Dead by April hail from Gothenburg, Sweden and are a band who are likely to divide opinion amongst metal fans. Their musical style is hard to categorise as it doesnt fit into any of the neat genres that reviewers often love to use. Dead by April blend synth-rich pop music with death metal screams/growls and clean vocals. If this description sounds at all familiar then you’ve probably listened to fellow Swedish band Amaranthe who produce a similar blend of musical styles. A major difference is that Amaranthe use clean female vocals in addition to the clean male vocals and male growls which gives them more depth and variety than Dead by April are able to manage.
This is a very difficult style of music to succeed with – for many metal fans this is too much like pop, but for many pop fans this is too much like metal. When done just right though it can sound great, and attract a whole range of new fans.
The death metal style screams are great and the clean vocals are well done. The music is extremely synth-heavy with good drum work but with the guitar quite low in the mix and the bass almost non-existent. If you were to remove the death metal vocals then what you’d have here is good pop-rock, but the screams help add some weight to the songs.
Unfortunately while Dead by April blend pop and metal together very well, there is a disappointing lack of variety in the album with the songs tending to blur together as they all sound very similar.
This is a very good album, but for me, despite everything Dead by April do well when it comes to blending pop and metal, Amaranthe simply do it much better – Dead by April may have done it first, but Amaranthe have come along and perfected what Dead by April were trying to do. I’d certainly recommend Amaranthe fans check out Dead by April though – there’s plenty here they’ll like.
Dead by April are:
Jimmie – Clean Vocals and Screams
Zandro – Vocals
Marcus – Bass
Alex – Drums
Track listing:
1. Dreaming
2. Real & true
3. Within my heart
4. More than yesterday
5. Calling
6. Two faced
7. Crossroads
8. Incomparable
9. Too late
10. You should know
11. When you wake up
12. Lost
13. Last goodbye
