Style: power (clean/mixed vocals)
Review by: Sam
Country: Canada
Release date: 04-12-2020
NOTE: This album was originally included in the December 2018 issue of The Progressive Subway
Now man this band sucks. I had decent hopes for it. It sounded like pretty standard prog power from snippets, but I had hopes it’d at least be executed well. And I tell you, it’s not. This band clearly has talent on the technical side of things, but their songwriting just isn’t up to par. It’s a cliché, but this band shows off for the sake of showing off. It’s a combination of showing off how technical they are and how tough and heavy they are. The riffs are mostly uninteresting chugga chugga and the vocalist tries to sound real manly but instead he sounds like the dude from Three Days Grace. And to make it worse they also incorporate some generic Metalcore-styled breakdowns with generic Metalcore harsh vocals. His vocal lines are also just uninteresting and don’t fit the music at all.
For example, the ending epic Ocean is exemplary of everything wrong with this album. It starts with an incoherent three minute instrumental piece full of showboatery. Then when the guy starts singing it doesn’t match the music in the slightest. He tries to sound big and manly like Rusell Allen, but it fails horribly. Then the songs continues with all sorts of proggy twists and turns (with awful singing) without really going anywhere, and when it ends it doesn’t feel conclusive either.
If I had stumbled on this band when I just started reviewing, I might have given them a pass. But the longer I’ve been reviewing the more skeptical I’ve grown. Initially I still had the excitement that I was doing something new and that all underground bands are underrated and thus gave them a rating that was too high. Now I’ve come to the realization that most underground bands are underground for a reason and that there are usually only about 5 albums a month that are worth adding to my collection. This is not one of those.
Recommended tracks: no
Recommended for fans of: late Symphony X no
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Darkaeon is:
– Hugo Mcsween (vocals)
– Emile Sylvestre (guitars)
– Yan Lemieux (drums)
– Alexandre Mirandette (bass)
– Michael Menard (guitars)
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