OneMetal.com REVIEW:
Disarmonia Mundi – The Isolation Game

Disarmonia Mundi are an Italian melodic death metal band, consisting of vocalist Claudio Ravinale and drummer / bassist / keyboardist / guitarist / vocalist Ettore Rigotti. The pair are joined by Bjorn ‘Speed’ Strid of Soilwork, who has lent his impressive vocal contributions to all of Disarmonia Mundi‘s releases to date. The Isolation Game is their fourth album, and sees the band blending melody and aggression with some vaguely industrial/electronic influences in a manner that closely resembles the likes of Soilwork‘s Natural Born Chaos or In Flames‘ more recent output.

The whole package is slickly professional – the production is polished to a blinding sheen, giving the instruments enough heft to sell the heaviness while still allowing room for the melodies and keyboard accompaniments to shine. The vocal contributions from the three members are balanced out well too, adding a layer of diversity to the material by switching from soaring clean vocals, shrieking screams and guttural roars. Instrumentally, Rigotti is very impressive indeed – creating catchy riffs and shredding solos on the guitar front, thunderously tight and speedy drumming, and keyboard textures that add an expansive atmosphere to proceedings.

So far, this all sounds great, right? Well, don’t get me wrong, this is an enjoyable album – clearly put together by talented people with a great deal of care. The only problem is that despite the professionalism and ability of those involved, this isn’t a particularly original album. The similarities to Soilwork in particular are hard to shake off, especially when Speed is actually in the band! That said, tracks like the blastbeat-laden ‘Blacklight Rush’ or the exceedingly catchy ‘Building an Empire of Dust’ are great examples of the genre, and quieter pieces like the acoustic ‘Glimmer’ break up the frantic pace of the album effectively. It’s just that, however great an example of Swedish-style melodic death metal this it, it doesn’t do anything that we haven’t heard before – one way of putting it would be that The Isolation Game epitomises the genre, without transcending it.

Disarmonia Mundi’s MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/disarmoniamundi
Coroner Records’ Website: http://www.coronerrecords.net

Bottom Line

An enjoyable, if somewhat derivative slice of Swedish-style melodic death metal.