ALBUM REVIEW: Perpetual | Terminal – Darkest Hour
DARKEST HOUR don’t make bad records; well, maybe there’s one but if anything the reason their 2014 self-titled effort gets a hard time it’s that the Washington, D.C. melodic death metal veterans have been ludicrously consistent in both sound and quality in just about everything else they’ve ever done. If you’re not familiar with them you can’t go wrong with any of the flawless three-album run from 2003’s Hidden Hands Of A Sadist Nation to 2007’s Deliver Us, or 2017’s return to form in Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora, although if you wait just a few more days you’ll find as good a place to start as any in album number ten: Perpetual | Terminal.
And ultimately that’s because this is DARKEST HOUR doing everything they do best; if Godless Prophets had a bit of a point to prove regarding the band’s savagery and thus dialled back some of their more anthemic tendencies, Perpetual | Terminal restores the balance completely. In the opening title track, for example, blistering fret runs and glorious Gothenburg riffing run into an epic soaring chorus that finds towering competitors in the likes of A Prayer To The Holy Death, The Nihilist Undone and New Utopian Dream as the record goes on. It’s proper arena metal stuff, but the good kind, not the butt-rock Sumeriancore kind, invariably sharpened by the trademark rasp of vocalist John Henry that works far better than any outright cleans.
Other tracks run a little more directly one way or another. Societal Bile, Love Is Fear and My Only Regret are all absolute ragers that keep things to tight three-minute maximums (in the latter’s case it’s closer to two), with the band’s thrash and hardcore influences pushed furthest to the fore, whereas the likes of One With The Void and Mausoleum are more melodic and dynamic and expansive. These actually do feature some clean vocals, mainly in gentler and moodier troughs that make the tracks’ respective bracing peaks stand that much taller. Closer Goddess Of War, Give Me Something To Die For does a bit of this too, an enthralling acoustic intro giving way to soaring leads and furious riffing and, well, more soaring leads to grant the album the epic and climactic finale it deserves.
Put all these things together – the fast tracks and the more dynamic ones and the third category alluded to earlier that you can probably just file under ‘melodeath bangers’ – and Perpetual | Terminal makes for a well-rounded experience even within the established confines of the DARKEST HOUR wheelhouse. For the most part it flows well too, although if there is one criticism it’s that there may be a bit of a pacing issue around the album’s middle instrumental interlude Amor Fati which creates more of an energy dip than needed coming right after the aforementioned One With The Void. But that is being fussy; Perpetual | Terminal is proof – unsurprising though it may be – that DARKEST HOUR have absolutely still got it, and anyone that wanted to rank this in the top half of the band’s near-bulletproof discography would have a very strong case indeed.
Rating: 8/10
Perpetual | Terminal is set for release on February 23rd via MNRK Heavy.
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