Spain’s Darkness By Oath seems to be a well established band in their homeland with plenty of gigs proclaimed and well received comments about their first two albums the band also states. By my own admission this Spanish outfit is very new to me and focus their whole attention on melodeath of the Swedish variety first formed by At The Gates and a host of other acts like In Flames and Dark Tranquillity. I always felt that the Gothenburg sound ran its course during the mid 90s as proved by said pioneers IF and DT shifting their sound to a more commercial direction and a wider metal public appeal, call it selling out if you like. Darkness By Oath don’t offer anything that has not been covered by a selection of 90s bands most of whom have either changed direction or folded, so in some respects the band has a little niche to exploit and hopefully gain recognition from.
The intro ‘Into The Gloom…’ is predictable as is the style and riffing on ‘In An Obscure Eternity’, which whilst true to the sub-genre doesn’t offer anything above and beyond what the 90s did. The vocals for me are far too one dimensional until the last tune, but more on that later. The sporadic snare blasts fit reasonably well and inject power but beyond that the tune is fairly pedestrian overall. The intro to ‘Violent Intentions’ is terribly infantile and the sudden change to an acoustic style is plain bizarre and does not work. After about four tunes my attention span was wavering, in fact I turned it off at this point as I was that bored. A different day and a different perspective as ‘A Cry Of Terror’ is a far more enjoyable song, but here the band adjusts their style to a groove metal approach with modern metal bounce and is by far one of the better songs on the album.
The simply titled ‘Instrumental’ is indeed what it is and has huge In Flames like melody on the guitar work right down to the harmony lead. The tune flows exceptionally well and is one of the best instrumental metal songs I’ve heard in a while. It’s back to melodeath on ‘Streams Of Blood’ and as a melodic death metal song it hits all the criteria with ease, but whether it stands the test of longevity is very much questionable. ‘Fallen Angel of Death’ is a tad heavier but is closer to modern melodic death metal than the 90s version of it. As I said earlier special mention should be given to ‘Terror In Thousand Faces’ which stands out with its clean vocal style, the only song that has any and sounds like Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquillity. If the band had incorporated more of this style then this album would have been far more enjoyable and memorable which may not be the true Gotherburg style but at least it would gain more favour.
There is very little else to say about ‘Near Death Experience’, it is neither astounding nor overtly abysmal but sits somewhere between hoping that stalwart melodic death metallers who crave the original Gothenburg sound to grab it by the throat and praise its very existence but for me I’d rather put ‘Slaughter Of The Soul’ or ‘Lunar Strain’ on.
(6/10) Martin Harris
Leave a Reply