Project X

At time of writing, Dark Moor's "Project X" is one of the worst scored albums on this site, and there are a lot of good reasons why. Now, I honestly don't think the album is SO bad that it warrants a single digit rating, it's still an awful album, and definitely the worst Dark Moor has ever made up until this point. The thing about this album is that everything about it screams of a 'show tunes' album. An album that was made as if the band expected it to get turned into a live theater musical or something like that. Now, that in and of itself isn't a death sentence. After all, Savatage made a few solid records that had the 'Broadway musical' vibe to them later in their career, and of course, Queensryche turned Operation: Mindcrime into something akin to that later too, and neither of those were this bad.

The difference between these examples and "Project X" is that those still knew what their target audience was and tried to do things to keep that audience around and interested while they branched out in a different direction. And while Dark Moor had long before this record forgotten what made them amazing in the first place, this record has given up even putting on false pretenses. The literal bare minimum is done to justify this album being a Dark Moor album. I honestly think this album should have been a side project under a different name, but they probably figured they'd make more money desperately trying to rip off fans that still had hope for a once beloved band rather than just doing something entirely new. The second glaring problem with the "Project X" concept is, at least in my opinion, the concept of aliens isn't one that immediately makes me think of a 'show tunes-like musical' album. So this record is a band abandoning everything about their sound and trying a new sound with a dead on arrival concept while knowing that the vast majority of both their fanbase and the fanbase of their core musical style is going to be very apprehensive and skeptical of the new style. That is the core of what is wrong with "Project X."

The best things I can say about "Project X" is that the band worked very hard in keeping their theme of the album consistent both lyrically and musically. Even if what they're trying is horrible, and a doomed concept, they still definitely do all they can to sell it. On every song, no matter if it's a quick or slow song, the keyboards are always driving that alien, 'beyond this world' feel to them. The opening track "Abduction" is not a very interesting song by any means, but it does what it's trying to do well enough. It comes in with some energy, establishes the theme of the album, and gets out without hurting anything. "Conspiracy Revealed" is without a doubt the best track on the album. It's still nothing I'd hold up, but it has a fun groove, a decently catchy chorus, and keeps the mood of the album going without making you groan. I'm just not sure if it was a good thing the track was short or a bad thing. On one hand, it could have been a worse song if they stretched it, but on the other hand, it just doesn't have enough meat on the bones to really be anything more than a passable track on a terrible album.

So many songs on this record are vomit inducingly corny. You have this alien theme to your album, but then have vocals thrown on them that sound like they came out of a crappy musical. Not only are they bad, but they're jarring to the ear. "Beyond the Stars" and "Bon Voyage" are nothing like the prior songs I mentioned. And while lyrically, they keep the alien theme running, and the subtle keyboards I mentioned do the same, everything about the melodies and vocal style don't fit it at all. The tracks are filled with these sappy overly bubbly vocals that make you think you changed albums by mistake. That's not even addressing the fact that neither of these songs have any musical integrity to them at all. If you're going to make a concept album and not stick with the theme and style you establish at the start, you're just left with a mess. I can't imagine anyone that is at all into heavier music that will find anything listenable about these tracks.

And then the album hits you with something like "There's Something in the Skies." Now, a lot of the piano on this track is very pretty. If I went to a show, and was in that mindset, and this song played during the final scene or something like that, I'd say it'd probably be a nice little track to wrap the show up with. But that's not where we are, and that's not what we're expecting. So instead, all we can take away from this song is an eight minute snooze-fest. Any beauty it had or any melodies that might catch you are gone when the song adds nothing to itself as the runtimes just keeps going and going. The song simply doesn't know who its audience is. Name any other song on the record, and you'll find a dull experience that isn't powerful enough to please a metal or Dark Moor fan, and isn't targeted well enough or crafted masterfully enough to interest someone who would be into this sound. The record misses the mark for anyone it could even try to reach. "Imperial Earth," for example, has some decent riffing to it, and certainly has energy, but it's almost nothing more than a track put there for exposition. The track is filled with jabbering from characters in the poorly established story, adds a little bit of vocals from Romero, goes back to the character bantering, and then ends. There is no one who is going to listen to "Imperial Earth" as a standalone track. It is a track that is only there to drag the album's concept along, and therefore has no business existing.

