Dark Aura

This will be my final review for this season's "Virgin Albums Challenge". My goal was to only write ten reviews. I'm not heavily-interested in "bragging rights", unless its towards myself. But even if I was interested in bragging to people, knowing me, I'd take it too far. And if the winner ever bragged to me about having the most reviews written this season, I'd just return fire and brag that I wrote less than him/her. No Dawn are a melodic thrash-and-death metal band from Norway. Notice how "Norway" and "noway" share some characteristics with each other.

Well, with that out of the way, I think it's time we get into what this review's supposed to be about, reviewing music, obviously! So, this record has some good clarity throughout the album. Good volume, good loudness, crisp tones...you name it! This album's production is one of those...."more-balanced" ones, where evereything is virutally on par with each other, you know, like with the instrumentals, vocals...that stuff.

The guitars are more groovy than I would expect from a melodic-themed band. I'm actually impressed to hear such a structure. Like, every song has incredible, medium-paced riffs, with loads of grooves. Fingers constantly climbing and changing positions on the neck of the guitar. The guitar could be at a lower-pitch, then climb up to higher notes with grooves along the way. The guitars have a standard amount of distortion. The guitars are creative, original-sounding, and have a catchy atmosphere. Basically, it's like hearing riffs that put you into a mesmeric trance.

The bass has incredible volume throughout this entire release, you can actually hear the bass in the background, behind the guitars. Plus, with good headphones, you can really even "feel" the bass, too. It makes the guitars sound a lot thicker and more powerful. Purchase a good boombox and you'll comprehend exactly the words I have previously spoke of. Just don't buy a cheap one, because chances are, it'll die after a little while...from more than just one album though (of any kind, in case you haven't figured that out yet).

The drums have good production, too. But the patterns are a little boring. It's not the tempo that makes it boring with the patterns, it's just the fact that the verity sucks in the patterns themselves. I find the drums to be the least engaging of all things in the band's performance. Most of it just sounds like "snare". Well...at least to me anyways. If the drums had completely different patterns, that didn't lack, then I'd probably enjoy this album more, to be fair.

The vocals, they're not bad. They're pretty good in regards to the production, too. But this time around, I feel these type of..."vocals" are quite "typical" for bands in the "melodic" genre. The vocalist sounds a bit like the guy from... "Children of Bodom" . Basically, in a sense... a "one-trick-pony". Predictable, yet somewhat bland vocal style. Not saying the vocalist sucks, because he doesn't...but it's just "boring" to hear vocals from many different bands, using the same style, that's all. But I would easily say they're better than the drums on this release. Also, the vocals have good reverb, to create in-depth tones for the vocals' characteristics. Makes the vocals sound a little "atmospheric" to the touch.

The album's artwork reminds me of something out of..."Borderlands", somewhat resembling "cartoons" (and with those thick, black lines to outline the chracters), but in a realistic way, if that makes sense. Oh, who knows... I don't care. I'm not really a fan of the artwork used, honestly. The colours are really bland, vulgar and just, well, not-so-engaging to the eye. It's easy to see why some bands never make money off their works, some releases have poor artworks to help drive buyers away. The music is generally fine, but the visuals just suck. Some female being groped by hands everywhere...that's it...? And with bland colouring, it's just lame...

Eh, this album is good, but it's not for everyone. I enjoyed it, but this could have been even better than it was. The guitars-and-bass, probably the better things of this record...and the lacked things, the drums-and-vocals. Not to mention, the artwork lacks badly, too. It's terrible. I would only suggest this album to someone who actually enjoys melodic-themed bands, because as good as these guys are, they have some work to do to have refine some skills. I feel more creative-ideas is generally all the band really needs to cover the entire field of their work. Unless they improve on that, they'll either continue to endure their shortcomings, or get worse after this point. And I'm being completely honest about that.

Sorry guys, but that's it. As for the band, consider my ranking of your album a generous one, because it did what it had to do, but it could have been way better than it turned out. Thank you for reading my final review for this season's "Virgin Albums Challenge". Not interested in the "glory" that comes with it (at least not during this point in my life). I competed and well, I've shown that I have the will to try (just not very hard). I've done my ten reviews in seven days, I'm satisfied now.