Band:	Dark Tranquillity
Album:	Endtime Signals
Style:	Gothenburg metal
Release date:	August 16, 2024
A review by:	musclassia

01. Shivers And Voids
02. Unforgivable
03. Neuronal Fire
04. Not Nothing
05. Drowned Out Voices
06. One Of Us Is Gone
07. The Last Imagination
08. Enforced Perspective
09. Our Disconnect
10. Wayward Eyes
11. A Bleaker Sun
12. False Reflection
13. Zero Sum [digipak bonus]
14. In Failure [digipak bonus]

Between Endtime Signals and The Last Will And Testament, Sweden’s metal royalty are opting for some ominous album titles this year. I for one hope that Dark Tranquillity’s newest effort isn’t a signal of any impending end, not least because it would be a slightly flat way to go out.

While At The Gates disappeared for decades and In Flames at one point exhibited a determination to degrade themselves further with every passing release, Dark Tranquillity have remained resolute in delivering consistent quality across over 3 decades. Having said that, a significant portion of their fanbase would likely voice that 2007’s Fiction represents their last true great album (notwithstanding the enthusiasm in some circles towards Atoma). When I reviewed their most recent album Moment in 2020, I recognized it as a likeable album that felt a bit safe, sedate and short on exciting memorability. After spending some time with Endtime Signals, I’ve come to regard this new effort as pretty much more of the same.

In truth, that opinion is still warmer than the one I thought I might be voicing after a first listen. Endtime Signals is firmly a product of the post-Fiction era of the band, with a lot of the expected keyboard/electronic-shaped soundscaping (with Brändström having the second-longest tenure of the current line-up, perhaps it’s not surprising) and an ever-growing presence of Mikael Stanne’s clean vocals, but for an album clearly embracing the more melodic instrumental/vocal elements, it initially felt low on actual engaging melody. I’ve warmed towards a few songs here now, but I would still say on the whole that this is an album that comes and goes a bit too easily while making a bit too little of an impact.

Focusing on the positive tracks first, “Shivers And Voids” is a solid enough opener, one that has a good level of energy to the verses and pleasant guitar textures in the chorus; it’s no “Encircled” by any means, but it allows the record to build some early momentum, particularly when it’s followed directly afterwards by another high-energy song in “Unforgivable” that has plenty of aggression and some decent hooky moments.

The song that was the first to grab me from the album, however, and also the one that has caught my attention strongly with every repeat listen, is “Enforced Perspective”. It’s another faster track, and one that brings the hooks in a way that sadly not enough of the rest of the tracklist manages; the verses have exciting tremolo riffs, while the dazzling keyboards in the chorus really elevate the urgency and emotive pull of this song, with everything capped off by some of the best guitar leads and solos on the album. It’s the start of a solid string of songs near the end of the album that contains “Wayward Eyes”, a stompy song that nevertheless has nice keyboard arrangements and a pleasantly tender chorus, and “A Bleaker Sun”, a track that is extreme vocals-only in the chorus but manages to be catchier in said chorus than many of the softer songs here courtesy of the keyboards.

Unfortunately, it is the prolonged stretch of songs between that opening one-two and these later successes that ultimately turn Endtime Signals into an album that is not unenjoyable, but slightly forgettable. It’s hard to point out any particular thing that Dark Tranquillity do here that causes this hint of malaise; there’s a degree of aggression to the verses of “Neuronal Fire”, “Drowned Out Voices” and “The Last Imagination”, there’s experiments with grandiose quasi-orchestrations near the end of the balladic “One Of Us Is Gone”, and there’s a mid-tempo stomp to “Not Nothing”. Nevertheless, the reality is that with every playthrough of the album, I struggle to remember the contents of many, if any, of these songs before they arrive in the tracklist, and nor am I left with much appetite to replay any of them after they finish.

I also mentioned earlier that Stanne leans quite heavily on his clean vocals across Endtime Signals. In principle, this isn’t a bad thing; he’s a highly competent and at-times passionate clean singer in addition to being one of the standout extreme metal vocalists, and there’s both songs and full albums (looking at you, Projector) in which his cleans are very prominent that are thoroughly enjoyable to listen to. However, he’s not been gifted with much in the way of great vocal melodies to demonstrate his abilities on this album, and furthermore, I feel the inclusion of two ballad-style songs in “One Of Us Is Gone” and “False Reflection” is frankly overkill, particularly when each of them is rather soporific. When considering how Moment ended with a cleans-only song in “In Truth Divided” that had a real sense of emotion and gravitas to it, “False Reflection” is just a bit bland and wet as an album closer.

Unlike In Flames, I don’t think Dark Tranquillity really have it within them to produce a genuinely poor album; there’s a fundamental level of competence to their musicianship and songcraft that prevents this. However, those moments of genuine thrill that their 90s and particularly 00s output are overloaded with have somewhat dried up across the past few records, and these last two albums are drifting a bit too much towards ‘background listening’ fare for my liking, when albums like Character and Fiction were essential listening. I wouldn’t turn off Endtime Signals if someone pressed play on it, but I struggle to see myself revisiting it with any real urgency.