Skymning - Artificial Supernova (2002)

If Stormchoirs was a sign of its times, then Artificial Supernova might be seen as AHEAD of its times. Since three years had already passed, I could hardly call this an abrupt shift, but the band members obviously looked around at the landscape and decided to forge ahead rather than remaining one in a crowd of melodic death metal scenesters from the country of Sweden. Granted, industrial or futurist elements in metal were hardly novel after the turn of the century, but for a band in that particular melodic scene to start incorporating more grooves and electronic elements in this specific was felt rather unique. Sure, In Flames, Soilwork, Darkane, all had a very contemporary vibe about them, not shying away from synthesizers and other modernizations, but Artificial Supernova had a way of sounding like organic industrial metal, that is, performed with the mechanic aesthetics to the beats, but with the normal array of instruments.

It's still melodic death metal at its heart, and tracks like "Shadowed (Astral Silver)" and "Exoskeletal X.T.C." still had some of their best individual riffs and guitar lines in that style, but even then they are tempered with some weirdness, like the bizarre pickup in the latter tune's bridge where the drums start to shuffle along and all manner of noises are thrown in. It's actually quite involved here, and the beats reminded me a lot of Prong when they had transitioned from gutter thrash into the industrial region through Cleansing and Rude Awakening. Skymning just remembers that the focus should be on the guitars, and thus this is an endless riff onslaught which just never really lets up, and always rebounds from wherever it tries to stretch the envelope the furthest. It's so well written that I can't think of even a moment or two here in which I started to lose interest, and despite being over two decades into the future of its manifestation, this one still feels fresh.

The production, too, is so much richer than on Stormchoirs, which clear and potent guitars, lots of nice effects filtered through the melodies like, and a uniform, machine-like step to the drumming which is the perfect seat for all the myriad awesome riffs. Vocally it's cleaner than the debut, but still using the rasped style with a few samples. The bass is much more important here, and really the whole mix kicks ass of even stuff like In Flame's Reroute to Remain which felt a bit too compressed. The Swedes had moved on to bigger exposure with a release through Candlelight and Blackend, and really I cannot tell you why this one didn't succeed. Perhaps the audience was turned off by its evolution away from the power metal-infused melodeath, but many bands at this time were exploring new ground, and not nearly as well as Skymning. Easily my favorite of their catalogue.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]