Fiction

Dark Tranquillity | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 24, 2007)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Century Media
• ASIN: B000NIIUYC
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,874 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Nothing To No One

2. The Lesser Faith

3. Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive)

4. Blind At Heart

5. Icipher

6. Inside The Particle Storm

7. Empty Me

8. Misery's Crown

9. Focus Shift

10. The Mundane And The Magic

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Album Of The Year as of right now, May 10, 2007

By 

Bodom J (Bethpage, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Fiction (Audio CD)

Bring this misery down on me! I love dark tranquillity, one of my favorite bands ever (if not my favorite) and I own everything they have done. Ever since I heard "shadow duet" from their first major full length, I was hooked. Since then and over the years, I have gone back and bought their whole catalog and never once been dissapointed. With each album they expand on their sound without giving into mainstream ideals and still managing to pay homage to their roots. Here is a band that writes in depth, exciting, emotional music and they will never stop if this album is any indication. I'm not sure how they did it, but with this album, they managed to write their best since Projector.

Stanne's vocals on this album sound EVIL as all get out. I mean, really, he sounds down right frickin' scary on all the tracks. With each album, his vocals continue to grow and they are doing so in the right direction. He spits venom into the mic on this release and I love it. And that's not even mentioning the return of his clean vocals! It's been years and a couple of albums since we've heard his very unique and baritone singing style and I'm glad it's back. Even these have been upgraded by him, still sounding better with even more venom and emotion. Even the last track has both clean vocals AND female vocals, which is a nice return to form. It feels nice to my ears to hear angelic vocals pop up, something they haven't used in quite some time (since projector if my memory serves me correctly).

The drumming is once again intricate and he (anders) is using everyting on the kit at his will. However, unlike most metal drummers, he isn't constantly bashing the drums, seeing how fast he can play or how much noise he can make. He makes use of what he has when he has to. He is easily my favorite drummer of all time.

Next we have the twin guitar attack. Some of their fastest, heaviest, riffs are on this album and the guitar tone is excellent. Guitar solos even pop up a great deal, something that DT hasn't done in awhile. The bass and the keyboards continue to add an awesome back drop. Once again, they keyboardist isn't a traditional metal keyboard player: he uses more ambient noise and dark melodies as opposed to a more silly, epic, sound used by other bands, such as power metal.

I really can't praise this album enough. Any bad points? Well no album is perfect, not even this one. I wish the drumming was louder, more up front in the mix. It would also been cool to have a little more use of clean vocals and female vocals. Finally, I wish they would do some acoustic interplay mixed with the heavy. But please be aware that these things are just fan boy nitpicking and in no way do they have any merit on my score and review (obviously).

Dark Tranquillity, I doubt you'll read this, but thank you for the great music you have given us over the years (almost 20!). When other bands make terrible records or sell out, you give us hope and can always been counted on.

UP THE IRONS!!!!!!!!!!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Melodic Death Metal Album of the Year From Greatest Band Ever, February 27, 2007

By 

P. Binh - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fiction (Audio CD)

Great metal bands are usually lucky to have 2-4 amazing albums, with the rest being somewhere between good and mediocre. Dark Tranquillity, on the other hand, have been producing nothing but phenomenal albums since their 1995 release of The Gallery. Ten years and five albums later, we have their latest and possibly their greatest masterpiece: Fiction.

Anyone who loved their last album, Character, will love Fiction even more because it's better at every level. It has the same dynamic blend of aggressive, heavy riffing, melodic passages, guttural growls, and synths that manage to provide background and texture to DT's beautiful melodic aggression. I was pleasantly surprised to hear these elements, so well-utilized on Character, blended with clean vocals and even female guest vocals on Fiction. I was also surprised that I could understand most of the lyrics without the booklet, a testament to the fact that vocalist Mikael Stanne has honed the uncanny ability to growl demonically and scream while retaining total control over his voice.

While Character was a great album, there were a few tracks that I wasn't crazy about. Fiction, on the other hand, does not have a single weak/mediocre/could-have-been-better track - they are all phenomenal. To me, a lot of the songs on Character sounded the same, perhaps because they didn't really have any slow sections or breaks to them. Fiction is far more dynamic with evenly balanced peaks of aggression and troughs of atmospheric keyboard breaks and everything in between.

How a great band can become greater with each passing album without falling into a musical rut after more than fifteen years is mind-boggling. They could have retired long ago as THE premier Gothenburg/NWOSDM band, but instead they chose to persevere, to remain true to their death metal roots and at the same time grow, change, evolve, incorporate new elements into their amazing sound, and to continue releasing unbelievable albums.

As an atheist, I have to say: thank God for Dark Tranquillity!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars another masterpiece under the belt., June 3, 2007

By 

Lord Chimp (Monkey World) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fiction (Audio CD)

Comparing the Dark Tranquillity's recent work with that of their historically related band In Flames, it seems almost counter-intuitive for dark tranq's standards to have remained so high. This review is not of course to speak of In Flames, but merely keep them in mind when considering how different Dark Tranquillity's work has become. Instead of forcing their music to fit a preconceived notion of commercialism to the point where all of the songs end up sounding like it was churned out of somebody's Swedish metal factory. _Fiction_ marks the third masterpiece in a row, and by now they have utterly perfected the stylistic turn that began years back with the mostly successful experiment _Projector_. It is easy enough to lump _Projector_ into the same category as stuff like _Clayman_ or _Natural Born Chaos_, although such a comparison does not bear much usefulness as _Projector_ did not mark a turn to commercialism in the scope of dark tranq's career, but instead was an experiment in the grand scheme of finding awesome music.

With gorgeous pianos and keys shining alongside the ever-brilliant guitar leads and riffs, _Fiction_ also marks the return of Stanne's clean vocals on two tracks and a female-voice supported chorus on the final track, the stunning finale "The Mundane and the Magic". The music is very close to _Character_, but where _Character_'s tracks came off sounding a bit blurred together, _Fiction_'s variety and imagination shows that if anything, Dark Tranquillity is only getting better and may yet peak beyond even what they attained with their youthful masterworks of genre-defining melodeath godliness, _The Gallery_ and _The Mind's I_. In fact, this is the best album since those. Tracks like the grumbling opener "Nothing to No One", the soaring "Focus Shift", or the ripping speedmetal of "Blind at Heart" are mainstays of the band's modern sound, combining the band's literally unmatched ear for melody and arrangement with their impeccable classical (as in western art music) sense of development and structure. Also of great interest is the churning, massive "Inside the Particle Storm", the driving metal of "Misery's Crown", with its sparse clean verses, growly-crunchy choruses and bridge with a blistering riff that screams for air guitar, and of course the INCREDIBLE closer "The Mundane and the Magic", where Stanne and guest singer Nell trade off lines on the chorus to chilling effect, and verses develop with seething guitar crunch and melancholy piano. This song in a way evokes "Bolt of Blazing Gold" without sounding at all like it, and that is of course a good thing. The production has been compressed to a grey smear with little breathing room for the arrangements, heavy and thick, which would out of context appear as a bad thing were the music not so perfectly incredible. Any other production would feel like it belonged with a different recording.