Album Review: The Black Dahlia Murder - Servitude
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Trigger warning: Suicide. If you find yourself struggling with thoughts of suicide, please know that there is help out there. The world is a better place simply because you keep breathing. No matter what your brain wants you to believe, you are worth saving.
It’s not an easy thing to establish a distinct sound, especially in a field as crowded with excellence as the modern metal scene is. Nonetheless certain bands defy the odds and manage it nonetheless. By now melodeath royalty, The Black Dahlia Murder are amongst that (un)hallowed clutch. There’s a specific way they write, the harmonies and chord progressions unified with a bellicose bite all their own and identifiable to anyone with a passing familiarity with with their output. They’re catchy and positively turgid with melody, yet with teeth enough that the unwashed extremity addicts like myself can get on board because they remember to include the “death” portion of the “melodeath” label. It doesn’t hurt that they’re as prolific as a catholic nymphomaniac too, reliably dredging superlative material from a seemingly inexhaustible well of inspiration. With that said, it was hardly a sure thing that we would ever see another The Black Dahlia Murder album given the wretched circumstances that befell the band in 2022, when longtime vocalist Trevor Strnad took his own life. However, the band decided that the show must go on, and now here I sit, with a shiny new The Black Dahlia Murder album before me. So; how is it?
They’ve not lost a step. Not one. “Servitude” is a conveyor belt of unbridled badassery, every bit as confident as it’s predecessors, prising ajar your drooling mandible and shovelling riff after glorious riff down your throat. It’s astonishing how much they can jam into each song without the daintiest modicum of slackening cohesion. “Aftermath” is a cataclysmic monster of ill-intentioned momentum, an eldritch centipede of limitless length armoured and spewing toxins constricting to throttle the earth itself. Deep burrow endless clawed limbs, set squirming to gouge heaving wounds in the planet’s core. “Asserting Dominion” spades Lye into the gashed surface; an appallingly catchy upbeat titan in it’s own right composed of virtuoso solo work and somehow danceable swing. “Transcosmic Blueprint” slinks from nimble upper-register tech death work to bruising palm mute grooves bookended with a graceful lead melody that will burrow into your hippocampus like bot fly larvae. But really, I could wax lyrical about any cut on here – at a lean 32 minutes in runtime “Servitude” wastes nary a second when naked throats lie supple for the slitting.
The sheer catchiness of it all belies the complexity involved; TBDM often don’t repeat a riff as is. They will add a harmony, vary the rhythms of chugging within it, swap out one lead bit for another...the result is songs that feel familiar but that shift and evolve as the song progresses, adding in transitions between sections so smoothly, with such professional ease that it’s staggering. There is a reason that this band are kings of their respective sphere. The opening of title track “Servitude” is as good an example as any of this pervading theme; in itself multifarious, sublimely intricate in composition yet never losing track of cohesion. It’s not like these are short songs per se – everything clocks in between 3 to 4 minutes (but for a short intermission) but when every song is such a rush, nothing feels it’s length. There’s an instantaneous, addictive quality to it that had me playing the album over and over again whenever the opportunity presented itself, catching fresh nuances each time. It’s so tight, so well crafted, and they make the abyssal depth that their music really has seem almost poppy in how upbeat and joyous it is. Some bands – and you’ll have enough examples off the top of your head to render my providing any superfluous – seem to audibly lose interest in their own sound at points, resorting to a perfunctory cranking out of middling material that on occasion hints at former greatness. Not so here. Each note, each beat, each screech bleeds passion for the task at hand. The band believes in their own capabilities, and as a result, so do I.
Former guitarist turned vocalist Brian Eschback puts in a stellar performance on vocals. Better than Trevor? No, I wouldn’t go that far, but he’s a strong vocalist nonetheless and I can’t fault him on his own merits. His intonation is varied and fits into the music like a glove. The guitars are of course magnificent – could they conceivably be otherwise considering that both gentlemen have former careers in tech-death wizards Arsis? The bass is a little lower in the mix than I would like but I’ve nothing remotely negative to say about it beyond that. Drums pound out dizzying sequences of blastbeats, d beats, fills, grounding the tracks with propulsive rhythm work that smashes the rest of the song components into your skull like an impact hammer. There is no single aspect of the musicianship on display here that could even fleetingly be described as weak or substandard; instead we are treated to an exquisite tour de force of metallic brilliance that plants itself like a crown jewel in any self-respecting melodeath fan’s year end list.
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