Black Sun Aeon is the solo project of Tuomas Saukkonen (Before The Dawn, The Final Harvest, Dawn Of Solace). Tuomas created the project in the beginning of 2008 to reflect darker personal side to his creativity. While stepping away from his simple, melodic rock and slowly diving into death/doom territory, Tuomas has taken Daniel Victor’s idea of incorporating many guest vocalists (Tomi Koivusaari - Amorphis, Ville Sorvali - Moonsorrow, Mynni Luukkainen – Sotajumala, Mikko Heikkilä - Sinamore), and its effect, being only slightly noticeable, doesn’t work as well as with Neverending White Lights. However, the music itself is strangely familiar, like the soundtrack to a summer’s past. Without falling into too many ruts, Darkness Walks Beside Me is a triumph of pessimism.
Just by looking at the song titles one could assume a concept is enveloping, perhaps a simple cathartic suicide on paper. While it would be far more interesting if the music followed this idea as well, the mood is essentially stuck in the sole being of pulsating, mid-paced doom. The riffing is quite catchy, as are a number of the growled passages within the first few tracks. The drums make it so easy to enjoy more than you probably should, as well as the guest growling styles of Tomi and Ville.
Sure, the first four tracks provide the one-two punch…but after that, the quality deflates like a fast food burger for a while. In this instance, it appears that though the buns of this doom burger are undoubtedly the perfect combination of powerfully grilled yet comfortably chewy, the meat has freezer burn and the cheese isn’t American. You just knew that doom burger couldn’t be as fulfilling as its picture on the advertisement, and the all too familiar feeling of the naïve consumer takes you over.
However, once A Song For My Funeral begins, you reach the other bun and the unsettling taste of mediocrity goes away as the fury is rekindled. Considering Tuomas’ past works this is certainly an achievement. He stepped out of his element and (hopefully) realized he had a future in this sound. So perhaps this is one of those doom burgers that you just need to chew for a while….especially the buns…and we both know that the buns are the hot stuff. You and your dad would agree.