That is the long and the short of "Project X." It is a confused mess of an album that can't pick a lane. I honestly think there are TONS more albums that are less listenable than "Project X." Hell, I've REVIEWED albums that I struggle harder to listen to from cover to cover than this one, yet I've given a higher score to. But this album, when you take the entire package into account, and how badly it missed every target it could have possibly been aiming for, is definitely awful. There's just so little that is of redeemable value on this record in any sense of the word. At its BEST it is boring, bland, and uninspired. At its worse, it is cringe worthy and misguided. Is "Project X" so bad that it deserves to be within the top 50 worst reviewed albums on this site? I don't think so. But I also don't think it deserves any more of a defense than that statement either.

You know, I actually enjoyed every single Dark Moor album up to this. Where they all perfect? Of course not, few albums are after all. "Ars Musica" wasn't their best work, sure, but it was at least a fun little piece of almost Nightwish-esque cinematic symphonic power metal. There were a couple tracks I could live without, but overall, I found it a fairly satisfying listen and I still go back to it now and again. It may not be a classic the same way "The Gates of Oblivion" and "The Hall of the Olden Dreams" are, but it at the very least gets the job done. This, however, makes me want to rip my ear drums out so I never have to hear it again.

There is not a single thing on this album that can be considered good in any way. Let's start off with Afred Romero's vocals, which are completely and utterly devoid of any emotion or energy through the whole thing. "Imperial Earth" isn't as bad as others in that department, but it's still nowhere near the man's best performance. Compare that song to anything off their self-titled fourth album (possibly the man's best vocal performance overall) or "Beyond the Sea", and you'll hear a stark difference. It just feels as though the man didn't put any passion into his singing this time around, for the most part.

Then there's the absolutely godawful drum sound. Look, I'm not saying that the production has to be ultra-slick or anything, but at least give some oomph to things. The drum sound here is extremely weak - it sounds like he's drumming on cardboard. The bass drum sounds like a goddamn pillow. The performance is technically decent I suppose, but it's certainly nothing to write home about, especially on songs that seem to be written more from a pop-influenced AOR sound as opposed to power metal (which is already the most pop-friendly form of metal out there).

The guitar work is technically competent, but not nearly as memorable as on previous albums, and that's when you can hear it (Enrik Garcia is a talented guitarist and I'd like to actually hear his fucking riffs). It seems they turned the guitars down in the mix this time around and gave the keyboards a lot more prominence, and considering how utterly irritating they sound on this piece of shit album, that's not at all a good thing. They try to set a sort of scifi-esque mood at times, and fail spectacularly every step of the way. There's not much of the neoclassical noodling that made the older work fun on display here, and that goes for both the guitars and keys. I guess the bass is (again) technically competent, but it's trapped in terribly written and produced songs, so it doesn't really matter.

"Project X" is an absolute chore to sit through. It has none of the charm of their earlier Rhapsody-inspired neoclassical work (up through "Tarot"). It doesn't have the Nightwish-esque cinematic scope that the albums from "Autumnal" to "Ars Musica" do. It's just straight up cringe inducing, and I have a very high cheese tolerance. It tries to be an upbeat, hooky, poppy album but it fails miserably at that particular goal - I don't mind pop-inflected metal. I think Amberian Dawn do a great job at that sort of thing, for example. Hell, I even like listening to the first few Amaranthe albums every once in a while. Dark Moor attempting a more blatantly and openly pop-influenced sound, though, makes my ears want to kill themselves. Avoid this like the plague.

Aliens are fun things. Joe Satriani discovered a few decades back that they make great surfing buddies, his overachieving protege Steve Vai actually learned how to communicate with them through his guitar, and more recently another associated genius otherwise known as Sir Devin Townsend became privy to an omniscient one and told of his exploits in search for the perfect cup of coffee. But like all fun things, they can become dangerous when not kept in moderation, and the next thing you know you're dealing with a disaster that rivals the carnage of the mid-90s Sci-Fi film "Independence Day", and that's only as bad as it gets when focusing on Will Smith's acting abilities. But all digressions aside, any subject for a would be concept album stands or falls based on what comes along with it musically, and Dark Moor's latest album Project X is of the variety that will make us think more fondly about the fate of the space shuttle Challenger.

It is necessary to disclose that the author of this review considered the early days of Dark Moor's career with Elisa Martin at the microphone to be this band's zenith, but he has nevertheless considered much of what followed to be respectably solid and even exemplary at times within the context of Neo-classical leaning power metal. Thus it is with a degree of sadness that he must report that both respectability, let alone any propensity of exemplary accomplishment, went clear out the window here. This album represents not merely a departure in style, but a literal departure in genre, as the contents can not be declared metal in any sense, nor does it even qualify as one of the manner harder forms of rock music that has cropped up since the end of the 80s. Granted, there are some fleeting semblances of this bands past that occasionally cycles through the melodic material, but it's all been stripped of any real sense of power.

