DAGOBA „s/t”

Let's be honest, you can count the number of good French metal bands on the fingers of a very deformed hand. Of course, there's the excellent Scarve and Tripod and on the technical death metal side there's the underrated Carcariass, but never has a band stood a chance of success than in the case of Dagoba.

They have one big advantage – they are on a major label, but they don't really need this as the music speaks for itself. In fact on this album, the music speaks very loudly. Forget for a minute that they are French; put aside all preconceptions of what French metal sounds like (unless like me, you've heard a lot of that underground black metal garbage) because you won't be expecting anything like what your ears will be greeted with.

Imagine, if you will, Strapping Young Lad jamming with Fear Factory all thrown into the ring with Gojira and Mnemic. Confused? You shouldn't be, as when you listen to it, it all makes perfect sense. Each song has been crafted with an incredible amount of professionalism and care. The playing is tighter than any of the aforementioned bands and the quality of the compositions is breathtaking throughout the whole album.

The only way of describing the music that Dagoba play is futuristic metal. Huge guitars churn out brutal riffs backed up by intelligent drumming and some of the most inventive vocals I have ever heard. Shawter's vocals change so frequently that you'd be forgiven for thinking that there were three or four vocalists all taking it in turns. Track 3 “The white guy (and the black ceremony”) illustrates this perfectly. Starting off with harsh and brutal vocals the song then slips into some kind of deep crooning for the chorus and later into death metal type screams over precision drums and choppy rhythmic guitars.

Track 5, “Another Day”, is arguably the strongest track on the album (in truth all of the tracks are untouchable) and employs a calm piano introduction over some electronic percussion. Dagoba use a lot of electronics to give the album a creepy and oriental feel – check out track 4 “Something Stronger” for proof.

There is another band I am reminded of when listening to this, but I can't quite put my finger on who it is. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter as this album stands on its own feet. It's brutal, it's different and you won't hear anything like it all year. The band doesn't give much away on their web site or in the CD inlay so I don't know much about them. Get hold of a copy of this (if you can) before they are huge. The only bad thing I can say about this is the same thing I say about a lot of releases – why isn't it available in the UK or the USA? I had a long trip to France to get hold of this, but my God, it was worth it. Along with the Darkness Remains CD, this is one of the years best and all of Roadrunners half arsed bands put together couldn't come close to the genius and feeling on this album.

RUNNING TIME: 66.03