Dioramic
Technicolor
7.7
When a Muse and Between the Buried and Me crossover thing totally springboards, guess who'll be ahead of the game?
Dioramic. That's who. Technicolor successfully marries shoegazey Brit-pop, post-punk, and metallic HC to the point of believability just shy of an actual mash-up. But man...this really could have been a fucking nightmare (and considering that this is their first full-length, it really really could have been). If there's a sound for the youth getting restless these days, it's the incessant tap-tap-tapping on strings and snare drums, and that form of expression is probably nearing the height of its anxiety. So it's about time that some extremely proficient young guns took the reins on "genre-defying" and beat back down those flighty, masturbatory tendencies. And who better to do it then the strength of the German, who surprisingly enough, make their identity scarce here. Dioramic have managed to transcend geography as well as the aforementioned pitfalls of alchemy, and goddamn that's hard to do. They ride out their other-continental influences so damn smoothly that you forget about from whence they came and totally get caught up in where they're going.
Every one of these eleven songs simply breathe, meshing together the hooky power of a band that jumps off of their amps and sells hundreds of thousands of albums with the sandpaper personified in the current trend of metalcore. For all of its pointy and abrasive qualities, Technicolor still glides on in. Dare I say that it's actually kind of sexy, and that's a hard emotion to get between the sheets of blastbeats and screams. It's gotta be the occasional sweeping vocal harmony and ivory keys that add some romance. That, and the kind of musicianship that I'm willing to bet studied jazz theory at some point. I've listened to this album enough times now that my favorite track changes depending on my mood, and today chose "The Lone Gunman." With a running time of a minute and thirty-five seconds, it sounds as lonely and haunted as something Ry Cooder could have put on his soundtrack to Paris, Texas, and lasts long enough to back a single thought. Nice touch.
Technicolor is not perfect if only because I believe that they have an even better one in them. I highly recommend this release to those willing to cross the streams, and highly commend Lifeforce for having picked up an act that doesn't fit in too comfortably with the rest of their roster. They need to take this new combination of colors and paint the world with it.
Technicolor is not perfect if only because I believe that they have an even better one in them. I highly recommend this release to those willing to cross the streams, and highly commend Lifeforce for having picked up an act that doesn't fit in too comfortably with the rest of their roster. They need to take this new combination of colors and paint the world with it.
