And now for something that should have been reviewed last year...but as we all know, there was no Temple last year so I'll have to do the honors for this album today.
Some of you might know 'em, some of you might have seen them perform live at a big festival in Europe or elsewhere and some of you unfortunately don't know 'em. We're talking about Cage, probably the best Heavy Metal band to have risen from the ashes of the the dull 90's.
We're talking about a band on which I'd bet my left arm (not my right one, I need that one more than the left!) that they'll become the Heavy Metal Monster, when all the still standing Metal Gods leave the stage forever (well we all grow old eventually, with white hair or no hair at all...). Hell, they're already an ass-kicking Heavy Metal band!
Darker Than Black is their third album release, after the fantastic Unveiled (1998) and the breath-taking Astrology (2000). Sean Peck's voice is the outcome of what would happen if you threw Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Tate (Queensryche singer) and Midnight (x-Crimson Glory singer) in a blender and mixed them together. He's simply fantastic. I can't remember the last time I listened to something relatively new and bounced up and down on my chair like a mad-cow (um I meant Chief Editor) who's ready to be milked! It's not just that Peck screams like bloody hell, it's the combination of brutal (yes, you read that correctly) vocals together with the raging screams. In Chupacabra for example (which is a song about an urban legend, a monster that lives somewhere in Mexico I think) that's exactly the case. You'll hear Peck singing '...he will steal your sanity, Chupacabraaaaa!' with a Halford-ish scream and at the same time there's a pretty brutal '...Chupacabra' scream behind that! Dave Garcia and Anthony Wayne sure know how to swing their guitars, these guys ain't killers, they don't suck either...they're just right, just where your ear needs them (and their guitars). Mike Nielsen (drums) and Mike Giordano (Bass) also keep on storming with a thundering rhythm section that rocks!
The whole album is 100% Heavy Metal, track to track. The album starts with a narration, Darker Than Black and then Kill The Devil comes just to make you realize that you're listening to something more than awesome. Then you're off together with the band on a journey through flames and melting steel till the very last second of the album...when you'll then strike the play button again!
Concluding, I'd like to mention the fact that all the songs actually stand out as super, if you insist though I'll tell you I love Chupacabra, Kill The Devil, Blood of The Innocent, Door to The Unknown and Wings of Destruction.
I had to do this review (even though I'm almost a year late) because I simply believe this is the best Heavy Metal album for the year 2003 and Cage are definitely the best newly arrived Heavy Metal act nowadays...
And what small hope have we
as black holes angrily devour our floating islands of light.
Theory becomes reality and another cross lines
the cosmic roadside engulfed by something....