The Melodeath Race

I wrote yesterday about how much I love Dark Tranquillity, and this set me thinking about how it was not always so. Just half a year ago, when I was first getting into death metal, DT was just one band among many. More accurately, there were four bands that were at the forefront of my death metal expansion: Dark Tranquillity, Opeth, Children of Bodom, and In Flames. I liked them all, though at the time, Opeth was actually my favourite. Disclaimer: I'll admit that none of these bands are pure death metal, though, so don't flame my ass for wrong terminology.

During the past half a year, I have been listening to all of them in fairly even amounts, with Children of Bodom taking prevalence around Christmas and Opeth being more common last year. But in the end, Dark Tranquillity has become easily my favourite of the four.

I became disillusioned with Children of Bodom because of their fixation with death (okay, it is death metal, but still) and their stupid lyrics. They're the only band I listen to that use swearwords in their lyrics consistently. I don't have anything against swearing and I'm not a saint, but I just don't think swearing belongs in lyrics. They were at one point my absolute favourite, but something just distanced them from me.

Opeth are a good band, but they take a bit of effort to listen to. Their music is sometimes boring and repetitive, and sometimes amazingly good, but they are not a band I can always listen to. They have an amazing vocalist, though.

In Flames, in turn, is not very consistent in their style. Their old music is great, but their newer stuff is too close to nu metal. They did a Metallica, so to say, except their change was less abrupt. I had an argument with a classmate two weeks ago about which is better, new or old In Flames, and he is a nu metal fan; this pretty much sums up why In Flames are not my favourite melodeath band. The name of this post was inspired by their song The Jester Race, though.

So that leaves Dark Tranquillity, and I find very little fault in them. They won the race, so to speak.