Review Summary: "One word of caution: enter The Dark at your own risk."
The Dark is, well, dark. It embodies a consistently gloomy atmosphere that could easily be the sound of a choir of ghosts, a massive group of dead souls forever destined to haunt the Earth. The sound could be described as eerie, for it brings to mind memories of depressing times. Specifically, the atmosphere sounds alive and dead, alive with dead soldiers telling their forgotten stories to any who dare listen. The album sounds like a soundtrack to a war movie, with moaning zombies thrown in for good measure. Frustratingly, the dark ambient nature of the music never lets up, and as the clever use of random instruments build up, the music becomes more and more suffocating. No escape from the nightmare seems possible, but the listener must know the end to the story. However, there is no ending to the story, for the songs only continue to trudge along in their predestined paths of horror. It sounds completely natural, as if the listener is in the middle of the action, a completely engrossing experience.
Amongst the bleak world that
The Dark pulls the listener into, it is quite easy to forget that
The Dark is a drum & bass album. Although beats exist, they are clever enough that they simply melt into the overall sound, and therefore seem less prevalent than they actually are. Beats also entirely glitch, as they continuously change throughout the entire length of songs. However, once again, these changes are employed carefully and cleverly, so as to fit within the grand scheme of things. The beats act as some sort of horrific creatures in the night, shifting from place to place as our hero becomes more paranoid. They also become less straightforward with time, which boost the chaos level in the album.
While all the horrors of the night churn and moan, not even the melody provides relief. The strings, or whatever else is used at the time, may promote a melody, but in doing so, the voices of sorrow moan along making the unsettling experience more unsettling. Operatic vocals, crying babies, moaning and screaming men/women - all variations are here. Melodies are never simple, as they are often comprised of seemingly billions of voices, instruments, background noise, and dark ambient tactics. When listening to something as drowning as this, one imagines their self in the middle of the worst event they can imagine – not just any event though, something so horrifying it would leave a permanent scar in the memory. If any album is going to bring a person to tears or instigate a depression, this will certainly be it. One word of caution: enter
The Dark at your own risk.
