Don’t come up missing, through the echoes you’ve listened.
When elder metal statesmen decry that metalcore as being “not real metal” (or, god forbid, refer to it as “screamo”) then they’re certainly not referring to the body of work laid down by Washington’s Darkest Hour. Anyone who’s seen the band live will attest that what Darkest Hour indeed do is thrash. And thrash hard.
Those who’ve taken a moment to listen to one of the seven outstanding albums they’ve put out over their decade-and-a-half-long career should be found in agreement. It simply wouldn’t be fair to hold their ignorance against them, and so, here, I extend the opportunity to all those who shout metal’s equivalent of “bah, humbug!” when faced with anything in possession of a “-core” suffix, to correct such a mislaid opinion. One only needs to take a quick listen to a track like “This Will Outlive Us,” from Darkest Hour’s ridiculously awesome, 2005 record, Undoing Ruin, to see what I’m talking about…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUvoZtK6pRk]
Coming off the back of 2003’s, thrash-drenched, Hidden Hands Of A Sadist Nation, Undoing Ruin sees Darkest Hour refining their sound, while still retaining much of the hardcore rawness that characterized their earlier albums. On Undoing Ruin Darkest Hour injected huge amounts of melody into their punk-based, thrash sound sound (which, in all fairness, can probably be attributed to the rise of bands like Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall at the time) yet any inclination toward a “cleaner” sounding Darkest Hour is kept firmly in check by the band’s gritty, hardcore ethos, and unabashed worship of old-school, thrash metal.
Where the battle-jacket brigade are liable to be put off Undoing Ruin is in, vocalist, John Henry’s strained croak. However, given the position held by Obituary in the wider metal canon, this hardly seems like a valid position to take. Those who protest, “but he’s just screaming” are undoubtedly correct, but what they leave out is that Henry perfectly compliments the rest of the band’s seething aggression and that he screams with such impassioned rage as to be utterly, and forcefully compelling – you can virtually hear his vocal chords tearing themselves to shreds.
You see that band, the one with the lead singer who looks like a mix between Rivers Cuomo and Bill Gates, yeah? Well that band is metal as fuck!
Where Undoing Ruin does play into the metalcore stereotype is in its shameless appropriation of the melodic riffing style pioneered by At The Gates on their (tentatively) final album, Slaughter Of The Soul (1994). That the second-wave of metalcore bands were “just ripping of At The Gates (man!)” is an oft-leveled criticism, yet being inspired by and adopting the otherwise satisfactory sound of a great band has never seemed like a particularly substantial critique, especially when such appropriation is handled with the skill and finesse displayed here by, guitarists, Kris Norris and Mike Schleibaum.
Noris and Schleibaums’ chops wouldn’t fully unveil themselves until Undoing Ruin’s follow-up, 2007’s almost-as-awesome Deliver Us, yet neither are they to be scoffed at in this instance. Tracks like, “Sound Of Surrender” and “District Divided” stand toe-to-toe with anything off Slaughter Of the Soul, and – while tracks from Darkest Hour’s earlier records, and even those from 2009’s (rather uneven) The Eternal Return find themselves dropped from their setlist, “With A Thousand Words To Say but One” and the awesome “Convalescence,” almost ten-years later, remain cornerstones of Darkest hour’s live set.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvePeOrcVTc]
A just world would see Undoing Ruin not only considered as a genre classic but also regarded as one of the classics, alongside the likes of The End Of Heartache and Alive Or Just Breathing. …It’s not too late.
Look, what I’m trying to say is that Darkest Hour kick ass.
