By Night

A New Shape Of Desperation

Written by: PP on 30/12/2006 14:13:04

Like all Lifeforce artists, By Night combines an almost symphonic atmosphere and a brutally tight, aggressive delivery together into a genre defying, boundary crossing album. Elements of hardcore screaming, thrash metal style shredding and Swedish melodeath style guitar passages are all present in a beast of a record carrying the name "A New Shape Of Desperation".

And indeed, as Adrian Westin screams out "WELCOME!! TO THE NEW SHAPE OF DESPERATION" with slight changes in the pace of his strength portraying vocals on the opening track "The Truth Is Sold", most metal fans will be sold, but especially those who hold The Haunted dear to their heart. The next song "People Like You" fortifies this view as the fast shredding of the rhythm guitar intensifies and focuses the melodiousness of the lead guitar, and together with Adrian's screams it makes itself the perfect representative of the sound of By Night, which can best be described as The Haunted gone more in-your-face.

The technical proficiency is plausible, and all songs are delivered with full force at all times. The production has turned the guitar sound into a stone cold one, which presses through your speakers harder than you might at first imagine from a band carrying the name By Night. The songs are raw, full of aggression, and like "Same Old Story", are written with the fist-up-in-the-air in mind. Imagine the kind of in-your-face hardcore Hatebreed writes, and intensify it further, and pack it into a killer-punch in your face, and expect a shitload of headbanging to be done through the record. Because that's what the smashing "Walls Of Insecure" invites you to do through the use of faded double kick pedals and tightly held together vocal assault and guitar domination.

But what might bother the listener in the long run is the similarity of the tracks on the album. Aside from the slower, more symphonic "Dead Eyes See No Future", everything is thrown at you at the same killer speed throughout. Adrian's vocals hold the same level of brutality as well, and clean vocals are a wish never to be fulfilled on the album. Thus, the problem with "A New Shape Of Desperation" isn't it's intensity, as it fully complies with - and even surpasses - the standard set out by bands like The Haunted and Meshuggah, but instead it's repetitiveness which reduces the longevity of the record. But hey, that's not always a big problem, and at least myself I enjoy the occasional punch in the face in the form of shredding guitars and ailing vocal assaults surrounded by fittingly raw production.

Download: The Truth Is Sold, Cursed By The Thought
For the fans of: The Haunted, Meshuggah, Hatesphere
Listen: Myspace

Release date 25.09.2006
Lifeforce
Provided by Target ApS

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