Dissection = In Flames - "Reinkaos" Review (30%)
I was willing to let "Storm of the Light's Bane" slide. "It's just an experimentation in stadium rock," I thought. Expanding horizons. Getting in touch with our own suppressed hetero-skeptic feminine side. No reason to act all prude, now, is there? It's no "Birth of a Cursed Elysium", but I'll manage.
This, however, is purely inexcusable. At first, I didn't mind "Reinkaos". Ok, Dissection decided to abandon all pretenses of metal and play stadium rock. They definitively jumped ships. There was always some suspicion that Jon was, um, "playing for the other team" so to speak. Like Gaahl, Inferanus and Ahriman.
However, as the tracks play on, another Jon enters my mind. Not Nödtveidt, but Davis. Ew.
Korn similarities? On a Dissection album? What the hell happened here?
For one, it seems Jon forgot what a metal music was supposed to sound like. Perhaps due to an over-exposure to rap music while in prison, he now associates anything with electric guitars to extreme metal? The subtle harmonic changes that made each track on "The Somberlain" progress as a coherent narrative are long gone, replaced by rather monotone chugging (cum-chugging, at that) and "groovy" riffs of the Pantera variety.
You thought "Drawing Down the Moon" was boring? Wait until you hear "Reinkaos", it makes "Nuclear Milkshake Holocausto Winter" sound like Craig Pillard on "Onward to Golgotha".
Dissection = In Flames
Jon Nödtveidt was never atop the vocal game, but his feeble attempts to mix clean vocals and with usual hardcore mockery of black metal rasps necessitate his castration, which makes me wonder if this "Reinkaos" album wasn't part of his attempts to transition to Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy.
Both music and vocals on "Reinkaos" sounds similar to what the Arch Enemy stadium rockers were releasing at the same time on "War Eternal" and "Doomsday Machine", all the way down to the chugga chugga nu-metal influences.
Did Jon start wearing American basketball jerseys like the posers of In Flames on the album booklet? I forgot to check. Anyway, Jon Nödtveidt deserves to be known posthumously as John Not-Veined, king (or queen?) of American mallcore.
Even Darkthrone couldn't fail more ridiculously at a black metal themed comeback.
Of course, every defect on "Reinkaos" is rendered a hundred times worse by Nödtveidt idiotic decision to replace every competent musician that ever played for Dissection with Thomas Asklund, of Gaygoroth infamy, and that guitarist from Watain. Literally Watain, and I'm not even joking.
At this point it's not even nu-metal anymore, it's nu-screamo.
If he were going for a "theatre of the absurd" type effect, he should have gone all the way and recruited Famine from Peste Noire and Eater from Sewer. Both make much better music than Watain anyway, and "Reinkaos" itself is barely above Watain's horrendous screamo vomit.
If you want real black metal with melodic sensibilities, listen to "The Somberlain", "Verminlust", "Far Away from the Sun" or "Fallen Angel".
While "The Somberlain" is a black metal classic, "Storm of the Light's Bane" a crypto-Gothenburg mockery of Dissection prior work, this turd "Reinkaos" is I believe the album that signified the end for this once mighty band.
To Nödtveidt, I say this. You fucked up. Hard. Way to ruin your legacy by having bad musical tastes and associating with incompetent musicians (of Watain, ffs).
And to the other two idiots, a piece of advice. Stop playing metal. Drop your axes, gentlemen, and move on, lest your careers end up like the band you worship... in flames.
Reinkaos score: 30/100.
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