Dark Tranquillity - Projector

The mighty Dark Tranquillity make their move to superlabel Century Media and produce one incredibly mundane album. Now, I'm not the only one to notice the alarming style change that many bands undergo after signing up with CM, but I'm not going to stick the label with the blame here. For instance, check out Cryptopsy's latest release and tell me they went soft, and Arch Enemy had recorded Stigmata before laying their signatures down. This leads me to believe that bands decide to "mature", and then pick CM as an appropriate label to shift to. A shame really, as older DT material contains some truly classic moments in the realm of melodic metal. I have to admit that my patience for the band has waned over the years, as Skydancer is by far my favorite, with The Gallery coming in a close second. I never really got into The Mind's I like I thought I should, and after hearing three seconds of those meloncholy male vocals, I'm ready to give up. When they retain their roots, things come together, but there's too much pomp in this circumstance for me to ignore. Am I disappointed? Not really, as I didn't expect all that much after The Mind's I, but it's hard to see bands do this... I wish I could pick out the 15 awesome minutes of this disc and leave all the crap out, but life's not exactly fair, is it? Actually, I just wish that they'd ditch the new co-vocalist and get back to some serious ass-kicking, but that's just my opinion.