Origins

Dark Moor's most recent album, at time of writing, is a step in the right direction, but not by all that much. "Origins" certainly isn't great by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely better than either of their past two releases, so that accounts for something. I'd say it's about on par with "Ancestral Romance." The other good thing I can say about "Origins" is that it tries some different things, so at least the band is making some attempts, and not just continuously going through the motions of garbage. It is still, however, severely lacking in depth, and that's the killing blow. The playing is still pretty simplistic besides some bursts of genius, as is the songwriting across the record. "Origins" is an album that isn't going to provoke much deep thought. Every song is quite short, which means none of them will get on your nerves, but none of them really last long enough to sink in, either.

On "Origins," Dark Moor adds a lot of folk and Celtic influences, which gives the album a pretty different feel. They also keep that feel relatively consistent throughout the record, so the fact that they committed gives the album an identity. The songs with these influences, unfortunately, have a varying degree of success to them. "Raggle Taggle Gypsy" is your more traditional feeling folk tune with a bit of a metal kick to it. It's not a bad song to any degree, but it's pretty standard for a metal folk song. There are dozens like it, so your feelings for that kind of thing in general will hold true here. "Druidic Creed" definitely drops the ball and ends up a bigger disappointment. The intro is pretty catchy and has a good melody, but there's not much that happens after that intro. The song pretty quickly turns into a very sappy and predictable Dark Moor track. It tries so hard to make the melodies and chorus feel powerful and memorable, but it's one of the more forgettable and dismal tracks on the record.

The album also unfortunately has a good couple of tracks that are just traditionally boring Dark Moor paint by numbers power metal. "Cross Through Your Heart" is as cliche as a power metal track and get. It is your dime a dozen power metal 'single' with a slightly more cringe-inducing feel to it. There's really not a lot more to say about the track other than that you've heard it a million times before, and if it bored you once, "Crossing Through Your Heart" is maybe even a little worse. "In the Middle of the Night" is very similarly cliche, but the chorus and melodies actually manage to be catchy, so it ends up being a slightly more pleasant experience. There's a little bit of an alright riff to top it off. "In the Middle of the Night" isn't really a standout, and it's not going to turn any heads, but it's an example of how to do a generic power metal song and at least make it the slightest bit memorable.

"Origins" also has a couple of songs that I wish were just a bit better than they are. They're so close to being very good, but just a bit off the mark. "Mazy" has a really good riff, and a fun feel to it. The chorus fits nicely on top of that opening riff, and is quite catchy on its own. Unfortunately, the verse melodies are a little lacking, and the song is just too short. If the song had some more depth to it, it'd have been a lot more of a memorable experience, but at barely three minutes long, by the time you start to get into the song, it comes to a close. The following track, "Holy Geometry" is a nice little rocker of a track with another solid riff and dueling verse melodies between the vocals in the guitar. The chorus also has a really strong performance from Romero, and he also hits an uncharacteristically high and wild note in it that was a treat to hear. It's just missing something. The song just needed some sort of varied section or some breath of fresh air to it to improve it. It's just a bit too much of the same thing to seal the deal. Two solid tracks that were just missing a little something to promote them.

There are two songs that are worth the purchase of the album for, though, and they happen to be the first two songs on the record. "Birth of the Sun" is the best Dark Moor track they've made in close to a decade. It's a perfect balance of that folk influence the album has throughout it and a good power metal song. The pipes give an interesting feel, and a very slick riff comes after it. Romero's melodies keep a dramatic feel to them while solid riffing from Garcia tops them off. The chorus is simply spectacular. It's catchy, memorable, and filled with emotion and fire. If you're a Dark Moor fan, but have given up to them in recent years, "Birth of the Sun" is worth going back for. "The Spectres Dance" isn't quite as incredible as "Birth of the Sun," but it's still a really good song. Again, the folk influence along with good riffing gives it a great start. The verse melodies aren't incredible, but Romero gives it a frantic, rushed feel that moves it very well. All of it is really there to build to the chorus, which is filled with fire, and ends up being one of the more memorable ones on the album. Again, I DO feel like "The Spectres Dance" could have been a star Dark Moor track if it had a little bit more depth and effort in the song writing, but as is, it's still a very good song.

"Origins" gave me a bit more hope for the future of Dark Moor. While it's not an album that is even CLOSE to what they were in their prime, the fact that it was such an improvement from their last two, and that no song on the album was outright dreadful made this a bit of a refreshing experience for me. I was really disappointed that so much of the album was so short and lazily made, but that seems to be a habit that Dark Moor can't seem to shake anymore. Short songs don't always equate to bad, but when they're short because they're under-developed, it takes a lot away. "Origins" wasn't exactly an album that quite got me looking forward to a future Dark Moor release, but it was at least decent enough to keep me from closing the door on them completely. If you liked Dark Moor, but gave up after "Project X," this record is a slight redemption and might be worth a listen. Temper your expectations, but there's a lot worse out there than "Origins."

"At least it can't be as bad as Project X, surely?" Well, it almost is. This is a warning that I took one for the team in the interests of science so I can now tell you that you should avoid this album at all costs.

The first song "Birth of the Sun" is mildly interesting. It has a folk element but should the reader have crossed paths with me before, they'll know I like folk infused metal, with emphasis on the latter word, because this isn't metal. But that's fine, I thought to myself, I'm okay with some slower paced songs alongside some higher tempo and higher energy offerings. However this isn't the case. The tempo is just so slow, and there is no real conviction. A lot of the time it's really uninspiring, which includes the words that Alfred Romero has to convey with his voice. I feel so bad for him. He sounds okay sometimes but no one else does him any favours.

