Insomnium - Anno 1696 (2023)^{Release ID: 42739}

Insomnium have always been a band that creates a style of progressive death metal that I should really enjoy. And for the most part throughout their career's, the band has succeeded at turning me into a fan. Despite what the general consensus may say, I still claim Winter's Gate as one of, if not the, pinnacle of death metal throughout the 2010s without much of a healthy competition to challenge that spot. Granted I am a nobody when it comes to understanding or appreciating death metal in its most straightforward form, and would much rather enjoy a melo-death thumping, so take my rating with a gigantic grain of salt.

That being said, with all of my past success with Insomnium in the past, I should have given the bands most recent album, Anno 1696 a spin when it came out, instead of just over a month later. Part of that had to do with March being an incredibly busy month for new progressive releases from Haken, Periphery and Ne Obliviscaris. And Insomnium kind of... flew under the radar. And after listening to Anno 1696, I understand why this happened.

Let's not mince words here: Anno 1696 is a great album. For Insomnium, they know how to keep a listeners attention without doing anything particularly ear popping. Despite the record having three tracks exceeding seven minutes, not one of them feels like it. Each track is well constructed and constantly refers back to the opening set of themes and motifs and further elaborates upon those themes, preventing "Godforsaken" and "The Rapids" from becoming stagnant and predictable, or slapdash and disjointed. Furthermore, the mixing on this record is superb! It takes a lot of work and practice to be able to match the electric guitars with the acoustic passages and have them both sound full and robust, but Insomnium did it here. Usually the acoustic passages are given a higher gain, which promptly butchers the death metal sections; a large reason as to why so many acts don't do it (unless they live in Scandinavia I guess).

However, Anno 1696 is a record where Insomnium are embracing their gothic sounds more than ever before. Tunes like "White Christ" and "The Witch Hunter" are slower and more brooding and have more in common with fellow countrymen Swallow the Sun than anything Insomnium have ever made. And hell, "The Unrest" has nods to Ghost with the vocal layering's during its chorus. In fact, the only track on this record that sounds closest to "death metal" is the closer "The Rapids". I clearly do not care too much for this style change because Insomnium have been able to work in gothic textures in their music before and this is just more explicit. However, I cannot help but feel like Insomnium had to give up a bit of their own identity in order to capture this progressive gothic death metal hybrid that they have created here. For what it is, Anno 1696 is a very good piece of music, but within the discography of Insomnium, it feels like a step down, despite the progressive songwriting. 

Best Songs: White Christ, Godforsaken, The Witch Hunter, The Rapids