Artist: Darkwater
Label: Ulterium Records
Release: year
Progressive metal is enjoying a real boom in the Scandinavian countries, which are thereby taking over the role of the genre’s global standard-bearer. Bands like Platitude, Seventh Wonder, Circus Maximus, Mind’s Eye,… are all serving up exactly what Dream Theater long ago became completely alien to, and what groups like Vanden Plas in Europe, Angra in Brazil and Symphony X in the US started putting into practice in the nineties instead. Songs with a compact melodic core, dosed all the way through with just the right amounts of prog-flavored escapes via broken rhythms and dynamic turns in the guitar and keyboard passages, yet with that signature trait of constantly, faithfully bowing to the basic melodic figures and core riff motifs that keep the songs on the red thread of their story. With their arrival and debut only in 2007, Darkwater are a slightly less interesting band, since on the musical horizon the groups mentioned above had already staked out the stylistic territory of their own recognizability before Darkwater did. Now Darkwater are wedging themselves, belatedly, into that territory among their Scandinavian countrymen.
Darkwater are yet another seriously promising band, kicking off their discography with this year’s debut “Calling the Earth To Witness” and getting down to some very serious competition with their countrymen’s musical achievements. From the cover art and the band’s name alone, you can guess at the mournful atmosphere that runs through the album and the Swedes’ overall expression. And it’s true. And honestly, what else would really spark with modern Vikings living in the shadow/sun of the polar day and night, constantly exposed to the bite of hellish cold, the embrace of ice and snow?
The album opens with a half-minute intro without any clear meaning, the kind that time ran over ages ago, and the opener feels totally old-school and chewed to death. But it’s followed by an exceptionally well-filled overall soundscape, laid out in All Eyes In Me. An avalanche of a guitar riff, open-chord style, with the accented vibration of a modern, smeared-out groovy clang, and of course with the guitars tuned “down”. Symphonic keyboards settle in skillfully on top, forming a superb contrast and placed in the production in an equally opposing position, which keeps the soundscape balanced while widening its depth, building up the intensity of that colorful mood – the mood of mourning I mentioned. It’s all built on minor keys!
The success of the Darkwater story isn’t progressively showcased jams, but the ravenously singable melodic quality of the choruses, which has the same effect as if you had a melodic hard rock or power metal band in front of you. These are the atmospheric peaks, thanks to an exceptionally tight interplay of instruments and the vocals front and center. The vocals are strong and clean enough to make a major contribution to lifting the mood at those points, as well as to raising the level of melody in the Darkwater songs themselves.
Of the bands mentioned in the first paragraph, the vocals are closest to Circus Maximus, with a considerably more pronounced touch of obscure gloom. At the highest registers they even fleetingly (incredibly) channel Charlie Dominici (Dream Theater’s first singer). Of course, the Darkwater vocals have been upgraded in developing their own explosiveness, but the hint is by no means superfluous, say, in In My Dreams, the album’s darkest song riff-wise and its closer, or in one of the transitions at the start of the fifth minute of Habit, the album’s longest track, which by the way is the record’s most complex composition, full of unpredictable motif and atmospheric turns, wisely and fluidly strung one after another, so the song keeps all of its clear melodic identity and compactness. This wise, ear-friendly stringing together of motifs, in search of perfect balance, leaves its biggest impression in Tallest Tree, where Darkwater steer most successfully between the melodic punch of compact motifs and progressively more complex, breakneck adventures, which sparkle with real potency in the stretched-out instrumental interlude that never stops entertaining with its impressive flow. The band conjures up a true dynamic foldout and a magical variety of highly appealing, multifaceted moods in The Play pt. I. and its continuation in The Play pt. II., where the guys point to an exceptional talent for building intense atmosphere with polished symphonic-orchestral arrangements, for which the keyboards are mostly to blame, often sounding like a proper little orchestra.
Darkwater are very thorough songwriters! The songs are stretched out in detail, and there are no moments on the album that feel like ballast (the half-minute intro aside). This is a debut that, given the band’s demonstrated potential, will undoubtedly be built upon by their future work. Darkwater offer a version of progressive metal that’s less complex, so it’ll fit like a glove for everyone who’s after an emphasis on melody and depth of atmospheric swell, riding on an excellent combination of a massive riff-based undercarriage, whose gears relentlessly keep the outstanding atmospheric moment of the keyboards’ symphonic-orchestral arrangements in constant high-voltage tension. A hugely appealing listen that’s at the same time easy to digest and easy to get into.
Lineup
Henrik Båth – vocals, guitar
Markus Sigfridsson – guitar
Magnus Holmberg – keyboards
Karl Wassholm – bass guitar
Tobias Enbert – drums
Production
Emil Westerdahl
Track list
1. 2534167 (intro) (0:32)
2. All Eyes On Me (8:48)
3. Again (9:01)
4. Habit (12:46)
5. The Play – I (2:34)
6. The Play – II (8:39)
7. Shattered (9:38)
8. Tallest Tree (10:14)
9. In My Dreams (6:09)
Album length: 68:22
