Review Summary: Diet-Primordial: zero calories and half of the taste.
When it comes to certain genres of music bands can just become a dime a dozen. If they don’t do something inventive with every album they can just blend in with the rest and fall into the inevitable line of bands waiting to sell out for a radio deal or fail miserably. Celtic metal, however, is thankfully not one of the genres that is overpopulated by dreadful clones and pretentious fads. After releasing their debut EP in 2008 and another in 2010, Darkest Era now brings us their first full length album, The Last Caress of Light. With obvious influences of Primordial and Waylander,
The Last Caress Of Light is full of heavy riffs, slick basslines, clean drumming and soaring vocals.
The one noticeable difference between the new album and the old EP’s is that Darkest Era has started to lose the folk instrumentation that got the “celtic” tag that has been placed upon them. The Last Caress Of Light produces a more straightforward metal feeling with it’s own hint of folk here and there. If you pay very close attention throughout your listens, you might catch some of the traditional Irish instruments playing but they are few and far between. “The Morrigan” is a remastered version of the song that first appeared on the band’s debut EP back in 2008. It’s one of the more traditional songs on the album in the sense that it gives you the best example of Krum’s vocals.
The biggest problem with the album is that none of the songs are able to stick out from one another. Unless you listen to this album enough to learn every single lyric you would most likely be able to put it on shuffle and have no idea what song on the album it’s playing. Just about every songs starts off with a similar guitar interlude and ends in the same fashion. Towards the end of the album you’ll stumble upon “Poem to the Gael” which is the definition of creativity on this album. The four minutes long folk song stretches Darkest Era’s imagination farther than their other 7 songs on the album and gives you a brief break from the monotony. The last song on the album, which is a eleven minute monster is just more of the same, nothing new to see here.
For all it’s intents and purposes Darkest Era’s new album doesn’t fail but it certainly doesn’t succeed to what they should’ve created with their formula. Their idea, concept and vision are good but some of the song writing decsions made just didn’t pan out and that’s what makes this a cookie cutter debut release. Given it’s their first full length,
The Last Caress Of Light is a good starting point but they’ve got a ways to come if they want to be something more than diet-Primordial.
