Jasper: To be honest, I usually dislike the kind of “tough guy metal” Dagoba specializes in. The type that was invented by big names like Machine Head, Pantera, and Fear Factory, and that is aped around the world by thousands of bands, little of them with anything new to add. Dagoba seems to have lost their case already with me.
And yet ‘Face The Colossus’ does succeed to impress at least for the major part of the time. Dagoba knows how to avoid the cliché-traps most bands of this calibre do stumble onto. There is a major improvement heard since last time as well, an improvement by the name of Tue Madsen. Already present on their sophomore album ‘What Hell Is About’, it seems he now finally got his “carte blanche’ to pull Dagoba’s sound up to chilling heights. It makes ‘Face The Colossus’ to a record worthy of such a name, with its Dimmu Borgir-esque keyboards and trigger-bass, while the guitar melodies are leaning more towards an In Flames approach. And all of it still fits in the neo-thrash jacket of Machine Head and Fear Factory, they just added some well-needed spice.
And thus Dagoba escapes a nearly inevitable verbal spanking, although I do have some problems with the album. The two power ballads ‘The World In Between’, and ‘Silence #3’ are quite nauseating in their sugary sweet lyrics and whiny clean vocals (which clearly isn’t vocalist Shawter’s strongest point overall). The rest of the songs are however strong enough to pull ‘Face The Colossus’ from the endless stream of metal mud so many other bands are in these days. A surprisingly strong effort!
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