Darkest Hour - Undoing Ruin
Rating
RIYL
As I Lay DyingSlayer
At The Gates
Chimaira
Release Date
06/28/2005
Label
Victory RecordsTracklist
1. With a Thousand Words to Say But One2. Convalescence
3. This Will Outlive Us
4. Sound the Surrender
5. Pathos
6. Low
7. Ethos
8. District Divided
9. These Fevered Times
10. Paradise
11. Tranquil
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Showcasing what is arguably their best material to date, Darkest Hour has fully grown into themselves. Their heavily Swedish influenced metal shines bright alongside a spectacular array of homegrown talent. Undoing Ruin is a breath of fresh air in such a stale metal marketplace.
As a solid, crushing force this album ranks itself among the giants, yet it features a lighter side of the band that is almost indescribable. Ripping solos highlight almost every track, but always present is some kind of layered harmony. Songs like “Sound of Surrender” and “Convalescence” pull off the feat of flawlessly blending two polar opposites into one seemless mesh. Adding to this mesh is an ominous presence tha looms like a black cloud over almost every track on the album. They even found room to add an acoustic guitar to the mix on the songs “Pathos” and “Ethos”.
For fans of heavier sounds, “District Divided” along with “This Will Outlive Us” provide a generous dose of pounding double bass kick and a wall of distortion that'll knock you on your ass. Now what would a classic album be without an epic ending? “Tranquil” gives listeners just that. It acts as a synopsis of what came before and pulls things together for the close.
On the production side of things this time around Darkest Hour went with Devin Townsend. Almost like a sixth member of the band, Townsend adds a level of cohesion seldom found on the majority of the releases sitting on today's shelves. He understands the wall of sound effect that Darkest Hour was going for and executes it to perfection. It’s full without sounding muddy or mumbled.
While it may not save metal as a genre, Undoing Ruin is a blueprint for how an album should be done. The only problem with upping the ante is how you will top it?
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