Actually, a good analogy for how Project X sounds is along the lines of what most people who exclusively listen to extreme metal and hate clean vocals think all Europen power metal sounds like since Helloween first pioneered the style. The dimensions of the album are basically tilted in a pop music direction, with heavy emphasis on the vocals, drums and keyboards, whereas the guitars have been mixed down to the point of simply being present but not having any real impact. Guitar solos occur, but they tend to mimic a sort of rock radio friendly, post-Queen mode of lead work, ergo there isn't really any virtuoso moments, let alone something resembling the Malmsteen-influenced majesty that painted much of their prior work, particularly during the early 2000s. But of course, the real emphasis is on gimmickry, and boy are some of these songs loaded up with it, from gospel choirs to robotic sounding voice-overs, and just about everything else you could imagine from a nightmarish version of Dennis DeYoung's subconscious.

There is so much going wrong within every single one of these songs that it's really pointless to go looking for any silver-linings in what is essentially a really bad fit of black comedy under the guise of trying to create a metal opera. The only thing that can really be said in defense of this thing is that given all of the extraneous moving parts outside of the principle band members, a lot of work probably went into creating this well polished junker of a space craft. Even Alfred Romero's vocals have a sort of raspy, wannabe theatrical charm to them when removed from the symphonic power genre that might play well on Broadway, but the vapid songwriting and lifeless production of the principle instruments simply make the effort put into this thing into a pile of parody cheese to go on top of the unintentional satire salad. One shutters to think how bad the five re-recordings that are on the limited edition version of this came out, of which this reviewer was not subjected to at this time and now most likely ever. Thank goodness for small favors from whatever alien sent them.

This album has been getting panned all over the place, and I hadn't heard a Dark Moor album since Autumnal, which I remember being pretty good. So I was curious – could Dark Moor really put out an album this bad? Well, the first couple of songs weren't bad – they were poppy, for sure, with the guitars turned down to almost nothing in favor of dancey keys that sound like something your grandma would have liked, and Alfred Romero's warbly Italian accented vocals, but they could have been worse. I mean, it sounds like lullaby music for the children of government conspiracy alien nuts who wear tinfoil hats, but hey, who hasn't wanted that at one point?

But then it just keeps going. The guitars just plunk along, the drums sound thin and boring and the whole thing is dominated by the keys and vocals. It's pop music, which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but the melodies are all soggier than a library book you left on the porch and then a summer rainstorm blew through. There's very little here that's actually catchy, which I suppose is a mercy given how bad Alfred sounds on here – I wouldn't want this vocal performance stuck in my head. The songs are built on fairly blasé keyboard melodies carrying the songs along like nursery rhymes and poor Alfred warbling along with whatever terrible, limp-assed vocal lines he was handed. He just sounds uneasy here, pushed to the forefront with nothing to go on, like an unprepared stage performer put into a play at the last second after the first pick came down with the flu.

Rather than build on the outer space motifs, they throw in a few very cliché sounding space effects and then go right back to droll, basic drumming, sniveling paper-thin guitars and blooping keys, with more vocal uncertainty laid over all that. It's a shame, because there did seem to be some idea here, but it's so poorly executed in every way possible. Power metal bands of this kind usually have some disposition to making non-metal works, so the genre change isn't the problem here – it'd be kinda cool to get a spacey, eclectic pop rock album with a lot of atmosphere from a band like this. But there's nothing convincing or cool about this music; nothing even remotely charming or interesting. The songs follow rote, predictable structures and make the most banal and obvious attempts at hooks and tugging on the listener's heart strings – it's just so bad, and I hate to be so blunt, but it is.

Bands like Kamelot or Delain could have taken songs this mellow and poppy and turned them into hook-monsters, but Dark Moor just sounds flaccid here. Hell, just listen to Kamelot's Ghost Opera for an example of how this style could be done better. In comparison to their classic albums The Hall of Olden Dreams and Gate of Oblivion, this is like a different band, and even a solid latter-period album like Tarot is much better than this in terms of quality. Songs like “Conspiracy Revealed,” “Bon Voyage!” and “The Experiment” are full of disparate stretches of cardboard-sounding guitars and Christmas carol-esque choirs wandering drunkenly amidst the tepid new-agey keys, and aside from not sounding like Dark Moor, they barely even sound like finished songs. They sound disjointed and poorly constructed, like they were demo recordings just hurriedly snatched out of the studio, and the band would be running behind them going 'WAIIIIIITTTTT!'.

