Thankfully, Damage Done was a damn riffy, heavier beast. I remember picking up Character at my local Newbury Comics, right up the street from the Staples where I worked during a lunch break on a particularly bad day, and I was blown away by how “The New Build” didn’t mess around at all. With Anders Jivarp blasting away, and both Niklas Sundin and Martin Henriksson hurling riffs and melodies at you at lightning speed, “The New Build” would set the tone straight away that sure, this is like its predecessor, but it was far nastier and uglier. Well, at least from the first couple of songs, anyway.
From “The Endless Feed” on forward, the moodiness that perpetuated 1999’s dark horse Projector would make its reappearance, but rather than dwelling in sorrow and despair, it would instead converge with the band’s refound ferocity, channeling a completely different animal altogether that would later become a Dark Tranquillity trademark. From there, future live classics like “Lost to Apathy” and album closer (and the only “ballad” on here) “My Negation” would further cement Sundin and Henriksson as a guitar duo just as worthy of praise as the classic duos before them. There’s not a bad moment on Character, with each song making a strong case for a live appearance, and the knowledge that no matter what the band chooses for their live set, it’s a surefire bet that anything from Character would go down swimmingly.
And a giant part of that is due to how Character manages to tie up everything that Dark Tranquillity created up to that point into a tidy, neat bow. While it lacked Mikael Stanne’s moody crooning, the intensity of his growls was never in question, and his savage performance acts as a thread throughout the album. Otherwise, the blazing melodies that were captured during Skydancer, fellow YMIO inductee The Gallery, and The Mind’s I were honed to an impeccable sharpness while the moodier vibes from Projector and Haven blended better than before, especially with a much heavier backdrop. This was a culmination of what made Dark Tranquillity great.
And I could say that about any of DT’s mid-period. Damage Done was the about-face return from more gothic wanderings, and Character’s immediate follow-up Fiction would further tinker with the winning formula, with a welcome return of Stanne’s singing voice. But Character… well, Character hit just right, during the right time, and at the right intensity. It was the perfect storm of melodic precision, death metal heft, and electronic experimentation that was the ultimate soundtrack to long work nights, eager drives home, and repeated listens with friends. Character was, and still is, something special, and now it’s rightfully in the Halls of the Olde, where it belongs.
