ACT III: LIFE AND DEATH

After the colossal Act II, The Dear Hunter expectedly continued their story with a third act, where the main character finds himself in WWI (Partially). Despite having such a crushing setting, the album is actually less heavy than the two previous albums. It seems to focus much more into melodic, heavily acoustic tracks. This album works very well as you can expect, as a matter of fact, I would say this is a solid 4.5 stars, I just can't seem to be capable of giving it the magic 5 star rating because there's a few tracks here and there that I don't consider phenomenal, just good.

So let's start off with my strongest opinion on this album, the first two tracks are simply the best openers in their entire discography. Writing On A Wall is easily my favorite of the one-minute openers you can find in every act, it's so epic! Of course, the heavy-hitter is the track that follows, In Cauda Venenum and good god is this track brilliant! I fell in love with it from the very first five seconds. The main syncopated riff resembling a reggaeton (you heard right) rhythm sounds shockingly well, combined with the war setting you have an absolutely crushing track. The song ends with a Hawaiian-ish outro.

The next very good song is The Tank, which is one of the theater-themed songs in this album, it has amazing drum lines and it's very groovy in general. The Poison Woman is the most theatrical of the songs here, and it's for sure very reminiscent of tracks like The Inquiry Of Ms. Terri, that possess very noticeable vocals and a rather comical vibe. The Thief also has similar properties to these, but in a more progmetal-oriented way.

He Said He Had A Story is one of those tracks that I mentioned being very acoustic oriented (that's not to say there's no distortion at all), this song establishes many beautiful vocal lines, and works as a very good ballad. This Beautiful Life also enters into the ballad category and works just as well. I personally find these two songs to be the best ballads of the album. Son and Father make up for a nice duo, just as you can expect from their names alone.

The rest of the tracks are good, absolutely. But I can't say they make me crazy like In Cauda Venenum, song that I have replayed over five hundred times. This album flows very well and benefits from having one of their best mixes to date. 4.5 Stars, a great album that, with a little bit of polishing, would easily be a masterpiece.

P.D. That album cover is SO GOOD (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)

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