With their sophomore effort, Scar Symmetry have given us another slice of Gothenburg style melodic death metal. They’re clearly firm believers in the old adage “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” – Pitch Black Progress doesn’t actually progress that much from their first album, Symmetric In Design, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Symmetric In Design delivered a satisfying blend of heavier moments and catchy hooks that returns to great effect on Pitch Black Progress. The few noticeable changes are small, and mostly good.

As with Symmetric In Design, the songs are all interesting to listen to; there’s a lot of variation on each one, with tempo changes and dual vocals the order of the day. Vocalist Christian Älvestam again uses a deeper, heavily distorted growl as well as clean vocals, and bears significant similarities to Dan Swanö, especially in his clean vocals. He’s broadened his range on this album as well, adding a screechier growl more typical of melodic death bands that’s sometimes layered under the deeper growl or clean vocals. The use of distorted and clean vocals is usually well-balanced, with enough growls to keep things nicely heavy; the vocal style changes match the tempo changes, with growls over the crunchy, mid-tempo riffs of the verses and clean singing for the more drawn-out choruses.

The production values are high on Pitch Black Progress – clearly this is a band that likes being able to use technology to their advantage. In addition to Älvestam’s layered vocals, there’s a stereo effect that appears on tracks like Slaves To The Subliminal and is especially noticeable on the title track; when played on your average set of speakers or headphones, the vocals bounce from one side to the other. Synths also play a large part on Pitch Black Progress, with a sudden horn bridge appearing in the middle of The Kaleidoscopic God that has a very theatric feel, and a slightly manufactured, synth-heavy opening on the album closer Deviate From The Form.

Given their similarity to mid-era Soilwork and In Flames (I’m talking about Natural Born Chaos and Clayman, respectively) one might expect Scar Symmetry to follow the same path as their fellow Gothenburg metallers, eschewing distorted vocals and solos and simplifying their song structures. This, happily, seems not to be the case except for a single track, Dreaming 24/7. Here the vocal balance fails, with the clean vocals overpowering the growls, and it features the simplest song structure and riffs in the middle of otherwise highly varied tracks. Fortunately, it’s the single exception on an otherwise solid album.

The low point of Dreaming 24/7 is, in fact, followed by the high point of two of the best tracks on the album, The Kaleidoscopic God and Retaliator. The first is the most ambitious, the longest track on the album and one of the most varied, starting off very fast-paced and threatening, barreling headlong into a chorus which, although using a slower, crunchier riff, also uses clean vocals; the contrast is quite welcome. The fast-paced solo is broken into two halves by a short, slower bridge which dies away and is then resurrected by a growled crescendo from Älvestam. Retaliator is by far the most varied, and also boasts the catchiest chorus; it’s the song on the album that will get stuck in your head and make you want to listen to it again, although you’ll have to get through the strange, muted screamed vocals that seem to be Älvestam’s impression of a bad metalcore vocalist.

Scar Symmetry seem to be comfortable in the style they’ve chosen; Pitch Black Progress is only fine-tuning what they started on Symmetric In Design, making it that much smoother and more refined. Fans of melodic death metal, especially the Soilwork and In Flames albums I mentioned previously, will love this one. Come for the hooks, stay for the tempo changes.