Review Summary: The worst album that did everything right.
On the surface, this was the perfect album to introduce me back into the metal review scene as I am a longtime fan of progressive groove metal: for example, I’ve done previous reviews of the latest albums by
Scarred,
Hammerhedd and
Polars Collide (a band which I am probably the number one fan of at this point). Unfortunately for fans in the USA, it will likely be a long time until we’ll be able to see them live since they are an underground, small-budget band all the way in Sweden, but don’t fret, we have
Polars Collide at home!
Of course, the
Polars Collide we have at home is
Destination: Void (DV); the band in question for this review. The two bands fill exactly the same role in the metal ecosystem. They essentially use the instrumental elements that we associate with Djent, but instead of the 2010’s wave of metalcore djent, they utilize the older style brought to us by
Meshuggah – one that sounds a lot more like high-gain, progressive groove metal and death metal. This style is most immediately obvious when listening to both bands’ riffs, chugging interludes, mechanical solos, and barking vocals.
Within the first seven minutes of
DV’s twenty-two-minute, one-song EP, you are hit with a polyrhythmic, palm-muted djent breakdown, followed by a robotic guitar solo easily identified as an imitation of Thordendal’s signature style, and uncanny pick scrapes leftover from the past five
Gojira albums. I have made some recent effort not to focus on bands being copy-cats but it’s difficult when
DV’s Spotify bio claims “Their sound is purely their own” – I mean, they are simply asking for it. Let’s just say, this band’s sound is built out of a combination of other bands.
Nonetheless, the band leaves much room for praise. This track represents something akin to an auditory portfolio of skills that the band is capable of producing. They packed this thing with many good riffs: Some are obviously chunky, utilizing techniques that date back to influences of
Pantera and early
Meshuggah, others have a stronger modern djent-flavor reminiscent of
WAIT or
Cloudkicker, some are a tremolo and nearly blackened, but most of them is just straight-up prog metal riffs.
DV present a variety of vocal styles that could land all over the local genre spectrum from alt-rock to death metal. These elements, along with the well-placed climactic sax section and ominous closing strings, it is hard not to appreciate what the band is doing here.
It is also worth mentioning that all of the musicians’ performances here are fairly tight, keeping time, and showing a natural synergy with one another. Meanwhile, members of other bands will often get left behind when the band changes tempos in progressive tracks. Additionally, one who appreciates progressive song structures can admire how they packed these parts of the epic song together rather than just presenting an EP with four mid-tier tracks.
In conclusion,
DV are good at what they do considering their level of musicianship and their compositional writing – and because of this I must give credit where it is due – but they are not astounding. It feels like they had a task sheet of all of the things that they were supposed to do in a progressive death/groove metal album and they checked all of the boxes skillfully. However, taking this illustration into account, it does feel like the band did certain things just to be
meta, and they did so much of what we’re used to hearing that
The Bludgeoning Dawn ends up feeling exceptionally cliche. This is one case where thinking outside the box will help tremendously.
