Album Reviews : Dimension Zero – He Who Shall Not Bleed

When I read the press release and saw that “In Flames mastermind” Jesper Strömblad and Soilwork’s Naidel Antonsson were on this album it really lowered my expectations. To put it bluntly, the more recent material from both of those bands puts me to sleep. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when the opening moments of “He Who Shall Not Bleed” got my head moving. Dimension Zero have the aggression and power that those two other bands are now missing.

This album is essentially Gothenburg-inspired melodic death metal, with a slight air of thrash. It’s a tad more aggressive than many bands of the genre which is good, but unfortunately it still suffers from one of the key problems with this genre – a lack of variety. Most of the tracks here are very enjoyable individually, but trying to tell the songs apart is a different situation. Luckily this album isn’t too long, clocking in at just over the half hour mark. The tracks are generally short too with the longest track barely scraping the 4 minute mark, although this doesn’t really make any difference because you could blend half of the songs together and they’d still sound like single tracks anyway.

“He Who Shall Not Bleed” kicks it into full throttle right from the start with some of the heaviest stuff here but with surprisingly a surprisingly catchy chorus. There are a few of these hidden throughout the album, you don’t notice them at first but they get you eventually. The band then power through a couple more tracks that are very similar to the opener, just not quite as powerful. “Hell Is Within” begins with an uncanny resemblance to older  material before going back to sounding like the rest of the album. Really, the only track that offers something greatly different is the closer “Way to Shine”. It’s slower and much more melodic than the rest of the album and even drops down to just clean guitars and almost-whispering vocals at times which sounds great. It’s quite easily the most interesting track and the only one that really stood out as being well written rather than sticking to genre stereotypes.

One thing in particular that bugged me through the whole album was the drums. Now I’ve already said that the album features little variety, and metal drums can often be a bit uninteresting, but the drums throughout this album were so bland and so damn repetitive that it bugged the hell out of me. I couldn’t help but pay attention to how standard they were and it almost ruined the songs for me.

Look, this album offers nothing new, it’s Gothenburg-inspired melodic death metal with a bit more intensity than normal. It’s nothing special, but not bad. If you’re a big fan of the genre then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this, but if not then look elsewhere. 5.5/10

For fans of: In Flames, At The Gates, Soilwork, Arch Enemy.

Band: Dimension Zero
Album: He Who Shall Not Bleed
Year: 2008
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Label: Vic Records
Origin: Sweden
www.myspace.com/dimensionzerometal

Track listing:
1. He Who Shall Not Bleed
2. Unto Others
3. A Paler Shade of White (A Darker Side of Black)
4. Hell Is Within
5. Red Dead Heat
6. I Can Hear the Dark
7. Going Deep
8. Is
9. Deny
10. The Was
11. Way to Shine <- Reviewers choice