Artist: Dan Dankmeyer (US) Album: Arcologies (2011) Genre: Instrumental Progressive Metal In October of last year, my Metal buddy CroOZza first reported on an American bed-room instrumental Metal artist called Dan Dankmeyer. Six days after that we reviewed his then latest album X, his tenth overall. We mentioned Dankmeyer’s excessive release rate, as X was his fourth album in 2010. “If he hurries he might even make five” we said. Well, he juuust missed it. His eleventh record Arcologies came out on January 1st, which lines him up perfectly for perhaps making five released this year.

Today, however, we’re only interested in Arcologies. Our main criticism on X in our review, was that it lacked some in terms of diversity and delivering climaxes. It featured awesome, deep riffs on seven- and eight string guitars, however, which kept us interested in this guy’s progress. Let us take a closer look at how Arcologies is doing!

Dankmeyer starts his new album off with a short track called Day of Dissonance. First thing that sticks out is that the style stuck. Excessively low-tuned guitars over programmed drums, providing a slurry, nearly synthetic, almost burpy sound. Like a big ass bullfrog in the horny-season. Layered over the low rhythm guitars is a lead guitar, outputting a warm melodic sound of higher frequencies. Considering our earlier critique, this doesn’t spell a lot of change with respect to recipe, which is a bit of a pity, and overall I’m not really impressed by this track. I even dare call it slightly boring.

Luckily though, the subsequent songs are much more interesting. Domination Nation, track three, is definitely something with a different feel. It starts slower, then changes to a dark setting and picks up speed, unlike anything I’ve heard of him so far – not that I’ve heard all his stuff, but still. The result is nearing the dark tunes of Black Metal, though without the tremolo picking, and wouldn’t look bad at all combined with some tormented Black Metal screaming. Somehow images of deep space pop up in to my head, which isn’t usually an association I make with music, so I guess this one really is different. Good song! We like!

What we also notice, is somewhat of a peak, just before the whole thing cools off again just after the 4:00 marker. If you remember our second part of critique on X – that it lacked climaxes – you’ll understand that we sighed in relief when we noted this fact. It wasn’t the peak of peaks, but it was definitely a high followed by a low, which indicates Mr. Dankmeyer has set foot in the right direction in terms of adding dynamics, and so emotion, to his songs.

What has to be said here, by the way, and in his defense, is that adding true dynamics is a bit trickier as a one-man bedroom band, than it is when you’ve got four of your mates playing along with you. Drum computers need to be programmed, and whatever you do, they won’t provide the material, reality feel of a real drummer, and so it’s difficult to deliver more emotion with them. In terms of vocals and bass, it’s even more difficult for Dankmeyer, as there are none. Consequently, all his emotion has to stem from his guitar work, and he has to quadruple the emotional, dynamical output.

By now we’re a bit further down the road listening to this album, and so far we’re happy to report that the variation between songs seems to stick. Kill Now, Shred Later starts with a slightly dirty Stoner Rock arrangement, but soon finds itself reinforced by melody and groove. ‘name this something cool’ starts very nice and easy, and although it gets louder, it does so in a more melancholic heart-pain type of way. The intro was very nice though, and it occurred to me that Dankmeyer should try one or two clean, or at least calm, songs on his next release.

‘name this something cool’ isn’t by far the best song on the album, but it’s the only one we could find on YouTube, and because we’re too lazy today to upload one ourselves, the decision was made to simple feed this one to you. If you want to hear more, the solution is very simple anyway: go to the guy’s Bandcamp page and have a listen, or just directly buy the album.

Black Ocean gives us the Orient. Arabic desert melodies lead the song, but groove is right around the corner, and there are even some atmospheric key/synth bits to help build the atmosphere. Once again, I’d like to focus on the up and downward motion this song follows: it shows dynamics, like most of the album. It’s one of the strongest songs on the album by the way.

By now the picture is clear: whether Dankmeyer has actually taken our critique into account, or whether he just grew as a songwriter and musician, Arcologies provides a much better album in terms of song diversity and dynamics. There’s still room for improvement – in the light of which more real instruments, vocals, or a truly shredding guitar solo would help – but progress is made in the right direction, and, overall, Arcologies provides a very listenable record. And that’s an understatement!

My Grade: 8.0/10
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Tags: American, death, instrumental, progressive, review

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.