  
Dead By April crept up on me back in 2009 and
quickly turned from intense curiosity to a full
blown obsession. Labelled as “Pop Metal”
I just had to check them out and I was not disappointed;
heavy distorted guitars, quick drumming and screaming
vocals but overlaid with heavy upbeat electronics
and some clean “Pop Vocals” if you
will. It was fresh, different and original which
has got my music taste written all over it and
after catching them support Skindred that was
it for me I was hooked. Since their success with
their first album the band has been faced with
some problems; both of their guitarists (one of
which was also a vocalist) left the band, one
being for personal reasons and the other being
lead songwriter Pontus Hjelm who left to focus
more on actually writing songs for the band rather
than being a part of the line up.
So having obtained a new guitarist as well as
a new vocalist and their original songwriter having
more time to work on the material they have finally
released their follow up album “Incomparable”.
The band have been caught saying that the album
has got the heaviness that they’ve always
wanted so with that in mind the curiosity grows
until finally I drop everything to have a listen
myself. Right from album opener “Dreaming”
you can hear exactly the same style but when they
said heavier they bloody meant it; don’t
misunderstand me the clean vocals are still here
along with the beautiful chorus’s and the
electronics are still out in force but there are
more screaming vocals and the music accompanying
is a lot heavier.
It’s just Dead By April, I can’t compare
them to anyone because they do what they do so
well and even with the difficult second album
have followed up perfectly. “Within My Heart”
was the first single from the album released in
May; the vocals on this track are spot on, growls
and clean work alone and overlapped, the chorus
is again stupidly catchy and the music ranges
throughout from the style that would make you
smash your friends faces in to that which you
would dance with your girlfriend to. Following
this track, on a UK tour with My Passion the band
debuted a track called“More Than Yesterday”
which at that show absolutely blew my head off,
really heavy on the electronics in this song but
they’re really quick to keep up with the
pace of the song, quick and heavy this one is
possibly the heaviest on the album.
Most of the first half of the album is just really
heavy; the aforementioned tracks along with “Real
& True” and “Two Faced”,
but there are some tracks that lay off a bit and
take a lighter approach like “Calling”
which the majority of the track is clean vocals
and little or no distortion.“Crossroads”
and “When You Wake Up” are other songs
that are in the same style as this, perfectly
crafted for a bit of a wider variety in the album.
The now on the whole, better than the first album,
but if you take the few phenomenal songs from
the first album they just dance over the new stuff
because they were just instant classics, where
as this album passed across the board. After all
this though it’s blatantly obvious to me
that the band is on the way up, give them a couple
more years and they’ll be dominating the
European metal scene.
4.5/5
Review by James Webb
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