Darkest Hour
Location
Richmond, VA
Website
Bio
For a band that has been together for well over a decade, DARKEST HOUR is just hitting their prime with the release of their new CD, Deliver Us. “We already know what makes Darkest Hour…Darkest Hour, and we haven’t strayed from those things,” guitarist Mike Schleibaum states. “But we’ve been a band since 1995, so change isn’t something we fear. Change is something the band needs to grow; it has helped us stay together for this long.”
Once again helping the band blaze new creative territory was producer Devin Townsend. “We definitely want to push the bounds of what we were about,” Schleibaum says. “We chose Devin again because we felt he would help us push the same envelope he helped us open on Undoing Ruin.”
It has been over three years since the release of that album, so the band had plenty of time to work on and stockpile new songs. “This time around we had a lot more songs than ever, and a lot more ideas,” Schleibaum notes. “Every time we work on a record, we get deeper in a groove of working with each other. That gives us the ability to experiment musically on more ideas.
“What’s more, our music always changes when it goes from rehearsal to recording,” he continues. “There’s always something that surprises us in the end. ‘A Paradox With Flies’ took shape in a totally different way after Devin got a hold of it. The same thing happened to ‘Deliver Us,’ the title track. We had an idea it would be pretty good, but once we heard all the bells and whistles and what [singer] John [Henry] brought to the table, it became something huge. That kind of change usually doesn’t happen until we get into the studio, which is when the life of the song takes shape.”
A few days before Deliver Us was released in July of 2007, the band returned to their second love… the road. They started out as the featured performer at the Sounds Of The Underground tour in the summer of 2007, and they certainly did not stop there. DARKEST HOUR went on to tour with Unearth, Emmure, and At The Gates. “A new record will rejuvenate us,” Schleibaum explains. “We’re very excited to play the new songs live. After you’ve been playing the old songs for a while, they become second nature to you. It’s cooler to kinda get kicked in the face by playing the new songs; you have to concentrate more when you’re doing something new or different. That’s what fun about playing music.”
DARKEST HOUR also enjoys meeting their fans face to face during their tours. “We like interacting with the people who enjoy our music. A lot of bands like to be mysterious; we like put it all out on the table. We really enjoy the company of people who jam to our music. On top of talking to kids at the shows, we actually read their e-mails and respond to what they write on our MySpace site. We’re an open book, which isn’t the case for the music heroes I grew up with. Even today, I know I can’t send Angus Young an e-mail or Eddie Van Halen a MySpace message and expect them to respond…but the guys in this band actually do that.”
Schleibaum states that the band’s measurement for success has changed over the years. “When you go from a 14 year-old kid to a 30 year-old man, everything changes,” he says. “The funniest thing about this band is that now, when we finish making a record, we go, ‘Man I hope we can do that again!’ Our enthusiasm has always stayed with us because we really enjoy what we do—not just what we sell.”
