The band tries breaching that point by force here, and the songs suffer as a result. On past albums like Damage Done the cybernetic, barren landscape painted by the melodies was endearing and came as an end, not a means, of the quality songwriting.
The first two tracks, especially 'Dream Oblivion' are totally out of character and inert attempts at adding a dissonant, dark edge to the atmosphere. What doesn't work needs to be addressed immediately, and is mercifully shoved out of the way fairly early in the album's procession. This is essentially Fiction all over again, and while Construct can be viewed in a similar light, Dark Tranquillity was still mostly there at this point. At the same time, it exhibits a few areas of marked improvement that could have truly gone somewhere special if the band continued in this vein. While clearly not as deficient or meager as the album that directly followed it, We Are the Void shows various signs of decline and decay in the formula the band has utilized with reasonable success starting with Damage Done.
