Essential album - reissued!
Justin Gaines | Northern Virginia | 09/03/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Originally released in 2000, Haven was the fifth full-length studio album from Swedish melodic death metal innovators Dark Tranquillity. Picking up where At the Gates left off, Dark Tranquillity, alongside In Flames, Soilwork and Hypocrisy, took death metal in a bold new direction, adding melody as a major element and experimenting with traditional metal elements, clean vocals, and in Dark Tranquillity's case, keyboards. Lots and lots of keyboards.
Haven was the album where Dark Tranquillity finally seemed to figure out their definitive sound. You could hear them moving ever so slightly in this direction on The Gallery and The Mind's I, and they perhaps went too far on the experimental Projector album, but with Haven all the pieces fit together. They figured out how to use a lot of gothic keyboard sounds and still remain undeniably a death metal band. It helped that Michael Stanne abandoned the clean vocals he used so abundantly on Projector. Not that I minded them, but at the time they made people wonder if Dark Tranquillity was going the way of Amorphis and Samael. I doubt it took anyone more than one listen to blistering songs like "Rundown" and the stunning "The Wonders at Your Feet" to put that idea to rest!
Haven is a stunning melodic death metal album all around. Inescapable melodies and atmospheric keyboards merge seamlessly with a traditional death metal assault and intelligent lyrics, and the result is an album where Dark Tranquillity proved that a death metal album could also be a work of pure artistry.
Haven really is a landmark album in Swedish melodic death metal history, and is one of Dark Tranquillity's finest efforts (and that's saying something). It's an absolutely essential album for Dark Tranquillity fans as well as fans of Swedish melodic death metal in general.
Edition Notes: Century Media reissued Haven (along with Projector and Damage Done) in 2009. The deluxe reissue features digitally remastered sound, a nice slipcase, expanded liner notes, and four bonus tracks. The first three bonus tracks - "In Sight", "Misery In Me" and "Cornered" were b-sides from the Haven sessions that also appeared on the Exposures: In Retrospect & Denial rarities collection a few years back. It's nice to have them added to the Haven album, but they're not really anything new. The final bonus track is a live version of "The Wonders at Your Feet". While I wouldn't recommend re-buying Haven just for the bonus tracks, I'd definitely recommend the reissue on the basis of the improved sound quality. Between the remastered audio and deluxe packaging, I didn't think twice about replacing my old copy of Haven."
Track Listings (15) - Disc #1