Dopamine are one of the hardest working bands on the UK scene, that’s a fact, and their last album ‘Auditioning My Escape Plan’ was one of my favourite albums of 2005 and I still stand by my 5 out of 5 rating. So I was really excited to get my hands on this, their new album ‘Experiments With Truth’. They have parted ways with Golf Records and decided to do it all themselves this time around but does that show in the overall quality of this release?
The answer to the above question is no not at all. It is obvious from looking at the overall package that Dopamine have poured a lot of heart and soul into this project and the outcome is a very positive one. The artwork to start off with is exceptional, I don’t usually talk about album artwork in reviews but in this case it definitely deserves a mention. The Digipack version, which I own thanks to the wonderful Neil Starr (Dopamine Vocalist), is wonderfully illustrated and contains 10 different Polaroid type pictures which can be used as different album covers, yes it’s that detailed. Makes a different from the usual ‘girl with blood on her hands’ album cover, which I’m sure we’ve all seen before.
Enough about that anyway, time to get down to the music. Now I’ve been a big Dopamine fan for over a couple of years now ever since hearing their ‘A Lesson In Dying’ EP and these guys never put a foot wrong. With ‘Experiments With Truth’ they start off just where they left off and the first track which is also the title track show exactly what Dopamine do best – Melodic, Up Tempo and Catchy as hell Pop-Rock. They also show that they put out a quality show number with ‘Just Like The Sun’ which really plucks on the old heart strings and the way it then leads into, probably my favourite track on the album, ‘Call To Arms’ is just genius.
This album isn’t perfect, it is a bit more mid-paced than ‘Auditioning My Escape Plan’ and some songs don’t make as much of an impact as the others mentioned above but it is another great album by (in my opinion) one of the best band in the UK at the moment. After seeing welsh bands like Funeral For A Friend and Lostprophets explode onto the international scene over the past couple of years I see no reason why Dopamine couldn’t be the next because they are just that god damn good.
 
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