Review Summary: As one of the few remaining American doom metal bands to be cranking out brutal, melancholic, truly promising metal over the last decade, Daylight Dies is truly a band to look out for and keep an eye on.
Slightly more subtle, melodic and several paces slower,
Lost To The Living is a formidable sophomore effort from this relatively new doom metal band. While
Dismantling Devotion was a masterpiece in it's own right,
Lost To The Living more or less continues to build upon the more than solid groundwork that the debut album presented to us. Daylight Dies are absolutely one of the more intriguing, original and emotional metal bands of the last decade. It is true that
Lost To The Living may initially come off as being somewhat of a rip-off to many Opeth albums, but the beauty of the record lies in thee fact that dozens of listens later, the nuances really start to jump out.
The album features the same acoustic/cleans mixed with distorted riffs and harsh vocals. This time around however the riffs are less convoluted, the drums a tad slower and the vocals more reminescent of Mikael Akerfeldt. The comparison can't be denied but it would be a mistake to write the band off as mere imitations. The atmosphere and emotion (in the lyrics and in the ferocity of the vocal work) is almost unmatchable in modern doom. The double bass driven instumental passages add some speed to the slower pace of the album. It is very rare to hear both guitars playing the same riff at the same time. This is part of what makes this album so intriguing. The clean acoustic riffs mixed perfectly in production with the heavy riffs is different from what we normally hear in this type of metal.
The bass does a solid job, plodding along at a reasonable pace and adding depth in the clean sections. Of particular notice are the clean vocals.
At A loss is sung entirely with clean vocals and guitars and lack of drums for the first half of the song. The sorrow in this song is almost incomparable to any melancholic music I have ever heard with post-rock guitarwork interspacing the bridge after the chorus and tasteful violin bringing this ending to new heights.
Like most, this record is not without flaws. Some of the instrumental parts become repetitive and drawn out. The 9 songs on the record may feel like 11 or 12 due to length. If you don't somewhat like doom metal, you may be inclined to steer clear. That's not to say however that if you do not like doom metal, you will not like Daylight Dies. They are often lumped in with the doom metal genre and stuck in that position, however Daylight Dies is much more than simply doom. If you enjoy metal, give this a chance and you probably won't be disappointed.
It's clear that Daylight Dies did not reinvent the wheel writing
Lost To The Living, however the band tread some new ground and show enduring promise for the follow-up album to be released in 2011. As one of the few remaining American doom metal bands to be cranking out brutal, melancholic,
truly promising metal over the last decade,
Daylight Dies is truly a band to look out for and keep an eye on. Sincerity is something we find lacking in most aspects of life and music is not exempt from this. Say what you will,
Daylight Dies is sincerity incarnate. They aren't trying to gain mass appeal, they are playing f*cking metal at it's finest and most sincere.
