Artist: Dark Sky
Label: AOR Heaven Records
Release: 2008
Rating: 3/5
Dark Sky is a band that goes all the way back to the early eighties. They’re hard rockers from southern Germany, from the town of Rotweill, famous for its legendary dog and not far from the notorious Bang Your Head!!! Festival in Balingen. The band had already put together their debut album, which they wanted to release in the late eighties, but then their label at the time ran into financial trouble, the band lost all momentum and fell apart. About ten years later they got back together. This time lady luck was on their side, and the result is their fourth album, titled “Empty Faces”.
Since I didn’t know the band before this and had never heard a single album of theirs before Empty Faces, I sadly can’t draw on any reference points when comparing the new album to its predecessors. All I can judge is the type of hard rock the band plays. Dark Sky belong to the branch of German hard rock that leans toward the more straight-ahead sawing of bands like Frontline, Fair Warning or Bonfire. Thanks to their seriously polished keyboards and the emphasis on that element, Dark Sky are great at conjuring an enviably darker atmosphere, which puts them close to the modern-day Jaded Heart (without Michael Bormann in the lineup). For that they can surely thank Markus Teske’s top-notch production, which carried even a hint of Vanden Plas atmosphere into the Dark Sky sound (again I’m thinking of the keyboards, as well as the way the multi-vocal harmonies are produced).
The riffs are pushed forward in typical German fashion, but the sound stays clean and clear. The keyboards hold the riffs in a tight embrace the whole way through and can pull off a varied mix of classic organ-sound curtains. In the intros and outros, they know how to season the atmosphere superbly with synths and bits of “sound loops”. The vocals are just right, resolute and well crafted in every register, sitting close in tone to Claus Lessmann (Bonfire) in his better days, yet he manages to stamp his own personality on the songs. The choruses are the crafted high points of the songs, taking the lead with excellent dark, atmospheric multi-part vocal harmonies.
The album kicks off at a seriously bouncy pace with the punchy Hands Up, which gets the adrenaline pumping right away. The guys don’t take their foot off the gas, and the album doesn’t lose any of its dynamics as it goes on. The atmosphere really takes over, especially in the mid-tempo songs like Believe It, Chase Your Dream or Saints Beneath The Sky. The guys also (less often) use three-part harmonic “picking” over the riffs, which lifts the dynamics of the riffs and the songs themselves. It’s not as extreme as with Helloween, but it’s a typical trick of the German school of rock. The band also pulled off an insanely catchy cover of Maniac (orig. Michael Sembello) from the film “Flashdance”, which slots perfectly in with the original material. Where the hell are the ballads? Right at the tail end this time. Meaning Of Life is a punchy ballad that the band was so proud of that they felt it was the album’s strongest moment and put it at the end. But after it, the album also has a hidden track, Final Day, which outdoes the punchy ballad in atmosphere, thanks to the impressively woven melodies of the main motifs and vocal lines, into which these quick-witted guys also worked a nice dose of acoustics mixed with a “stereo chorus” effect.
It’s obvious that the three-year gap between the previous album “Living & Dying” (2005) and the release of “Empty Faces” did the band a world of good, because they polished the songs to perfection in that time. That’s shown by the album’s high dynamic flow, with the quality of the songs never dipping at any point. These guys are seasoned old cats, and given how consistently high the quality of the new album is, it’s clear the lineup is firmly consolidated and knows exactly what its goal is and goes after it. Welcome to the German empire of hard rock.
Lineup
Frank Breuninger – vocals
Steffen Doll – guitar
Claudio Nobile – keyboards
Winny Zurek – bass
Uwe Mayer – drums
Production
Markus Teske
Tracklist
1. Hands Up
2. Empty Faces
3. Slave Of Time
4. Send Them To Hell
5. Chase Your Dreams
6. Maniac
7. Saints Beneath The Sky
8. Pleasure & Pain
9. Believe It
10. Meaning Of Life
11. Final Day (hidden track)
Album length: 52.18
