Darkest Hour

Deliver Us

[4.5/5]


When Victory Records released Darkest Hour’s last full-length Undoing Ruin in 2005, they hyperbolically touted the disc as the “best album of the decade” and compared it to Metallica’s Ride The Lightning and At The Gates’ Slaughter Of The Soul. It wasn’t, but the ironic part is that Deliver Us may actually make good on that promise. While Undoing Ruin took the band’s brand of melodic metal to its logical apex, Deliver Us shows the band transcending their sound by incorporating crooning vocals and studied songwriting to make for songs that will get stuck in your head as often and they’ll make your jaw drop. Guitarist Kris Norris’ abbreviated solos on tracks like “Fire In The Skies” are far more effective as carefully calculated blasts; thrash-friendly riffs on tracks like “Full Imperial Collapse” bring a Bad Brains-esque influence to the band’s seasoned brand of metal; and despite what long-haired purists will inevitably say, vocalist John Henry’s melodic vocals during the chorus of “Demon(s)” takes the band’s already epic sound to stratospheric new heights. In other words, Darkest Hour have finally arrived; just don’t say we didn’t warn you. (VICTORY) Jonah Bayer

ROCKS LIKE:

At The Gates’ Slaughter Of The Soul

Trivium’s The Crusade

Death’s The Sound Of Perseverance


IN-STORE SESSION

With vocalist John Henry

So you’re actually singing on this record. How did that come about?

Over the course of the past two records, our sound has really evolved, and I think one of the evolutions that’s been happening is that we started to incorporate more melodic elements. I’ve been full-on screaming since 1995 with Darkest Hour and I wanted to change it up-and, more than anything else, I felt like the songs called for that. However, it’s balanced by the fact that I’m doing the most brutal vocals that I’ve ever done, too. I’ve got these low death-metal growls in “Stand And Receive Your Judgment” and “Full Imperial Collapse,” and I don’t know where it came from. [Laughs.]

Do you practice your vocals beforehand or do you just get in the studio and wing it?

This was the first time I ever demoed anything prior to us recording. Before, I’d write the lyrics and show up at the studio and when I recorded, it was the first time I ever sang it. This time I had a computer with a recording program on there so I was able to track stuff; I was just screaming in my closet in my house. [Laughs.]

Especially compared to Hidden Hands Of A Sadist Nation, this album seems much more song-oriented.

This is the third record with this lineup, and it just shows how we’ve become more comfortable working with each other as musicians. When we play those [older] songs live now, sometimes we’ll cut out parts that we think we threw in because we wanted the songs to be six minutes long. We used to have all these weird hang-ups about our sound that didn’t make any sense. We’d be like, “Oh, we don’t do guitar solos because that’s not punk” or “We’re not doing singing because all these other bands are doing it.” But putting those kinds of restrictions on your music is pointless. I’m so glad we’re over that now.

Where do you see Darkest Hour’s sound evolving from here?

I couldn’t say. We don’t really think about that when we write or put out an outline of what we want to do. We’ll spend a year-and-a-half touring and in that time people will keep coming up with ideas, and then when it’s time to do the record we all lock ourselves in our practice space for days at a time and just come up with shit. There’s not much planning involved, it’s more like it just kind of happens. I know it sounds like a cliché, but our songs sort of write themselves at this point. Jonah Bayer