Style: melodic death metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: self reflection, reinventing oneself, relationships
Thoughts: Coming from The Gallery and The Mind's I, I had high hopes for this album. I didn't know anything about it when I first put the album on and when I was greeted by a piano I was not entirely sure what to think... and by the time Freecard had concluded I remember turning the album off.
My original CD of this I sold to a buddy for a few bucks and then never thought about it again. Dark Tranquillity was dead to me. I wanted nothing to do with them. The riffs sucked. Where was the speed? What was up with those horrible clean vocals? I had their back catalog and that was good enough for me... this new direction and I were not compatible. Young me was an idiot.
Early Dark Tranquillity is some of the best melodic death metal that Sweden ever produced... but the band had enough of that style. I remember reading an interview at some point where the band was saying they wanted to move beyond the confines of melodic death metal and create music that was more in line with what the band wanted to hear. Projector was the result of that.
The fact that the music slowed down and became less technical is not a bad thing. In fact it lets the riffs breathe more than they ever did on the early albums. It allows the atmosphere to be a stronger focus than anything beyond a few fleeting moments in the bands early works. The fact that keyboards became a central part of their sound was a foreshadowing of where the band would ultimately end up.
Projector is arguably a transition album... but a transition to what? The sound on this album is very consistent and the albums that followed were not in a similar style... so rather than a transition album I feel its more appropriate to call this a stand alone experiment.
Despite the fact that young me was an idiot. I'm glad that older me decided to revisit this unique entry into Dark Tranquillity's long and storied career. In retrospect this is one of the better albums that the band put out. At minimum we got a glimpse into what they truly wanted to do at the time... something that I can't say they have always done in their later career.
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