DARKLON – Mind Reaper

vote
6.5

• Bands:
  DARKLON
• Duration: 00:40:14
• Available from: 11/28/2025
• Label:

• No Remorse Records

Streaming not yet available

Third album for Darklon, a power metal band from Greece, more precisely from the capital Athens: authors in 2019 of the debut “Rise From Death” and in 2023 of the very good “The Redeemer”, the Hellenic combo presents itself at this important event with a different face at the microphone – Bill Chrepas of Wildfire replaces the resigning Migus – but with remarkable determination and above all a mental focus; characteristics, these, which allow the band to bring home an overall good result, although still perfectible.

Here, 'focused' is in our opinion the best adjective to describe the essence of this “Mind Reaper”, a record which on a sound level therefore presents marked differences compared to its more varied predecessor. Especially starting from the proposed genre: if US Metal elements borrowed from bands such as Vicious Rumors and Metal Church have always been part of the band's DNA, now they are actually structural, solid foundations for a sound that has thickened considerably in the last two years.
The epic echoes and classic/heavy ambitions of the debut and subsequent album are almost completely abandoned; in their place the aggressiveness, shooting and roughness of Powermad and Omen take command of the pentagram, metallising but also impoverishing the general proposal.
The preparation of the singles – as well as the production, sharp and sparkling – are much improved, as is the speed and cleanliness of the riffing, and just listening to the opener “In The Abyss”, or the powerful “Shockwave” or “Powercast”, is enough to realize this. DK Krasonis' guitars clank surgically on a very compact rhythm section, but also remembering to bring a bit of melody to the proposal, as happens on “Soul Stealers” and “Psyched”, songs made more accessible precisely by a good work of phrasing on the six strings.
The group's aesthetic itself also seems to have followed the more aggressive and lethal trend of music, and in fact a more furious and robotic mascot heads out on the cover, smashing brains in a futuristic laboratory instead of facing hordes of enemies as in the epic artwork of the previous album.
All this leads us to say that “Mind Reaper” is the result of precise choices: the musical direction, the aesthetic and also production choices kill the variety effect and concentrate the efforts on a single objective; the result is therefore a solid and compact album, capable of enhancing what the band believes to be its strong points, however at the expense of variety and instinct.

As always, the judgment on albums strongly aligned in one direction is up to each of you: as far as we are personally concerned, although we listened and appreciated what was crystallized in these virulent forty minutes, we still feel a little orphaned by the more accessible inspiration of the previous album.
Well, we admit it, what we perhaps miss a little is that somewhat epic aftertaste, somewhere between Jag Panzer and some Iced Earth, that we appreciated on “The Redeemer”.
Nothing that affects the performance of “Mind Reaper”, let's be clear, the good rating at the bottom testifies to the quality of the product, this last sentence of ours represents only a warning for those who already knew Darklon and will find them a little changed with this listening. For everyone else who discovers them with this album… well, they will find in their hands a good product of a genre (US metal) which – although a little dated – still has a lot to say.