After feeling a little let down by Dead By April’s previous release Let The World Know, I was hoping to be more impressed by their fourth album Worlds Collide – and thankfully, I was not let down!
Worlds Collide almost sees the band coming full circle, with the clean vocals once again coming from guitarist Pontus Hjelm (who last featured as one of the lead vocalists on the band’s self-titled debut) and there’s a nice air of familiarity to their music – yet it also sounds fresh and engaging. The band just sounds invigorated as a whole and the album makes for a great listen as a result. Dead By April are on top form, and it shows.
The album gets off to a strong start almost immediately, with opening track Crying Over You getting things moving nicely before progressing to I Can’t Breathe, which is an early highlight of the piece. Featuring a trademark earworm of a chorus, this is a track that you will soon find yourself singing along to, and the song as a whole is massively impactful. Don’t be surprised when this one gets stuck in your head after you’ve finished listening to the album.
Progressing nicely from that point, the tracks that follow are similarly catchy and engaging, and another great inclusion is later track Can You See The Red, which is a more hard-hitting track that sees Hjelm and harsh vocalist Stoffe perform in tandem with one another at some points in the track, and it’s really striking. Their voices fit together perfectly and instrumentally the song is top-notch – the guitars and drums add a great level of extra noise, and the keys adds more melodic interjections, which results in a very balanced track as a whole.
Worlds Collide is perhaps Dead By April’s strongest album to date. Hopefully it won’t be too long until they’re back on UK shores for another tour – we’ll be down at the front again!
9/10
