review: Dark Messiah

Dark Messiah

Dark Messiah

Self-Release

release: 2 December 2016

Listen to the complete recording at the first link below.

It is commendable that Dark Messiah, a Canadian groove metal band formed in 2015, has a recording that they are doing by themselves. The world of rock and roll is hard and you have to be stubborn to stay with it and not give up. Many people do not want to pay for music and there are so many fashions, trends and waves, that it can get weird out there. This band likes to play live and they want to play live. Their music focuses on songs that people can understand the first time that they hear them. All that is needed is that you like heavy rock and metal music. It's not too genre specific, a kind of chugging, grooving rhythms that just about anyone into rock can understand, really. Here and there, there's a bit of melody thrown in to help out with the heavy rhythms. They sound like a young band doing their thing and getting their groove on.

It is not fun to write a negative review, especially of a band that has been working hard to get to this point. However, the thing that brings down the music is the vocals. The vocals reveal something like that they are undecided about what they want to do vocally. It sounds too much like some guy down the street shouting. They do not want to sound like a death metal band and they are not interested in being a total thrash band, either. It would seem like they like early 90s Metallica and Pantera vocals, that type of midrange grit style. The result in 2016 comes out like a modern version of the Crowbar/Neurosis vocals: the kind of old-fat-man vocals by people who cannot sing and are just kind of shouting in front a microphone, just kind of filling out the sound, just hollering from their big obese bellies. They could be trying to do vocals or they could be suffering from painful gas, it's hard to tell. Now, then, Dark Messiah is a young band and they don't sound as unlistenable/intolerable as Crowbar or Neurosis or bands like those, but it's just too generic right now. It's good to remember that early 90s Metallica/Pantera was actually singing, not just hollering. Dark Messiah is a young band and they have plenty of road ahead of them to reconsider the vocals and to put it all together. It seems like they are in the early stages of figuring out where to go. Let's wait and see what happens.

OFFICIAL: Blending the elements of metal, metal and metal, Dark Messiah is your perfect soundtrack to the apocalypse. Sit back and relax as you listen to the soothing, calming, face melting, ear bleeding, ball busting rock that gently pierces your brain. Their soul cleansing sound is the perfect thing to gracefully walk you through the collapse of a failed capitalist world burning to ashes in front of you. When it’s all said and done Dark Messiah’s music will elegantly grasp you and escort you through the excruciating, agonizing abyss that is forever known as the gates of hell.

darkmessiah2.bandcamp.com/releases

facebook.com/DarkMessiahWpg/

twitter.com/DarkMessiah204

review by MMB