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7.0
- Bands:
DARKNESS EVERYWHERE - Duration: 00:27:08
- Available from: 10/05/2024
- Label:
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Creator Destructor
“To Conquer Eternal Damnation” is the title of the debut album by Darkness Everywhere, a Californian melodic death metal band from Oakland, Bay Area, formed as a trio at the end of 2020, which explicitly refers to the Gothenburg sound of the mid-nineties.
The lineup now features four elements thanks to the enlistment of drummer Garrett Garvey: previously the drums were the prerogative of singer and guitarist Ben Murray, coming from Light This City – another melo-death group from the Bay Area of the early 2000s – as well as owner of Creator-Destructor Records, with whom he also worked on this debut album. The other two members are lead guitarist Cameron Stucky of Crepuscle and bassist Zack Ohren, who is a longtime producer of Light This City and also of the album in question, as well as acclaimed groups such as Machine Head, All Shall Perish, Suffocation and Decapitated.
The musical references are therefore mainly In Flames, Dark Tranquility and At The Gates: no metalcore insert from the recent American school contaminates the proposal of Darkness Everywhere, which however definitely focuses on immediacy: all the pieces are around three minutes (some even less), so much so that the ten tracks that make up the album attest to the length being around twenty-seven minutes, a somewhat strange duration between the EP and the full-length.
It almost seems like what the four Californians want to tell us “Ok, our proposal is not very original, but we won't bore you because we'll get straight to the point!”and in fact, once the frills are removed, the durations of the pieces and the album are limited, and the dynamics are pushed to the maximum, Darkness Everywhere achieve their goal of offering the public a debut that is neither revolutionary nor personal, but all in all tasty and engaging.
Ben Murray's voice is a pleasant cross between Mikael Stanne (especially) and Chuck Schuldiner, while Cameron Stucky's guitar solos are punctual, technical and precise; the rhythm section runs like a train that never derails. On the second piece “The Architect Of Misery” we find Laura Nichol of Light This City as a guest, who gives us a nice duet with Murray.
The opener “Retailation”, the title track and the seventh “The Final Descent” are truly compelling; while some tremolo picking parts, especially on the fourth “Cosmic Misfortune” and on the last “The Tragedy Of Infinite Loss”, refer to Amon Amarth's first epic gem “Once Sent From The Golden Hall”. The Californians' tinsel-cutting ax, however, fails to fall on the fifth track “A Dreaded Equipe”, a short, totally acoustic interlude that serves as an introduction to the furious “Starving Eyes”.
The sound in general is well cared for and perfectly suited to this updated and hyper-vitaminized nineties melodic death metal; compared to the 2022 EP there was an undeniable step forward from this point of view, but, to be honest, if it was gained in terms of impact, a bit of personality was lost, a not uncommon outcome in these cases.
The merit of “To Conquer Eternal Damnation” is to offer, in just under half an hour, a well-conceived, well-played and well-recorded sonic assault, albeit without any major surprises: for lovers of the genre, an album to definitely keep into account.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM