Darkest Hour Deliver Us (Victory Records)

The constant shelling of everything that is optimistic and poppy by this metalcore howitzer is relentless, genuine and mysterious. Their sixth release is full of double bass drum thumping, throaty screams and metal guitar chugs and soloing. Eschewing sappy melodic breakdowns that come off making the whole thing contrived, this volatile DC quintet adhere to a steady diet of nitro-fueled scorchers. But somehow, the lyrics are still audible, which is something lacking in most groups of this genre. Instead of hacking sounds and garbled phrases, words like “cascading” and “serenity” get a guttural wash over but stay discernible. One of the more unforgiving tracks on the Deliver Us is “Tunguska”, which can only be a reference to the Tunguska Event: a mysterious explosion in the Siberian wilderness in 1908 that felled trees for 830 square miles, left unexplained for many years. A miniature black hole passing through the earth and the annihilation of antimatter were hypotheses, but now it’s believed to have been caused by a comet or meteoroid exploding before impact.

Suitable subject matter for a band known to thrust their heads through drywall and generally run amuck.

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