Outliving a foregone conclusion

I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about how great I think Darkest Hour’s new record is. Well, here it is – two older songs from split releases with Ground Zero and Dawncore.

Anyway, did I mention how much I like Undoing Ruin? Like, when the chorus kicks in for the second time in song one, when the beat slows down to a heavier crunch? It almost feels wrong to listen to this in the middle of the summer; it’s rainy day music. Walking through the rain, an overcast sky, and then right into the next song, ‘Convalescence’ – “nothing thrills me, nothing kills me” – and that great guitar melody that borders on cheesy, but it’s not; just a little sad. Those hooks are all over the record, of course, and I can’t get enough of it. It’s not power metal, there’s less method and more raw feeling, yet it’s very controlled and well-structured throughout. In Flames and Soilwork can’t touch this. And yet there are plenty of places to raise your fists in the air and climb onto the persons sitting next to you on the subway for a metal pyramid.

There’s that thrash attack that starts off ‘This will outlive us’ that leads into the more standard hardcore-leaning riffing and the song’s quasi chorus – “My life is a blank piece of paper, staring back at me.” Yes, more of that! Instead, we get a slow breakdown of sorts to wrap up the song. ‘Low’ is just a full-on feel-good blast, while ‘These fevered times’ bares more than a fleeting resembles to ‘The fevered circle’ and the rest of Terminal Spirit Disease – but, by no means a rip-off, it sounds more like an expression of musical brotherhood, of the shared experience of the eerie melodrama of life. I could go on and on, but the record’s been reviewed better than I could do in plenty of places already, so let me just say that, even if it’s not a metal milestone, this is one very fucking solid release and a lot of fun to listen to.

Darkest Hour’s split with Ground Zero was released in 1999 on East Coast Empire. ‘Faith like suicide’ fits right in with the songs on Mark of the Judas and, to me, serves as the earliest indication of what this band was really capable of doing. At over six minutes, it’s a pretty long song, and the recording is pretty muddy, but the riffing and dynamic changes that made Mark of the Judas such a good record are all there. ‘With friends like these,’ released in 2001 as a CD single by Join the Team Player Records, has more of a rocked out feel to it. It’s really built around a single riff, but it’s short enough to feed off that riff without losing any steam. Both of these, by the way, were recorded by Ken Olden.

The split with Dawncore is still available (e.g. at Interpunk) – even more easily so if you live in Europe – and the split with Ground Zero shouldn’t be too hard to find either, so I encourage you to keep an eye out for both. Go visit Darkest Hour for more info, tabs and merch and come out to see these guys play when you have a chance, if you haven’t yet. They’re a hell of a live band.

Darkest Hour – Faith like suicide
Darkest Hour – With friends like these …