Dotma – Sleep Paralyses (2011)

Arriving from the Metal promised land: Finland, today we have Dotma and their very impressive debut full-length album “Sleep Paralyses”. Having had a great month in terms of Gothic Metal releases, we are still completely blown away by the quality behind this monumental release.

Filled with great musical arrangements and emotive vocals, “Sleep Paralyses” quickly became a fixture in our regular Gothic Metal play list due to its catchiness and beautiful female vocals courtesy of newcomer Johanna Lesonen. The band’s music has some Power Metal tendencies, but the overall sound after all the vocal layering moves towards the Gothic Metal genre.

After a killer opening track with “Legend of Blackbird”, the band pushes things a bit more with “Reborn”. In this track we have a male singer doing some operatic sections that reminded us of Therion (when they used to be good and less pretentious). It’s a bit bad that the band didn’t use this element more in the album (besides in the choir sections), but maybe for future releases. The killer solo in this song also feels like a cherry on top of a very sweet cake.

The comparisons to Nightwish on tracks like “Silent Sunshine” are inevitable, but the band sets themselves apart fairly easy with more straight forward and not relying on massive orchestrations and any pop-ish elements. Johanna’s vocals are particularly enchanting in this track and the choir sections make this song sound even more impressive.  If you are looking for ballad-type songs, we have “Indian Fall” and sections of “Kingdom of the Sky” and “Memory worth Dying For”.

Our favorite songs of this release have to be “Kingdom of the Sky”, a massive 11 minute piece that goes through a wide variety of moods and sections. And “Memory worth Dying For”, a very emotional track that has been playing very often in our regular playlist in the last few weeks. The guitar work through the album is excellent and never goes into full-on over the top section like other bands tend to do.

If you had to make a comparison to other bands, we have to say that Dotma sounds like Coronatus with Liv Kristine singing. But then again, it is very hard to take away from the band’s very identifiable sound. If you like Gothic Metal and particularly excellent female vocalists, then you should definitely buy this release. We can only hope for more releases from this excellent band in the future.

Release: March 22nd, 2011

Country: Finland