Rebel's Mother

Item: The Dark Unknown
Author: D_Lister

The Dark Unknown

(1998)

Reviewed by D_Lister

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Label independentDead Zine1998

progressive metal speed metal thrash metal

Here is a San Francisco area band that's got a lot of potential. When I first got their CD they had a tear sheet they sent with a biography and on it, they described themselves as "Progressive Metal."

Uh-Oh I thought! I put the CD in and it starts spinning. A drum rhythm starts. A nice metal intro, and then the sounds of thrash metal guitars start pouring out the speakers. My eyebrows raise...then comes the low vocal rumble of what? Yes a death metal style growl. A smile curls my lip as I begin to listen very intently.

It's not long after that growl that the song settles into the band's self given description. Overall the songs are a very nice brand of crunchy metal that all seem to experiment with softly sung vocals at some point. It's not a bad design for the songs, but it does get old after awhile. The guitars remind me a lot of the band Betrayal (weren't they from the San Fran area too?) who were never comfortable with the description of speed, thrash or death metal when it was applied to their music. (I read an interview where they said they had been called Death Metal and they certainly were not...don't know who could mistake Betrayal for Death Metal!)

Skull is the second track on this CD and it shreds! This is a thrashy speedy piece that depicts the death of our beloved saviour. Again in the middle of the song the vocals tame out on us and I think this song is just too fast for that here. Still this is a great song.

The title track is the next song and this one clocks in at just under 8 minutes. This is one of the songs that really shows the experimental side of this band. Some atmospheric keys in the background of the opening of the song accompany the lonely sounding guitar. A melody of voices sing the opening refrain...then it all breaks loose and again we thrust into a frenzy of thrashy crunch that makes you want to kick some butt in a pit. The vocalist does even manage to sing a part or two in that really good death growl of his, but mostly the vocals are sung and shouted, trading off the styles.

The music pretty much holds this pattern throughout and as I said it's not a bad format but you've got to be into this style. A lot! For me this album is a mood album. Sometimes I really want to hear this music, others I just don't.

Lyrically the band has their hearts right. Every song out of 11 tracks comes from a Christian stand point, and there is no way of interpreting that differently. These guys are NOT ashamed.

The production of this album does lack in places, the bass loses its dominance sometimes and guitars get that tin can sound here and there.

To summarize, this album is thick and crunchy, but tends to calm down a bit too much. The vocalist has a killer death growl that is used too infrequently and only an OK singing voice that is used too frequently. They pull some double vocal stuff here and there, and maybe if they had one guy singing and the other guy with a rougher vocal style it'd probably come off really good. Just a thought.

They've got some samples of their music on their webpage, check them out and see what you think. This is for fans of later Tourniquet, and Deliverance style of music.

6/10