PHARAOH OVERLORD are an Experimental Rock band comprising of three former members of the Finnish band, CIRCLE. With "Out Of Darkness" however, they have gone towards a more Heavy Metal vibe, and for the most part, it works. The album also features additional voice and guitar talents from Sam Velde of NIGHT HORSE, and Bruce Duff and Frank Meyer of ANGUS KHAN. This means that there are a total of four different lead vocalists.

The album starts off well with the short intro of "The Eyes Of Pharaoh" transitioning nicely into the album title track, this being a fairly standard Heavy Metal tune, but a solid one, at that. The next song, "Devastator", starts off very promising. Again, your standard Metal tunes, with a definite 80s feel to it. However, around the halfway mark, things start to get a little tiresome. The track title gets sung over, and over and over... for the last 5 minutes of the track. In my opinion, this song would have been a lot better if it had stopped after only two or three shouts of "Devastator!".

The rest of the album takes on a ride through quite a few of the different sub genres of Metal. "Doomsday Mourning" is slightly Gothic Metal-esque, as you'd probably expect from the title. "Transylvanian Afternoon" also shows signs of this but oddly enough is also combined with happier sounding Metal. "We Came To Rock" and "Unseen Eye" stick to Heavy Metal. "No Speed Limit" has a heavy backing track, but the vocals are sung in an almost Punk style, which is strange, but it works. The final track of the album, "I Am The Light", is more Hard Rock than Metal, but is still a solid song.

"Out Of Darkness"is certainly an interesting release. PHARAOH OVERLORD hasn't fully moved away from their usual experimental style, but they can do the heavier side of things quite well. It's not a bad album, but there's this feeling that it can't quite decide what it wants to be, and I think this hurts it somewhat.