So Sedated, So Secure

This is something I've been wanting to get my hands on for quite some time!

So far, I haven't read one negative review about this album and I'm not about to break ground with my review. First of all, I used to have the first Darkest Hour CD and I remember liking it a lot, but as far as I can remember, it was never as aggressive as their new album.

Almost all of the songs are mid to fast tempo, what with with drum tracks that feature omnipresent double bass drums... I swear, they are all over the place, and you never get tired of them! The guitar riffs are pretty technical but not all that much. Some of them are pretty rockin', in the same sense that you could say the Santa Sangre guitar riffs rock.

But if you're looking for the slow, chugga mosh type of stuff, look elsewhere. The vocals are like the icing on the cake. They are pretty harsh, kind of like on Damnation AD's last album. Come to think of it, there is much in common between Darkest Hour and Damnation AD, musically at least. Only negative comment I can think of is that some of the guitar riffs tend to be overused. Other than that, I absolutely love this album. One of the best Victory releases in a long time.

Here´s yet another (yawn) band from the US that plays a mixture of Hardcore and the Swedish Melodic Death sound (think Gothenburg). They lean more towards Melodic Death than Hardcore but you can still hear a bit of the Hardcore influence in there (in the vocals mainly). Musically they are decent but I´m not into the vocalist at all. This is just more of the same and extremely unoriginal. No matter how many times I listen to the album it passes by without grabbing me and a few times I even zoned out from it completely. Not a good thing. If you can´t get enough of this style then by all means check these guys out, I´ll stick with SHADOWS FALL or KILLSWITCH ENGAGE.