In the course of four albums, Dark Sky's music has moved progressively from well written, well executed melodic rock to a harder and heavier variant, strongly influenced by producer Markus (Vandenplas) Teske and his first love, power metal.
Consequently, on 'Empty Faces' the band's trademark melodic flair has to put up much more of a fight to be heard. Teske's cleanly constructed but densely packed layers of sound - biting axework, epic keyboards and pounding rhythms - could easily have suffocated the band's melodic choruses and hooks.
Fortunately Dark Sky's songs have a strong survival instinct. But at times they have difficulty pulling free from the production's iron grip.
On the positive side, tracks like '
Hands Up', '
Slave Of Time' and '
Pleasure and Pain' are compact, self contained pocket rockets, bristling with kinetic energy, with each building on the last to create considerable momentum.
But others, like
'Send Them To Hell' and
'Saints Beneath The Sky' sink below the surface, weighed down by the heavy duty production.
As you might expect, as with their previous material, the band's music has clearly been influenced by the giants of teutonic rock.
There are a few lightning raids on the Scorpions' sizeable body of work ('
Empty Faces', 'Meaning Of Life'), and one or two briskly executed excursions into
Bonfire territory
('Chase Your Dreams',
'Believe It').
That said, throughout
'Empty Faces' the band clearly aim for a level of musical integrity. One that just about allows them to maintain their own, unique identity, but at times it's a close call.
Maybe, next time, a quick shift into reverse would be appropriate. A summer weight sound and a more
AOR inclined style could well see this band gain the attention their songwriting deserves.
Written by
Brian Saturday, June 21, 2008
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