Lunatic's Serenade
HMS Music Spotlight
Canadian metal is flourishing in so many genres right across the country. One such band – A Darker Day hails from Ottawa and is hitting it hard in the metal scene with a new 5 song EP. What you get here is some solid metalcore with proggy/metallic flourishes thrown in to spice things up.
The five songs that compose this EP are tightly packed with precision and aggression, plus a heaping dose of metalcore to match the intensity all through the EP. We open with “Memory Man” that begins with someone flipping through a radio dial before the festivities erupt, roaring into life with all the hell of a band like Pantera and sounding convincing too! I liked this song quite a bit because it runs the full gamut of the metal spectrum for me. There’s some interesting distortion going on with the guitars and plenty of hardcore shots to boot. The next track “A New Terror” sounds like a well-oiled machine, while the guitars (Jeff Jobling, Marc Roy and Gumbi Thrasher) grind in unison. The vocalist Adam Loback carries the song and man does this dude know how to scream and shout.
The third track “Sweet Release” slows things down a bit as we get some slow mellow sounding bits to open things, but that doesn’t last long as the guitars start up and surprisingly there is tons of melody in this number. I loved the riff halfway through and at times it reminded me of mid period Shadows Fall – so all good as far as I am concerned. The song that follows “No Hero” continues with that harmonious melody from the last number and improves upon it with a galloping engine beat that gets my attention right away. Then the last track “Unbelieve” saunters quickly into life and keeps a good steady pace, but it does get a little proggy towards the end, making it more interesting for these ears.
A Darker Day
A Darker Day
(Self-Release)
Written by: Kenneth Gallant
8 out of 10
Overall though, this is a good start for A Darker Day. I think the key word here to best describe this band is balance, since they have heaping does of hardcore, aggression, and metallic attitude. I hear elements of Pantera and Shadows Fall in their core sound, but by no means are they just clones of those bands. They have a unique blended sound all their own and if you can grab a copy of their EP you won’t be disappointed.
You can check them out here at Reverbnation.
Kenneth Gallant, HMS
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