Album Rating: 5.0
The guitar tone on this -- based on what I've listened to at any rate -- is unmatched. I've never heard a thicker, darker...meatier, Metal guitar tone.
The passage in 'In The Midnight Hour' from 5:18 onwards, and its climax with the fat guitar at 5:55, is one of my favourite moments in music. It's genuinely pummelling, but also a release -- and an epic one at that. And that comes after being pummelled for a good 5-6 minutes with really bleak, desperate, almost ugly melodies...then you're given release with that passage.
And then we go into the triumphant passage with the low-pitched cleans, and the marching feel of the riff and drum pattern -- almost like a slow, dark Iron Maiden. It's just phenomenal atmosphere and songwriting, which sadly is absent from their more recent, more accessible stuff.
The song took a while to grow on me, but once it did, I realised its -- and the whole album's -- sheer genius.
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