Album review: Darkest Hour – Perpetual | Terminal

Twenty-nine years, nine killer albums, and still Darkest Hour only know how to utterly slay with every release. With their signature take on melodic death that leans heavily on thrash and a touch of hardcore, they have reached album number 10, and it is a worthy addition to their canon, focusing on all of their strengths and delivering an engaging listen from start to finish.

With a ‘cleaner’ sound than 2017’s Kurt Ballou-produced Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora, it nonetheless has a lot of grit, rumbling to life with the epic title-track. Equally triumphant and mean as hell, it kicks down the doors ruthlessly, matched by the aggressive yet plaintive Prayer For The Holy Death and serrated Love As Fear, never holding back when in attack mode.

The band like to step away from the all out kicking every once in a while, and they do so without compromising on overall momentum. The relatively brief, almost proggy instrumental Amor Fati adds a nice texture, and then there’s the acoustic, somewhat folky passages of Mausoleum, which sees frontman John Henry exercising his vocal cords in a different direction.

One thing every Darkest Hour album needs is a suitably dramatic closer, and this time around it is the massive Goddess Of War, Give Me Something To Die For. Beginning delicately, it steadily builds into something staggering, the kind of thing even Killswitch Engage might wish they had penned. It brings things to a suitably emotional conclusion, anyway, once more asserting the band’s unfettered talent.

Rating: 4/5

For fans of: Unearth, In Flames, August Burns Red

Perpetual | Terminal is released on February 23rd via MNRK Heavy