Where to go after Death? With their previous album, Summerland, DOOL took us to the afterlife, a strong and radical theme that was also the culmination of a romantic and mystical style borrowing from gothic rock, doom, grunge and pop-rock, always with an approach that seeks emotional impact through bittersweet melancholy. A third album is a tricky business: DOOL is now established and had to evolve if they were not to stagnate.
In a way, this change of skin is an integral part of The Shape of Fluidity, where questions of evolution and self-acceptance take on a particular meaning for Raven Van Dorst, who was born intersex and whose voice has never been so androgynous, striking in the highs and intimidating in the lows. More trivially, this fluidity jumps out at us with all the raging verve of Venus In Flames, the opening track: DOOL is more biting than in the past and, by adding a more metal heaviness, more unpredictable and progressive structures and more contemplative post-rock interludes, DOOL is also more technical. The result is conquering, intense and often epic (Self-Dissect, Hermagorgon).
Does it lose any emotional power? The songs that used to grab you instantly in the gut have given way to more complex tracks that may require more listening to assimilate, but DOOL still have this sense of efficiency, this know-how when it comes to creating a sound that will sweep you away like a tidal wave, like the poignant title track. On House of a Thousand Dreams, featuring a guest appearance by Kim Larsen (Of the Wand and the Moon), the Dutch return to their mysterious sepulchral poetry with folk overtones and a medieval vocal line (sometimes reminiscent of "Belle qui tiens à ma vie" sung recently by Bleu Reine... whose drummer is Vincent Kreyder, also DOOL's new drummer, well, well, well!). We know that, despite the sincerity of their music, DOOL also love the grandiose and theatrical: Hymn for a Memory Lost and The Hand of Creation offer the album a grand finale in which crushing heaviness and funereal moods cohabit with visceral flights of fancy mixing rage and hope in a movement that the band has the secret of, uniting a wide range of sometimes contradictory emotions in the same momentum of insane class.
With The Shape of Fluidity, the notion of the quest for identity and openness gives DOOL a new intimate touch... which can also be applied to the band's music. Building on the foundations of their two previous albums, the band have sought out and incorporated new things to define their identity even more clearly. The result is an album that is both musically richer and more coherent, as if DOOL, like its vocalist Raven Van Dorst, had found itself for good and gained a new, irresistible confidence.
