DARKO – Starfire

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8.0

• Bands:
  DARKO
• Duration: 01:11:00
• Available from: 05/06/2024

Darko have become one of the most promising deathcore bands of recent years thanks to their ability to catapult the genre towards the deepest and coldest space: while most of the bands of this genre are in fact incorporating black and symphonic influences, the duo moves into cyber/industrial territories, with tons of electronic music to make the proposal more disturbing.
Retracing the curriculum of the duo that makes up this studio project, we remember that Tom Barber is known as the singer of Chelsea Grin and former voice of Lorna Shore, while Josh 'Baby J' Miller, who plays all the instruments in Darko, was the drummer for Emmure, Spite and Glass Cloud. Recently, the latter joined Chelsea Grin as a drummer, so now Tom and Josh work together in both Darko and Chelsea Grin.
The double commitment does not slow down the artistic production, so after the EP “Deathmask, Pt. 2” – a sort of bonus to the incredible second studio album “Oni” – the duo gives life to this third voluminous chapter, again with a lucid artistic vision and with the desire and enthusiasm to experiment wildly, without placing any limits on one's compositional freedom.
The good news is that “Starfire” continues the discourse begun by its predecessor, continuing to give deathcore a ruthless and inhuman savagery, musically the daughter of the latest Emmure and, ideally and conceptually, of the industrial of Fear Factory and the cyber metal of Strapping Young Lad.
Barber's growl has become drier and more alien, and in general the production is digital, very clean but cold, almost robotic; the work on the riffs, binary and pounding, is simply incredible, literally disfigured by noise and effects conceived by Joshua Travis, Head and Tom Morello, sent in a capsule into space and reworked by an alien civilization.
The title track, “Distant World”, “Rampage” and “Chrome Moon” combine these bestialities with an industrial/cyber metal scenario, with electronics that recall that sick aura of Apex Twin, the epic of Mick Gordon and the tension of a Dead Space spaceship. Elsewhere influences more linked to nu metal emerge, with dynamics reminiscent of Slipknot, as in the hyperviolent “Death Charge”, in the tense and animalistic “Pleasures” and in “Bunny Suit”, where bounce reigns supreme and is pulled into the middle even a scratch. Then there is “Virtual Function” with Scarlxrd, who with his trap metal carves out a situation apart.
The novelty introduced in “Starfire” is represented by an impressive injection of melody, which takes over entire songs starting from the unexpected “5D” and continuing with “Cry Baby”, “Sora” or the final “Finding Love In A World Full Of Tragedy” and “The Mother”: dreamy, slow and ethereal motifs dominate, always embedded in electronic motifs, with the spectacular intervention of Marcus Bridge of Northlane (in “Sora”) which gives notes of unreal peace reminiscent of the Dredg. When the two worlds overlap the result is alienating, so “Mech Control” and “Teardrop Sunshine” almost risk confusing the listener.
Perhaps the injection of melody and the contrast that certain songs are capable of giving birth to should be sufficient to stem the issue, but it must be said that the marginal problem of “Starfire” lies exclusively in the length: nineteen songs for one hour and eleven minutes, with such violent content, make listening almost exhausting, so much so that Darko literally take the piss out of us by inserting the interlude “The Record Is Over Time For More” before the finale.
Any type of editing, or just the division into two chapters (because “Starfire” could in fact be a double album), would certainly have made the work more digestible, but the beauty of Darko is precisely this unconditional freedom, strongly desired through giving up a recording contract and even assembling a band to play live. The future of deathcore music? We don't know, this is certainly Darko's present, and that's fine.