The ballad “I Want to Believe” is a particularly horrific song, with a nauseating main melody line. Fuck, this is horrible. This is why aliens won't talk to us. This is basically Dark Moor's St. Anger. It's just so lame all around, with no good songs or even any good parts; bad in every conceivable way. This wouldn't even be good elevator music. Whoever's in charge of elevator music – those untouchable gods we cannot see – would hear this and go “nah, I'd rather not drive away customers. Throw it in the garbage.”

A dimension in which bands do not shit the bed all the time is beyond our reality. The magnitude of artistic meltdowns covers disappointment, pants-shitting shock, and everything in between. Dark Moor, thanks to “Project X,” joins the ranks of those unfortunate cases in which the breakdown between records is something knocking on the door of spectacular. “Project X” comes after the wonderful “Ars Musica,” and it really couldn’t be further from both its predecessor and anything Dark Moor has done hitherto. Long story short, it’s a bomb; the decline of Dark Moor’s style is almost impressive. Dark Moor’s enduring ideology of power metal glory, even after multiple albums that were at least bearable, becomes pompous, excessive, hackneyed, and downright agonizing.

I’m having a hard time putting down just what in the hell is going on here. “Project X” runs between pseudo-power metal themes and a growing presence of hard rock/AOR songs that have these gospel choirs thrown in for some awful reason. The focus is user-friendliness, because these choruses and hooks have nothing to captivate; they are mundane and disposable. Any sort of nuance or measure of drama Dark Moor had once had is thrown out the window for the circular songwriting and horrendous, cringe-inducing gospel parts. Even Alfred Romero, a superb vocalist, sounds like junk. The production and the situations he’s forced to handle because of the hard rock influences give the impression that he is blundering and out of place. His smooth, elegant vocal style turns into a sputtering, messy performance that adds yet another hindrance to the excessive baggage.

At this point, we’re shooting fish in a barrel. The sound quality is atrocious, ruining not just Romero’s vocals but also the band’s instrumental authority. The attempts to write deep, multilayered tracks by mixing in gospel bits and softer sections don’t have any depth; they are dreadfully written and performed nonsensically. Aliens and abductions surround the concept of “Project X,” so there are plenty of needless keyboard sections going for a spacey effect and all sorts of extraterrestrial/government conspiracy buzzwords sprayed all over the place. Any semblance of an edge, bite, or flash of relevancy is shipped out for this uninspiring gruel of gospel/show tune sections and fourth-rate hard rock/power metal with a South Park Canadian on vocals. “Gabriel” isn’t too bad; it actually has a notable chorus and semi-decent songwriting. The rest deserves a one-way ticket to the Event Horizon.

I hate the shit out of this. There is not a single reason for a band as talented and dynamic as Dark Moor to release something that loves to shower in its own vapidity and self-congratulatory insolence. The production is garbage, the performances are gutless, the songwriting is basic, the concept is cognitively impaired, and there is nothing here worth a second glance other than a few parts of a single song. May “Project X” return to the planet of mediocrity from which it came.

This review was written for: www.Thrashpit.com

I'm going to make this brief, because I won't be able to get through this otherwise.

Dark Moor is known as a neo-classical/symphonic power metal band. They have taken a decided detour on this album to change the style, feel and theme of their sound to something more like Phil Collins singing about aliens. Yes, it's just one of those desperate leaps these bands make when they know they're producing crap: produce crap in a different genre.

The lyrics a heaping mess of Spanglish and the umpteenth degree of cheesy, with such subjects as aliens, abductions, space wars and cosmic nonsense. But I could probably look past that with quality music. This music is anything but quality. The metal is mostly stripped away, the guitars are weak and subdued, the drums have no punch, playing nothing that would be considered a metal beat, but rather mostly soft rock beats. The keyboard washes over everything with a sound that can only be called "gray". Sometimes dance-music-esque, sometimes bell-sounding, always out of place, and overbearing.

The vocalist doesn't even sound like he's trying. He doesn't project, he doesn't wail, he sounds half hearted and weak. It's like you get the feeling he doesn't even want to be singing. The songs have a very ballad-y, Barry Manilow-y type feel. This album is radio friendly even by 1978's standards. I mean, this is zero heart, commercial, plastic garbage.

So, take the bands old sound, take away all the neo-classical, all the symphonic, and 98% of the metal, add in Barry Manilow (I'm not joking), the most vanilla soft rock humanity can produce, a little Blondie, by-the-numbers song writing, a 9 year old's lyrics and ass production, and you have this turd of an album.