Dynazty over the years have featured highly in our ‘albums of the year’ lists and now 5 albums in we have ‘Titanic Mess’ I’ll say this from the off it is probably my least favourite of their albums so far, not that its bad, in fact it’s rather good, it’s just that somehow all that energy and sleazy rock of 2012’s ‘Sultans of Sin’ and new heavier sound of the follow up ‘Renatus’ has been lost in excessive production and the pursuit of heavier, more symphonic songs, the result is that they now start to sound like a lot of other bands out there.
Performances are of course solid as ever, and tracks like ‘Untamer of Your Soul’ and ‘Roar of the Underdog’ should drag you from your seat and get the fists pumping, and they are head and shoulders the best here.
Elsewhere, though, the take on Power Metal isn’t quite enough to really grab your attention: opener ‘The Human Paradox’ really is all chorus and riff, and whilst it engages you for the first few listens, you end up wishing it was more. It’s the same with ‘Crack the Shell’ where you lose interest in the verses. It’s that nagging feeling that whilst good ‘everything pretty much sounds the same’ that keeps dogging you.
The exceptions aside from those already mentioned are the title track which is more progressive and acts as the antithesis of the rest of the chorus-heavy album, as it lacks one! The other surprise is the slower number – ‘I Want to Live Forever’ which stands out perhaps simply because it breaks that feeling of sameness.
Overall I get the feeling that Dynazty hasn’t quite nailed it on this one, sure they’ve underlined the change in sound, but with a few notable exceptions I don’t think that album number five will be getting as much airplay as some of their earlier releases.
