Album Review: Dampf - "No Angels Alive"

 

I hate Dampf.  Which is to say, I love Dampf, and I hate how much I love them.  (I promise this is the only part of this review which is about me.)

There are a lot of metal bands on the planet Earth.  More than can be named or reasonably counted, never mind actually listened to or documented.  But the number is high.  

And the sad truth is that many (trying not to say “most”) of them suck.  They’re either derivative or boring or uninventive, or their suffer some manner of ideological problem, like thinking that the only pure music is recorded live in a hotel hallway in downtown Dresden, Germany.  More often than we’d like to admit, metal devolves into a sound that is (sometimes literally,) like banging two potted plants together and recording the aftermath.

Enter Dampf.  A band started kinda on a whim when a friend of Swedish electronic dance artist E-Type dared him to write a metal album.  That was “The Arrival,” and it was so good and so catchy and so well constructed, that it necessitated a second album, and here we are with “No Angels Alive.” And it is just as well executed and fun to listen to as its predecessor.  

Which, frankly, the metal community should be embarrassed at the fact that for all their number, this electronic guy can so easily traipse into the midst of the genre and absolutely nail metal in a way that so few understand.

It’s clear that A-TRON (electronic stage name E-Type) has a blueprint for his metal songs, and then like a housing development from the ‘80s, has come up with a dozen variations of the basic blueprint.  Which is genius when foraying into territory that doesn’t feel like your home base.  

The plan goes something like this – huge, layered, singalong chorus, consistent, constant rhythm, high contrast melody, poignant guitar solo, upbeat inflections, high beats per minute in the verses.  The sliders adjust from track to track – a little more electronic here, a little more harsh vocal there, a little slower here, a little heavier there, and in the end, you have ten songs that all share the same blood, but all feel a little different.

And it’s damn near perfect.  “Masquerade,” the album’s prominent single, might be the catchiest song I’ve heard this year, just as “From the E-Ternity” was on the band’s debut album.

I will say this – “No Angels Alive” is a little more power-ballad-y than “The Arrival” was, and that colors the experience depending on your opinion of power ballads.  That doesn’t mean those songs are lesser in construction; “Heart of Darkness” is a fun listen that strikes a good balance between metal roots and cinematic melodrama.

Even if you’re not a fan of that though, there’s still plenty here to like, particularly as Dampf really reaches and spreads their wings for the power metal opus of “Mists of Avalon (Don’t Wake Me Up).”

Either way, it remains joyously embarrassing at how easily Dampf has arrived on the scene and smoked most of their contemporaries, especially considering how seriously metal takes itself.  This is too much fun to be ignored or discarded for so petty a reason as spite.