EPIC UP YOUR MORNING WITH SOME SCAR SYMMETRY

I’ve been living with the new Scar Symmetry album Dark Matter Dimensions for about two weeks now, trying to determine what I think of it. Finally the rest of you can hear it in full on the band’s MySpace page and just for yourselves. In no particular order, here are my thoughts on the album and the new singer(s) situation:

• The songwriting core of the band is definitely intact. They still bring the Death Jovi goods, unaffected by Christian Alvestam’s departure.
• Production-wise, the band have done a lot to make new clean vocalist Lars Palmqvist sound just like Alvestam. At times, I even forget Alvestam is gone. The verdict on whether he’s going to work or not will ultimately come down to how he sounds live, but from the footage I’ve seen so far I’m not convinced. On record, the guy certainly sounds good.
• New growl vocalist Roberth Karlsson is pretty much interchangeable with Alvestam.
• The album is front-loaded, with the first three songs being the best. The rest just kind of seem to blend together for me, but perhaps I just need more time to learn them.

So go on and stream the new album and tell us what you think. The album comes out officially on October 2nd in Europe and October 20th in the States… though you know how silly we think staggered release dates are in the Internet age.

-VN