The second half of the album is dire, as opposed to the first half being merely a herculean challenge, by this point I was considering the meaning of life. I thought it couldn't get worse than "And For Ever" which was so generic it was painful, but oh it does. I'm not sure if Enrik Garcia actually turned up for half of it. Sometimes the listener is able to register the guitar's existence with a couple of really uninspiring and obligated solos but in other times it's completely devoid of anything and it just sounds like seventies rock. "Holy Geometry" encapsulates this perfectly if you managed to make it that far and the finale "Green Lullaby" did a good job of putting me to sleep.

On the bright side, on top of Romero sometimes sounding okay, the bass is the only thing keeping the thing alive. Dark Moor of yesteryear had a good, fluid and interesting bass that supplemented the myriad of melody. This is the only thing they've retained because I don't count Garcia as retaining anything and he's the only one left of the original lineup. "Raggle Taggle Gypsy" is quirky at least. But anything they've even tried to do has been done by many other bands, infinitely better. It might be okay for obscure rock radio stations, but I'm scraping the barrel here, just as much as they did dragging out this dumpster fire to forty minutes in length.

Compared to "Project X" this is more forgettable, because at least the former was so bad you remembered it was bad, like a sports-ball team that gets a disproportionate amount of jokes and memes for their inadequacies. With this, it's purely uninteresting and like I said before, I made the sacrifice so you don't have to.

It's hard not to go overboard with pejoratives. At this point Garcia should just pull the plug; at least it's not pseudo conspiracy theory nonsense. But it's not Dark Moor. If Garcia wanted to make a new project with a new sound, he should have made a new band, so the non-metal that it is would happily never feature on this glorious resource. My final words: A few others still have optimism but mine's long gone. It's over, Dark Moor is gone.

Dark Moor's previous album, Project X, was hot garbage. "Gabriel" was an okay tune at best, but everything else was reprehensibly bad. With that musical blunder now staining their career, my eyes were fixed on whatever Dark Moor did next because I was hoping they'd be able to pick themselves up and go back to playing that classically-inclined symphonic metal we loved--at the very least, a return to the quality of Autumnal if The Hall of the Olden Dreams was an impossibility. Of course, there was always the possibility that the previous album was no fluke and Dark Moor was now destined to suck forevermore. But neither happened; we ended up with Origins, which is an album at war with itself, simultaneously trying to be invigorating and interesting once again, but it just can't entirely quit the opioid that is soft rock. The result is an album that has two very obvious, clashing halves that makes the whole thing feel disjointed.

The Good:
The album starts off with "Birth of the Sun," which is altogether entirely different from what Dark Moor usually puts out, but nevertheless is fresh and exciting, if a little simplistic. The rolling drums and judicious use of bagpipe give it a distinct folk sound and Alfred's descending vocal hooks through the chorus are a treat, and we end up with a song that won't set the world on fire but is nevertheless enjoyable. That's a good sign! A few tracks later, we get the album's biggest earworm with "In the Middle of the Night," which is one of the aforementioned soft rock tunes that Dark Moor seem predisposed to making anymore, but clear direction and pleasing melodies, including its pulpy late-70s-sounding main riff, elevate it over similar songs both on this album and on the last few albums. "Isuelt" is just a pretty good ballad--nothing really noteworthy or outstanding, just pretty good. And the album's closer, "Green Lullaby," sure is a nice little lullaby. It seems like, aside from the opener, all the best songs on the album are on the slower end, which seems like the opposite of what should be happening. Oh, and there's "Raggle Taggle Gypsy," which can be either a good or bad song depending on your propensity towards silly tongue-in-cheek folk songs. I think it's amusing enough, but your mileage will vary greatly with this one.

The Bad:
First of all, I joked about Alfred sounding like he just got back from the dentist on Project X because of his ridiculous lisp, and it seems like that trend has not only continued, but gotten worse. At times, he sounds like Scott Malkinson, and no one deserves to sound like Scott Malkinson. The guitar tone is also really thin and weak, at times failing outright to make itself known, making the whole album feel even more limp and lifeless than it should be. But anyway, continuing the train of thought from the previous section, whenever Origins tries to go for a faster tune, it seems to stumble and fall on its face most of the time. "The Specters Dance" is almost a good song, keeping up the folk elements while being upbeat and energetic, but the fact that it's so dead simple and offers no surprises whatsoever makes it impossible to remember once it ends. "Crossing Through Your Heart" suffers the same problem of being too disposable--the lyrics clearly want to inspire me with the prospect of exciting rock music being felt with every fiber of my being, but the delivery all around is just so bland and tame that the very idea of pulse-pounding rock music seems like a myth. Every other song transcends mediocrity and exists only on a spectrum of Bad to Worse, from the vomit-inducing faux-bad boy rock stylings of "Holy Geometry" or the utterly dull "Druidic Creed," up to "And For Ever," which is probably the most generic ballad Dark Moor have ever written.

The Verdict:
An attempt was made. Origins clearly is scraping about for ideas and direction, and while it sometimes finds success, it more often than not grabs a handful of plain oatmeal or, worse in the case of "Holy Geometry," a fistful of toilet fudge. This is a band that found itself in the gutter after attending a UFO conspiracy convention and getting fired from their jobs for doing far too many drugs, and this album consists of a band trying to clean themselves up for that important interview, but their black eye and withdrawal ticks are still visible and obvious, and they're pretty sure the urine test is going to come back looking like a Jackson Pollock painting--they haven't fully recovered from that insane bender, but dammit all, they're trying. And maybe the next album might actually reveal a band that's good again! But this is not that album. This is the halfway house album. The first awkward rehab session album. The explaining-to-your-neighbor-why-there's-a-flower-pot-shoved-up-their-dog's-ass album. And it should be viewed as such.