Dark Tranquillity, like many unique bands, is basically a treatise on the insufficiency of genre. Genre is largely a collection of aesthetic values, and is often divorced from any stylistic considerations. For example, Taylor Swift is supposedly country, even though she just plays pop that includes a few melodies on a fiddle (stupid Taylor Swift). Reviewers would call it metal if she used guitars. Most rock in the new age is just pop structures with guitars.



There are also stylistic elements to genre: to convert real metal riffs to other instruments, you would have to re-orchestrate and remove some of the shredding. My point with Iridium was that it's structure is simple enough that it's only metal aesthetically: replace the guitars, put clear vocals on it, and you've got yourself a song in [genre of choice]. That's not a criticism. It's just that the song is remarkably simple, centering around a single melody; the "metal" in the song is just the familiar DT texture, and it's largely window-dressing over the composition.



Certainly, one could make the argument that some stylistic elements of metal are present, e.g. the roll on the drums, or the monotonous, pounding guitars in the verses. However, I think you could pretty easily rework the notes performed into a song you wouldn't recognize as metal.

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