Melodic Death Metal band A DARK REBORN formed in the early months of 2020 and immediately formed their great sound for their debut album "My Light," teased to the world in the form of their first single, "Dust in the Ground" released that very same year. Now, with an album out the full vision of the band is unleashed upon the world in a storm of breakneck drums, explosive riffs and delectable piano.

Beginning with an appropriately haunting piano melody, the album establishes itself as a dramatic, cinematic and genre bending, thanks to the combo of melodic piano, electrical sci-fi elements and the echoed, reverbed drum hits. This intro track is short, concise and a good build-up of what's to come, teasing the elements one by one until the main body of the album comes in swinging in with "Dark."  Starting with another piano entrance, which is soon swapped out for a nice rim drum beat and the first encounter with the lovely voice of vocalist Earth. The song seamlessly becomes progressively heavier before you even release its happening ad in the space of just 20 seconds, we have moved from sullen solo piano to an almost indie rock drum section to chugging guitars and washy crashing drums with a whole lot of punch. The track has some great metric modulation, the time signature moving from full to half time to create powerful and heavy moments sprinkled in throughout the track.

"Catharsis" has a great feature from MIND DRILLER's Estefania Aledo and is one of the strongest tracks of the album, retaining all the magical atmosphere whilst hitting new heights of heaviness. Musically its hard hitting and high energy, starting with a slow build-up of strumming guitar and tom drums, once the heaviness hits it hardly lets up. Great screaming supported by a technical blast beat which is then nicely contrasted by the drums entering half time for some china cymbal headbanging gloriousness. A crushing breakdown is prefaced by a whimsical build-up of strings, hi-hat and floaty guitar, it seems that everything in the song that isn't a smashing breakdown is working towards making the descent into heaviness even harder hitting, and it works every time.

Whilst A DARK REBORN's "My Light" doesn't necessarily do anything ground breaking, and it may sound familiar a lot of the time, its roots are deeply laced in Metal and the result is  comfortable, warm feeling of heavy music from simpler times, its digestibility is a massive strength in that it's hard not to enjoy, with lots of changes occurring I metal, new genres popping up left and right, grounded albums like this feel great to listen to, hard hitting drums, fantastic vocal work, classic Death Metal guitar work and plenty of breakdowns, it's a classic in the making.