1. Shores of Elenna
2. Numenor
3. Heroic Deeds
4. Darkness Descends
5. Taur Nu Fuin
6. Minas Morgul
7. Witch-King of Angmar
8. The Dwarrowdelf
9. Born of Hope
Genre - Heavy Metal
Sometimes nothing can
set you up for the head-in-hands disappointment when a band you loved
releases a completely unexpected and out of the blue sub-par release.
Such is the case I have found with Italian epic heavy metallers Holy
Martyr, who release their first album in six years entitled
Darkness Shall Prevail, trading
the exotic ancient Japanese samurai themes of Invincible
for the hobbits, elves and
nazgul of Tolkien. I mean it's Holy Martyr and Middle Earth, how
could you possibly go wrong? Theoretically this should have been
amazing, how could it have been anything but? But in reality it bears
all the scars of a band who have just by the looks of things have
lost direction and don't know quite what they are trying to achieve
with this release.
To
begin, the production is really fucking bad for a heavy metal
release, and let me tell you being a huge black metal fan I'm pretty
immune to bad production jobs by now. Fair enough Holy Martyr always
seemed to opt for the rougher side of the coin when it came to this,
but it worked on their earlier releases; it added a sense of grit and
fortitude to their sound, but here it's hard to describe as anything
other than downright terrible. I get that they're going for a kind of
darker sound here, but it just really doesn't work. For starters the
vocals are absolutely brick-walled in the mix, they're far too loud
and together with Ivano's slight accent it just comes off a bit
disjointed and awkward and actually started to give me a headache
about halfway through this.
Instrumentally
it is decent enough, but for a band of this calibre who are so much
better than this, 'decent' just isn't acceptable enough. The guitar
playing lacks urgency for the most part, the tone is thin and weak.
There are decent patterns scattered here and there and the odd riff
which threatens to ignite some sort of spark but then it kind of just
dwindles off into mediocrity each time, leaving you with the
impression of lost opportunities every time. “Born of Hope” is
definitely the stand out track here, containing some great riffs and
vocals and was pretty much the only one to hold my attention, it's
just a bit of a shame it's the last track.
What
I'd love to know is where has that heroic, barbarian spirit of the
past gone? When you compare the likes of “Tar Nu Fuin” to the
likes of “Warmonger” and “Spartan Phalanx” there's just no
comparison really. It seems like they completely lost their balls in
opting for this 'darker' sound that they are shooting for on Darkness
Shall Prevail. When you're
attempting epic-metal in the vein of Manilla Road like these guys,
you really need the hooks and melodies to hold peoples attention, and
that's just not present here, the whole album kind of just passed me
by like heavy metal elevator music.
I
really hate to say it but the whole album was just a struggle to get
through, not due to it being downright awful no, it's just painfully
boring more than anything else. Where it threatens to break out into
something epic and fist pumping it kind of just unceremoniously veers
off into mediocrity. The likes of “Numenor” and “Witch King
of Angmar” are decent enough but not what I come to expect from
these guys, the whole album just sounds jumbled, incoherent and
hastily thrown together, and with having had six years to work on it,
is pretty inexcusable. I spent far too long looking/hoping to find
something which wasn't here on Darkness Shall Prevail,
so don't bother with it unless you're an absolute die-hard of the
band, their previous three are so much better. These Italian warriors
appear to have lost their way a bit and could do with re-finding
their inspiration.
4/10
Originally written for The Metal Observer
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