Darkest Era are a Northern Irish Folk/Heavy-Metal band formed in 2005, whose debut album’s released by Metal Blade Records on a worldwide deal. Sounds impressive, but is it?
Let me start this by mercilessly stating that Darkest Era is heavily indebted to Primordial (and at times Waylander, one of their guitarists had a brief jaunt with them). It’s not the last time I’ll mention the former in this review though, so get used to it. Some riffs and drum/structural timing sound almost identical to the Dublin masters. Luckily enough the heavy metal elements soon take over and steer the band off the predictable. Indeed Darkest Era is not a pure Folk Metal band by any means, even though that seems to be what they are mostly marketed as. This is Heavy Metal, very accessible, modern Heavy Metal… it’s not particularly dark either (although some doomy elements work quite well).
Whilst it’s clear to me that Primordial didn’t reinvent Irish folk music and that those same ancient pool of influences are drawn from here, one cannot help but to get the ‘it’s been done before and much better’ feeling, but then again, they are competing against one of the best bands on the planet. That said there’s some quite nice acoustic numbers on the guitar that I can appreciate. Some of the lead/solo patterns, whilst not reinventing anything, are quite enjoyable as well.
Whilst one could imagine A.Nemtheanga’s vocals over this music, it’s probably best not to, for Darkest Era’s sake. The vocals here are clean throughout; no aggression in them, aiming more at the emotional. Frankly, what really lets this release down are the vocals. The singer has a very limited range, especially when he attempts to hit those higher notes. I cannot emphasize enough what a massive problem this sort of lack of range is, especially with an album over an hour long, it get incredible tiring hearing the same voice without much variation. The lack of variation also comes in the seemingly constant ‘looking-for-the chorus’ song-writing, it really gets to me in quite a bad way. I’m aware it’s a Metal Blade album and it has to sell to a mainstream audience, but the music here is strong enough to stand on its own without the choruses. “Pop” isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.
So to conclude, what we have here is a commercial and far less talented poor-man’s Primordial Heavy Metal band. It may sound harsh, but I’ve listened to this album a lot of times now, tried to like it and all that’s come from it has been further negative things to comment. This album clearly isn’t for me (exactly, stop listening to it then, you shit!). I can imagine fans of more accessible chorus-driven heavy metal releases loving this album, though and I can see them doing extremely well, touring with their idols, playing in front of thousands and releasing many an album. All this whilst my bitter ass plays pub gigs and moans about how things are not what they used to be back in the day when we played that other pub up the road, which was shut down five years ago as no one bothered to show up to the gigs.
http://www.myspace.com/darkestera
