely blows them out of the water!
There are so many great twists and turns on this album that you really didn’t get back then. The level of progressive songwriting, combined with the fundamentals of death-doom riffs and slow builds is pretty ingenious. The songs “Lunacy”, and “Godforgotten” are great examples of how Dark Millennium successfully wrote songs that build in one way, say with those dripping, eerie chord progressions, then detour your expectations with unexpected tempo shifts, all while building up to a satisfying, evil climax (sending you into immutable despair).
Let’s be real here, this level of songwriting is something that was not around in 90s death-doom; making Acid River an overly idealistic look into 90s progressive death-doom rather than a re-creation verbatim. To elaborate on this point, there are many fans of this album that believe it is as good as it is because of how fully it captures what 90s albums were like, but on the contrary, Acid River succeeds because it takes the old sonic aesthetic and complements it with the past few decades of songwriting improvements.
In conclusion, this is an old-school album at first glance but a very contemporary album from a songwriting perspective. With many listens this becomes very apparent. I’m one who is not typically a fan of doom metal but this album was a game-changer for me. This has a lot of parallels to traditional progressive death-doom but comparing their merits shows to be unfair competition for the older albums. This supports the view that music does progress over time, as long as you know where to look.
Attribution: https://theprogressivesubway.com/2022/02/16/review-dark-millennium-acid-river/
