Draconian - Sovran (2015)

Following the departure of vocalist Lisa Johannson in 2011, fans of Sweden’s pillar gothic/doom metal act Draconian were left wondering about the future of the outfit. Enter Heike Langhans, formerly of The Great Sleep, to take the helm. The band’s newest, Sovran, surprisingly, sounds like nothing ever slowed them down. It’s an album that, while business as usual for the sextet, demonstrates that a major lineup change has done the band some favors in the way of memorability and songwriting.

It’s basically a given that Draconian’s first two albums — 2003’s Where Lovers Mourn and 2005’s Arcane Rain Fell — are some of the most important goth/doom albums to be released in the past two decades. The band was never the type to rest on its laurels, but 2008’s Turning Season Within was too polished for its own good, and 2011’s A Rose for the Apocalypse, while offering more in the way of symphonic doom/death, left me cold.

Sovran, by comparison, sounds rejuvenated, with the band finding a finally harmonious balance of the theatrical, morose, and menacing. Newcomer Heike Langhan’s vocals are less operatic than Johannson’s but are a better fit for the band’s current direction, with “Dishearten” providing one of the best examples of her range, both vocally and emotionally. Far more than just a pretty voice, Langhan’s voice adds feelings of yearning and pain where Anders Jacobsson’s growls fall short. Jacobsson, while not the most dynamic growler, is convincing enough in his delivery and prevents Sovran from turning into a weepy, saccharine mess as many goth/doom albums are apt to; the ugly, eerie doom riffs of opener “Heavy Lies the Crown” work wonderfully with his bellowing, fiery roars. Even if his main job is to provide the “beast” to balance the “beauty,” he does it effectively enough to where it doesn’t seem forced or cliched; similarly, Langhan’s voice is a driving force on many tracks rather than being relegated merely to choruses and “soft parts.”

It’s the remainder band, however, that makes Sovran such a rich listen: “Rivers Between Us,” the ballad they’ve been hinting at for years, oozes with a fragile beauty that is elevated by Langhan’s vocals and the achingly sad guitar melodies, backed by violins, and album closer “The Marriage of Attaris” approaches Mournful Congregation in terms of sheer weight and grandiose arrangement. For being squarely in the goth/doom niche, Sovran is very much a guitar-based album, incorporating melodies reminiscent of My Dying Bride and early Swallow the Sun, with “Pale Tortured Blue” being a standout cut for its pure might and majestic power. When keyboards appear, they function as more than mere “atmosphere” and contribute layers of sound that, if not present, would make the songs feel hollow and incomplete. An array of mellotrons, violins, and strings appear throughout the album and add a tasteful elegance to the song structures without ever overstepping bounds into campiness or melodrama. Furthermore, Draconian are able to effectively navigate slower tempos without ever falling into mire, and the pickups in tempo are well placed, such as the driving double bass in “Stellar Tombs” and the ending section of “Dishearten.”

Simply, Sovran is an album that works equally well as a full album absorbed in one listen or in smaller chunks; it’s not often that, in a genre that is capable of doing only a few things well, there are no throwaway tracks on an album — Sovran is the exception. The band’s chemistry, even with a major lineup change, has fallen into place. The songwriting is effectively paced and finds a balance between drawing listeners into a dusky atmosphere while still putting emphasis on the heaviness of the sound and the moods portrayed by the melodies. Miraculously, though this album has all the trademarks of the goth/doom niche, Draconian avoid being stereotypical and elevate the soft/loud & beautiful/ugly dynamics of the genre into a new place. Within the span of an hour, Sovran leads listeners through a gallery of despair and tragedy as well as offering glimmers of hope and catharsis. It has an artistic maturity and dead seriousness lacking in other artists of the genre, and it’s the same earnestness that has helped Draconian establish themselves as the forerunners of a sound that is endlessly aped and convoluted.

Sovran will not change the opinions of those who aren’t fans of the band already, but it is an excellent album that re-establishes Draconian as masters of what they do — limited though the appeal may be, sometimes a band just needs to come along and show others how it’s really done.

by OldThunderKY, ninecircles.co