The Return to Darkness

Well this is pretty much worthless. This band gets some good press – I'm guessing from friends of theirs – but they really are just a Dimmu Borgir ripoff, right down to actual stolen riffs. Admittedly they are ripping off the sound of DB when they were actually kind of good, but they are not doing it that well. Their sound is largely a mess, with all the melodies provided by the keys, backed up by guitar "riffs" that are just rhythm chunking. The vocals are an omnipresent vomiting sound filtered through a mile of effects in imitation of Behemoth's Nergal, but they bark all over the album and prevent you from hearing anything else too much of the time. Here and there DR add some even worse flourishes, like the cringe-worthy clean vocals they put in here and there, which sound so nu-metal they make me want to vomit – they seriously sound like Linkin Park. A lot of the melodies are suddenly and incongruously Power Metallish, all of which prevents the album from sustaining any kind of consistent mood besides annoyance. This band sucks.